City Tour in LA?

[flamomo]

We're sailing on the Golden out of LA in 29 days, and are flying in a day early and staying a day after the cruise.

Princess used to have LA City Tours, and one shows up in the shore excursion section of the Princess site. But there's nowhere to sign up for it. (It shows the valid date ending in April of this year, so I presume they are no longer offering it. It also does not show up in excursion booklet that came with the pre-cruse packet.)

If it's been discontinued, that's a shame. We thought this would be a great way to see a few highlights of the LA area without renting a car and driving around ourselves. Really don't want to risk that.

[calwriter]

Don't know about Princess' tours specifically, but as a SoCal local, I've looked at the descriptions of tours offered by other cruise lines, and the thing you'll see most on those tours is traffic!! They have so many "locations" jammed in that it will likely be a "there it is! There it is!" tour....You might be better off researching one or two spots in advance, and renting a car to go there...LA really is a sprawling place and weekend sporting events, parades, you name it can really slow down movement in a tour from one place to another...

[Suzanne123]

I don't know where you're staying, but the concierge at your hotel will have loads of tour brochures. We did one (maybe 4 hours or so) to Hollywood and enjoyed that. We were at the Sheraton Gateway LAX. We specifically booked a tour so we wouldn't have to deal with the terrible traffic.

 

http://www.la-tours.com/la_city_tour.htm

[Coral]

I stayed at the Marriott Airport hotel at LAX and signed up with a tour from there. I did a LA city tour which lasted about 5 hours.

[flamomo]

Coral, that's where we are staying. The Princess tour that we found, but does not appear to be operational, was to last about the same amount of time as yours, and included a stop at the Farmer's Market for lunch. Sounded so appealing.

Did you book that tour after you arrived at the Marriott? I know where the concierge's desk is, so we can look into it after we get there. Thanks for posting that info.

[Coral]

Coral, that's where we are staying. The Princess tour that we found, but does not appear to be operational, was to last about the same amount of time as yours, and included a stop at the Farmer's Market for lunch. Sounded so appealing.

Did you book that tour after you arrived at the Marriott? I know where the concierge's desk is, so we can look into it after we get there. Thanks for posting that info.

 

My guess is the Princess tour is for those who have completed their cruise and have late flights.....

 

I called the hotel before I arrived and asked the conceriage for possible tours given my arrival time. They had them every couple of hours or so. I signed up once I arrived at the hotel.

 

What they did was pick us up at the hotel and took us to the tour office where we joined other people. The tour included several stops starting with Venice Beach (I think), the Farmer's Market (which was excellent by the way), and Hollywood. We also saw other things along the way such as Rodeo drive but we didn't get out of the bus. Overall - the tour was fine. I wasn't thrilled with the tour guide (this was 18 months ago) and we had a lot of traffic coming back to the hotel.

 

Hope this helps.

[flamomo]

Your reply is very helpful. We will check at the concierge desk when we arrive the day before the cruise. Maybe we will be able to set something up for the day we get back into port. That would probably be better, because we don't arrive at LAX til about 1 PM the day before the cruise.

Thanks again