Caribbean Princess Shore Excursions

[formula14]

As first time cruisers we are looking forward to shore excursions. We are doing Bermuda, San Juan, St-Thomas and Turks & Caicos. We noticed you can pre-book shore excursions directly through princess cruise website. Do you have to book the excursions through the ship or can you book once you get to the islands at each port? Trying to figure out what are the advantages of pre-booking on ship or on your own at ports. Is it less or more expensive through princess? Or are there alot more options once you get off the ship at the ports.

 

We appreciate the help.

 

Thank You,

:)

[newyork cruiser]

Do you have to book the excursions through the ship or can you book once you get to the islands at each port? Trying to figure out what are the advantages of pre-booking on ship or on your own at ports. Is it less or more expensive through princess? Or are there alot more options once you get off the ship at the ports.

:)

 

It's vacation, you can do whatever you wish! The advantages of booking through the cruiseline are that the ship will not leave without you (a real danger if you are not good about budgeting your time) and that there are no decisions/planning to do, just show up and off you go. The advantages of booking on your own - you can customize your trip to just your areas of interest, usually less expensive, also typically smaller groups.

You will usually find tour operators on the pier, but the port of call boards has a ton of great information about different tours. Many of these you can pre-book by contacting them online. Happy planning!

[Amie Lynn]

I reserved all my shore excursions in advance and I'm really glad I did. We leave in 23 days and there are very few slots left on some of the more popular excursions.

If you reserve an excursion and decide once you are on the ship (or even before) you would rather not do it or found something better...you can cancel up to 24 hours before you arrive in the port without a penalty.

 

If there is something you really want to do, I say book it in advance. If you go the the Ports of Call pages for each of your destinations you will find a lot of people do book with outside companies and you can find reviews on both ship excursions and private excursions.

You can book excursions through companies not with the ship, but I'm not sure I would. Last year we went on a cruise and booked a pretty long excursion (5 or 6 hours) and it advertised having a lunch...well there was basically nothing to eat for the lunch and our tour guide was over 35 minutes late picking us up from our last port (which scared our group because it was our last stop before going back to the ship) but he did show. And to top it off...our bus got in an accident! A truck hit the side of our bus. Thankfully no one was hurt and we were able to continue on, but it still makes you nervous. Our whole group wrote a letter commenting about this once we got back and every one of us received half of our money back. I'm not sure we would have gotten this if it wasn't an excursion provided through the cruise line.

Hope this helps! :-)

[jag27]

As first time cruisers we are looking forward to shore excursions. We are doing Bermuda, San Juan, St-Thomas and Turks & Caicos. We noticed you can pre-book shore excursions directly through princess cruise website. Do you have to book the excursions through the ship or can you book once you get to the islands at each port? Trying to figure out what are the advantages of pre-booking on ship or on your own at ports. Is it less or more expensive through princess? Or are there alot more options once you get off the ship at the ports.

 

We appreciate the help.

 

Thank You,

:)

 

I'm on the CB in May and have a similiar itineary (except Bermuda, we are going to St. Maarten). After a lot of reseach online, a lot of the excursions provided by other companies (not through Princess) were about the same price except the one excursion we are doing in St. Maarten (renting a Harley Davidson for the day).

 

Do some research and compare prices. If Princess offers an excursion you are intersted in at a comparable price, book it through Princess. This way if you change your mind, you can cancel 24 hours in advance. If you book through an outside company, you usually have to put a deposit down (if you book in advance) and usually can't cancel unless the boat doesn't come into port or because of bad weather.

[ally&tommysmom]

HI! I only have a second (i'm on the ship and it's not cheap in the internet cafe'). But I wanted to tell you that we just did the Snorkel and Sail in Turtle Cove today (Caribbean Princess) at St. Thomas and it was amazing. I wouldn't miss it. It was SO fun. I was literally 6" away from turtles at two different points. It was so neat. There were lots of brightly colored fish, too. If you like that kind of thing, it's something I would definitely do. It's in the princess brochure. We were on the Dancing Dolphin ship. You can go to thedancingdolphin.com and see some pics.

 

Whatever you decide, have a great time! sorry i couldn't comment on the other ports.