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Excursion Booking on 13 night New Zealand - Ovation of the Seas


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Looking for advice or opinions on booking excursion for 13 night New Zealand cruise on Ovation of the Seas locally or on board. Because on board acct is in U.S. dollars and we are converting from Canadian funds, I would rather book locally due to currency exchange being better. However I'm wondering if certain ports have time constraints and recommend booking via the ship. i.e. Brisbane port recommends booking via ship because of proximity of port and heavy traffic. So wondering if certain ports in New Zealand have same issues. Anyone have any experience with this?

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Did 14 night NZ on Ovation and no problem with using credit card to pay for excursions at port. Only Dunedin port, cruise terminal is far from city centre. Option is pay cruise shuttle ( I think it was $25 USD) or take local bus ( NZ cash only), no foreign exchange at port.

 

 

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We did a 12 night cruise on the ovation around NZ.

We found the ship tours weren’t that much more than the private tours.about 20%more or less.

 

The bad thing about the ship tours ,the ship canceled a couple of them at the last minute.no apology ,no alternative.nothing.

They did give a refund but everything was booked out.

It wasn’t just us because everyone was talking about it.

 

So at those ports we just went ashore and had a look around.

 

One local tour operator I recommend is Arrow tours in Taraunga.

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One thing we dd notice was RCCL shore excursions rarely have discounted rates for kids. The exact same tours were invariably cheaper for families by booking through 3rd party sites or direct in port.

 

 

Cheers

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If you’re happy to post your ports of call you may get some specific recommendations. Viator offer a number of tours in NZ specifically for cruise passengers with a return to ship guarantee. Zeelandier is another well regarded operator.

I would give some thought to tender ports in particular as often ships tours get priority and there are a lot of passengers to move afterwards, which can cut into your day.

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

We used a local company in Tauranga which we docked at. They guaranteed getting you back to Port in plenty of time which they did and they refund your monies if your ship does not make it into port for any reason such as bad weather etc. Did my research and they were recommended on this site by fellow cruisers and on TripAdvisor.

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We used a local company in Tauranga which we docked at. They guaranteed getting you back to Port in plenty of time which they did and they refund your monies if your ship does not make it into port for any reason such as bad weather etc. Did my research and they were recommended on this site by fellow cruisers and on TripAdvisor.

Yes there are some great local tour guides .Do you you remember the one you used .We had a large roll call group use Scott tours in Tauranga . https://www.scott-tours.co.nz/

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