Caribbean Excursions that don't charge for babies?

We are going on the RCI Freedom of the Seas and leaving in 3 weeks. I'm amazed how almost every shore excursion we've found thus far charges for our 6 month old baby! Can you recommend any companies or specific excursions where we won't have to pay for her to go as well?

Here are our stops:

St. Maarten

St. Thomas

San Juan, Puerto Rico

St. Kitts

Any insight would be greatly appreciated!

-Megan

The excursions are charging for a seat on the bus regardless of the age of the participant. I realize that you are probably holding your child on your lap and feel he/she isnot occupying a seat, but the excursion company does not see it that way. Perhaps you can arrange something privately. EM

What is it you want to do in each place? It's quite possible you don't NEED an excursion at all, to do that which interests you! A guidebook will tell you everything about your ports...you might find things that are quick and easy to get to by either walking, or hopping on a bus! Head to your local library and pick up a guidebook (reference section!). Decide WHAT you want to do...and we can help with HOW!

We've done private tours for just our family in almost all our ports, and have not been charged for our child (including in St. Petersburg, where had we gone independently we'd have needed to get our 3 year old a Russian visa and the price for 3 visas for all of us would have been more than we paid for the private tour for our entire family).

I usually start by looking at the list of ship excursions, pick what I like, and then double check trip advisor for excursions (since sometimes the ship excursions miss some nice kids activities) and then find a private vendor on trip advisor. In the caribbean, you will save a lot on private excursions as compared to ship ones, even if you take one for just your family. If people don't recommend specific vendors here, you might want to repost in the Caribbean board to see which vendors people on cruise critic have liked in the past.

I am surprised. We did Freedom of the Seas western caribbean in December and didn't pay for our three year old on two of the three excursions. One was through Royal and the other was a private jeep tour. The last was a beach club that did charge, but not much. Double check yours. If you are going through Royal, add the excursion to the planner and when you click on the cart it should tell you if there is a charge. Looking through the ports (we will be doing a similar sailing this November) I think we are just going to walk the forts in San Juan. Those are free. We haven't made any decisions on the other ports.

Check the boards in here on the ports of call. You can usually do a search within each board for young children, etc and find posts by others with ideas.

We are taking our grandkids to Alaska this summer and I was shocked that Celebrity did not charge for the 3 year old on any of the excursions.

Maybe look at some outside the cruise line? On carnival my one year old was free on everything we did, there were a few that we would have had to pay but decided to go with something else.

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