Oceania Insignia Shore Excursions

Considering booking the Insignia for world cruise in 2020. I've been reading some reviews online and talking with travel agent and what I'm hearing is that the ship's excursions are not great and are overpriced. What's your experience? If you're been on the world cruise, how easy is it to book your own excursions not affiliated with the ship?

Thanks,

Jamie

I haven't been on the world cruise but what I've read from those who have been is that there are a number of included ship's tours. Sometimes you're in an area where you feel safer with a ship's tour than going on your own.

Our experience with oLife ship's tours -- we have always tended to do more private tours than ship's tours -- is that in general they have been excellent. The bus usually has NOT been full, although on the four tours we took on our May 10-25th Riviera cruise they did tend to be full.

If you are buying a ship's tour, yes, they are on the expensive side. One of the tours we took on this recent cruise was in Kotor ("Highlights of Kotor"). The list price for this tour was just under $200. A friend of mind is on Royal Caribbean right now and from the tour description she will be taking exactly the same tour, most likely from the same agency. I don't know the price but I'll be sure to ask her. I'm positive it will be for a lot less than Oceania's tour.

Mura

Many places you can book your own private tours or just DIY

You get so many included excursions with the RTW cruise maybe use those in areas you feel uncomfortable DIY

If you do a search here you will come across at least 2 reviews of the 2016 RTW cruise

I'm booked for the 2019 world cruise and just finished booking excursions. I also tend to do private tours on most cruises, but that's when there are 4-8 ports. Have you thought about how much work is involved in booking 90 tours??!! It's hours and hours of research, booking, looking for others to possibly tour with you and the cost isn't exactly cheap....if each tour were $50, that's $4,500 per person! And you can't book most of them a couple years ahead....you have to wait until less than a year.

We did the most economical and less stress way....we took the OLife perk of the 72 excursions (36 each). We just finished booking ship tours in places that are far from the port (where we don't want to worry about missing the ship), countries with poor infrastructure, and in places where there may be safety issues.

We booked a few private tours (one overland and 5 in places where we stay overnight) and plan to DIY in most of the others, especially in Europe where we've been many times. This has lessened the time and money spent on this part of the cruise planning.

You ask about how easy is it to book a private tour? Depends on where it is, any language issues, money conversion issues (for deposits), the provider's internet status and how fast they respond. I've dealt with everything from great to horrible. I'm currently having trouble with a hotel where I booked 2 rooms and paid the deposit for them, but they're claiming that I just booked 1 room and paid just 1 deposit. Even though I sent them copies of the confirmations, they're ignoring me! I finally cancelled both rooms, but am not getting any response nor my deposits back. So mad.

Unlike you, I've read many good things about the ship tours....obviously not everyone agrees, but alot of people have reported having a good time. If I had unlimited funds and time to do much more research (I still work fulltime), I might have done all private tours, but I'm sure we'll love this trip anyway. :D

We did the round the world in 2017 and have booked 2020. We arranged majority of our excursion privately or as "do it yourself" tours, including a 4 day India excursion. In places where we were concerned about safely getting back to the ship on time (i.e. Petra, Jordan) we made sure to do the ship's tour. Prices privately may be 1/2 of Oceania's price. Also, make sure to check your "role call" here on Cruise Critic as other traveler may be seeking to fill out excursions they have arranged which means the heavy lifting has already been assigned or completed! You can view videos of our 2017 trip on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE_Ks2zI1xOTLqBXm0OnzDw and I have just put up a sort of photo gallery/blog spot which is a work in progress. http://www.rfromm.com

Considering booking the Insignia for world cruise in 2020. I've been reading some reviews online and talking with travel agent and what I'm hearing is that the ship's excursions are not great and are overpriced. What's your experience? If you're been on the world cruise, how easy is it to book your own excursions not affiliated with the ship?

The knock against the quality of ship's tours is typically the size of the group. When you're with a small group of people, especially folks you'll tour with more than once, there's a strong commitment to return to bus on time/not spend too long at a shopping stop/avoid talking while the guide is presenting, etc. That's not always the case when you're traveling in a moderately filled larger bus. I've got to believe these bad behaviors will be minimized on a RTW cruise because you'll be together with the same folks and the small group spirit and courtesy will prevail.

The ship's excursion guides are all licensed guides and know their stuff every bit as well as the guides offering small group tours.

We did the ATW16 and are booked for ATW20. We took shorex often because of safety issues, getting back to the ship on time, ability of guides to speak English, and safety and condition of buses/vans.

It seems in the past few years that O is decreasing the number of people on the bus. We took OLife on our most recent cruise this May from Mumbai-Rome on Nautica and some of the groups numbered in the 20s and they weren't OE.

The number of people on your bus doesn't matter sometimes because some of the guides are now using "whispers" which makes it easy to hear what they are saying.

Because some of the places you might go are filled with people, ie Jerusalem, Herculaneum, and Santorini you're going to do well to keep up with your group regardless of its size!

If you take Overland tours with O you will stay in some absolutely gorgeous hotels and often there are events planned for you such as cocktails at sunset or a local group to perform after dinner.

Shorex was a no brainer for us on ATW16. We always felt safe in those ports where I was thrilled to be traveling with a local guide...and on some buses we traveled with a police escort through town and with an armed guard on the bus.

Some tours can be good to great, while others can be disasters. I’ve had both. The disasters rarely have anything to do with the quality of guides or equipment , but with the luck of the draw of fellow tour mates. Most definitely not a “one size fits all” situation or answer.

About the quality of the tours: In most places around the world, all ships use the same tour operators. Sometimes these operators are the only game in town. All our ship's tours on all lines including Oceania were fine to excellent. None was horrible. Many had small busses. In rare cases, one participant might have been annoying (late to the bus, whining), but that happened to us on a small tour of 8 as well.

I was very impressed with the Hong-Kong to Bangkok ship tours. We did them because we had gotten a lot of OBC and were surprised at the quality. Especially where there are few private companies and where the food and local transportation can be questionable, ship tours seem safest.