Carnival Shore Excursion or Look For Others?

[crzyfish83]

Preparing for my first cruise in May, and I am doing research daily. The one area that I keep coming up empty with questions is in which shore excursion category. Which route should I take. With reading the boards I see many people who have taken shore exursions and I'm not sure if they were booked through Carnvial or some other dealer. If they aren't booked through Carnival I would love to know who the best and cost affordable shore excursion dealer is.

[RoofingPrincess]

The Ports of Call boards on this site are great places to find out which excursions by which vendors in which ports have worked well for other cruisers. There is no one "best and cost affordable shore excursion dealer".

The Roll Call for your sailing is also a good place; sometimes other members are looking for people to join them on excursions which have a minimum number of people needed or where there's a fixed cost for, say, 2-6 people, and they want to reduce the per-person cost by getting the maximum number of people.

[tak81288]

Preparing for my first cruise in May, and I am doing research daily. The one area that I keep coming up empty with questions is in which shore excursion category. Which route should I take. With reading the boards I see many people who have taken shore exursions and I'm not sure if they were booked through Carnvial or some other dealer. If they aren't booked through Carnival I would love to know who the best and cost affordable shore excursion dealer is.

 

It really is going to depend on you and how comfortable you are. If you book on your own, it does take a bit of research. There is a wealth of information on theses boards. You can go to the port of calls section and click on each port you are going to get ideas of independant vendors people have had success with. There are also other websites, such as trip advisor, that have reviews of different companies.

 

The advantage of booking thru the ship is that if for whatever the reason your excursion is running late the ship will wait for that group of people. It also doesn't require any research. You just look at their list and see want to do and book it. However, many times you will pay more, sometimes you wind up in a huge group, it takes longer to do the smallest things, like board a bus, due to the amount of people...etc..

 

The advantages of booking on your own is that the groups are normally a lot smaller, they can customize your excursions for you if you want to do more or less then what you are seeing on their website, (for the ship excursions what you see is what you get), and many times you will also save $$ and can get group discounts and things if you have a lot of people in your party.

 

If you do independant excursions, just make sure you watch the times closely and give yourself plenty of time to get back to the ship. I wouldn't book a 6 1/2 hour excursion independantly that takes you far away from port, if you are only going to be in port for 6 1/2 hours. It gives you no wiggle room for something to go wrong, like getting stuck in traffic.

 

Also, keep in mind that some things don't require an excursion. Like if you just want to go to the beach, there will be cabs lined up to get you there as soon as you get off at the port for pretty cheap. There's no need to pay for extra to the cruise line to do simple things like that for you. You still have to research in advance though, so you know where you want to go, but everything doesn't necessarily require an "official excursion". Some islands are easy to get around on your own.

[caribsun]

I have used this co.

http://www.caribbeanshoretours.com/

[whciv]

We have used Carnival's excursions and also booked our own several times. You do get a bit more personal treatment when you book your own, but like others have said you need to be careful you don't miss the boat. We have seen folks in Alaska and in Europe who missed the boat due to problems with their private tours. Sometimes its things out of their control... like traffic jams. When you book with the ship, they will wait for you.

 

We've been pretty satisfied with the Carnival excursions we've booked. Most offer exactly what they say. When in Europe, we like paying in dollars rather than in the local currency. Most cruise lines run on dollars and its convenient to have everything booked to your room. Plus, with cruise ship problems and weather issues you may find your itinerary changes from what you booked. The cruise line lets you easily cancel and/or change excursions when things like this happen.

 

Just our thoughts. Have a great trip.

 

Smart-Travelers

http://www.*****

[crzyfish83]

Thank you all for your replies! This is one of my biggest concerns and you all have helped to get this under control.