waiting until day before port to book excursion

[sail-a-bration]

We are doing the W. Carib. on the Dream at the end of Oct. We are thinking of waiting until the day before each port to book an excursion because we have read that Carnival excursions will go out in bad weather, then no refund. How often are the popular excursions sold out and how easy is it to do a walk up private one on shore. Good and bad stories are welcome.

[jimbo5544]

We are doing the W. Carib. on the Dream at the end of Oct. We are thinking of waiting until the day before each port to book an excursion because we have read that Carnival excursions will go out in bad weather, then no refund. How often are the popular excursions sold out and how easy is it to do a walk up private one on shore. Good and bad stories are welcome.

Popular ones sell out all the time. Your idea is not ine I would do if I really wanted to do the excursion. An alternative would be to book yourself, but the same issue is there (the excursion goes on as planned). I cannot remember many (read that any) that we had that we wished we could have gotten out of.

[firefly333]

The first sea day they give the talk on excursions and after this talk is when some of the cheaper ones sell out. Depends on which ones you want. The really cheap ones seem to go first.

 

I book before the talk gets started. Its not like Im going to know what the weather is going to be like 24 hours later. I was completely surprised this last cruise that there was rain the morning we docked in cozumel. beautiful but hot every other day.

[MissDiva1]

I would not recommend doing it this way. But then again I don't book thru the cruiselines.......

I have seen Carnival cancel the stingray city tour in Grand Cayman because it was raining...but I would assume everyone got a refund.....we booked with a local tour co. and went on ahead and had a blast........not sure why a little rain made them cancel and alot of people were mad.....

[tulsacubfan]

Agree with everyone else. Not only for the reasons stated, but I don't want to spend ship time standing in line to book an excursion. We actually plan and book online before we ever get on the ship.

[Missiowa]

we always book our excursions on our own. We wanted to swim with dolphins on one trip, carnival wanted over $300 per person, we went up to the counter and purchased it for $71 per person plus tax. We rode the same boat over to the island as the carnival people. We couldn't believe how much we saved. We swam right next to the people that paid over $300.

[deetrayn]

I also would not do this. With the Dream being such a big ship with a high number of passengers being onboard, some excursions may be sold out by then.

[tak81288]

If there are particular things you want to do (especially if space is limited) I would book in advance to ensure you have a spot.

 

However, if you don't really care what you do, your method of booking the day before will probably work fine since you will just book whatever is leftover. However, if you are going to go that route, you will probably save $$ by just purchasing tours/excursions at the pier through private vendors vs. booking thru the cruiseline.

[S.S.Oceanlover]

I would not recommend doing it this way. But then again I don't book thru the cruiselines.......

I have seen Carnival cancel the stingray city tour in Grand Cayman because it was raining...but I would assume everyone got a refund.....we booked with a local tour co. and went on ahead and had a blast........not sure why a little rain made them cancel and alot of people were mad.....

 

who did you book with and how was it?

 

We just did it last week with stingraysailing and they were awesome.

 

 

Bill

[MissDiva1]

who did you book with and how was it?

 

We just did it last week with stingraysailing and they were awesome.

 

 

Bill

 

We also booked with Stingraysailing......he gave us all a choice to cancel and get our deposit back.....not one of us cancelled and he was thrilled that we were all troopers. Got out to the sandbar and it quit raining and it was awesome......Carnival cancelled that morning.......

[S.S.Oceanlover]

We also booked with Stingraysailing......he gave us all a choice to cancel and get our deposit back.....not one of us cancelled and he was thrilled that we were all troopers. Got out to the sandbar and it quit raining and it was awesome......Carnival cancelled that morning.......

 

They were great for us too. We were the only ship in Cayman the day we went and only had 10 on the boat. We had a personalized excursion.

 

He also offered to drop us off at the beach after the excursion but everybody just went back to the ship.

 

Very nice boat too.:)

 

Bill

[Jasalth]

In the past we generally have always booked things well in advance. I have had everything for our upcoming cruise (one threw Carnival, rest private) booked since over 5 months out. I like to plan things, and would rather say... spend $200 this month, $300 this other month, than have a $2000 bill at the end of the cruise.

 

Our last cruise was on RCL. My mother won a nice chunk of change and took everyone on a cruise. We waited to book excursions since money was tight and we were not sure what we would want to do/have the money for. We looked with in a day of getting on the boat and nothing we wanted to do was avaliable at all anymore.

 

I have kids who cruise with us, so to me, walking up to some random guy standing around with a sign w/o knowing who they are or anything about their company, just doesn't appeal to me at all!

 

For our 4 stops, I have 1 Carnival excursion booked (better deal than private tours from what I found) and 3 privately. Out of these 3 private ones, only ONE wanted a deposit. While I am sure it wouldn't be favored by the excursion companies who don't take deposits, if I find for some reason we don't want to go, they aren't going to charge us anyways.

 

It also depends on your definition of bad weather. Where we are from, bad weather would be a hurricane. We get a lot of rain, snow, hail, wind where we are from and have to go out in it on a normal day anyways so it wouldn't bother us! Swimming in a thunderstorm would be a problem for a safely sake, but I can't see anyone who runs tours willing to risk the law suit for someone dieing just so they can take people's money.

[dapaddo]

we always book our excursions on our own. We wanted to swim with dolphins on one trip, carnival wanted over $300 per person, we went up to the counter and purchased it for $71 per person plus tax. We rode the same boat over to the island as the carnival people. We couldn't believe how much we saved. We swam right next to the people that paid over $300.

What port was this in. that is what I want to do just once.

[sweetlissa]

we always book our excursions on our own. We wanted to swim with dolphins on one trip, carnival wanted over $300 per person, we went up to the counter and purchased it for $71 per person plus tax. We rode the same boat over to the island as the carnival people. We couldn't believe how much we saved. We swam right next to the people that paid over $300.

 

What port and who did you book with? Thanks in advance!

[Gail & Marty sailing away]

If the ship skips a port you get a refund.