Excursion - fully booked or not?

[Spanieleyes]

I am currently planning some port excursions for our 2nd cruise, and wonder if anyone can help please. I had tried to book a RC excursion online, but had what I thought was technical problems. As they had been slow to respond, I tried phoning AND emailing customer services for some assistance. The gentleman I eventually spoke to said that it wasn't a technical problem but as there were only 2 spaces left for booking online, this was why it wasn't letting me book 4 places. He said there were still places available for those people who didn't want to pre-book and wanted to book only when they got onboard. So my only option was to join the queue when we boarded and try booking places then. I have since received an email reply and it basically says the excursion is now FULLY booked and we should try asking when we board to see if anyone cancels.

 

We aren't sure which answer to believe? Does anyone know if this system of holding back places on excursions, for booking when onboard, is true? Many thanks if anyone can help.

[Clarea]

Yes, it's true that they hold back a certain percentage (don't know exact numbers) for onboard booking.

[Karma5]

The system is not working correctly ……….that is also a big problem……..

[marci22]

Which excursion is it?

 

Some have very limited capacity (some of the Segway tours are 10 people and they do fill up before boarding).

 

But most tours are on buses or large catamarans and I would be very surprised if they were totally full before boarding.

[Spanieleyes]

Which excursion is it?

 

Some have very limited capacity (some of the Segway tours are 10 people and they do fill up before boarding).

 

But most tours are on buses or large catamarans and I would be very surprised if they were totally full before boarding.

 

I think you are right :). It's a Segway tour so I'm assuming there will limited places compared to a lot of trips. We did try booking directly with a couple of companies, and one of those did say their entire day's time slots are booked out to RC that day.

 

We just weren't sure whether this "holding places for booking when onboard" was accurate or not. Clarea has kindly answered that one for us, thank you :D

[edeneyes]

I can't speak to your specific tour, but the system is definitely not working consistently. Prior to our recent cruise, I tried multiple times to book tours online and kept getting an error message. We were on a long b2b cruise and I again tried to book tours online for the second leg using the ship's computers. Again, no luck. Customer service on our ship didn't seem to know anything about the problems with booking online and refused to help until I sent an email directly to Royal Caribbean. The main office contacted the ship and we were then told that all the tours were available, even though we could not book online. As far as holding back a certain amount of tours, we got conflicting answers from different Royal employees. We were also told directly by The C&A rep on the ship that there definitely are problems with the system. This was a portion of the answer to the email we sent, which might be of help to you.

 

"For future reference, guests may call us for assistance with making their shore excursion reservations online, at our Shore Excursion Help Desk at 1-800-398-9819, Option 2.

 

We have also introduced Cruise Planner. It is a remarkably helpful tool that allows our guests the convenience of booking onboard products and services prior to the start of their cruise vacation. Booking these products and services ahead of time allows our guests to remove these details from their “to-do list” once on board the ship, freeing them to enjoy their actual vacation rather than use vacation time for planning.

 

This wonderful tool takes the place of our pre-cruise planner website and allows guests to make reservations in a much more user-friendly environment. You can find Cruise Planner on our website under the Before You Board tab."

 

I haven't tried the new Cruise Planner, but maybe it's an improvement.

 

Good luck.

 

 

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[lisa010]

I booked excursions for our trip several weeks ago and at least one has been replaced by an excursion for a port we aren't even going to. Its also giving me different error messages when I refresh the page. I have no idea what is going on but I do have a print out of the calendar with the correct info I printed a few days ago.

 

 

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