Any bad non Princess excursion experiences?

[konatyme]

We've hardly ever had to pay ahead for the independent tours we've taken; almost all have had us pay after the tour. We've taken a lot of great tours that were much less crowded than the Princess ones.

[geoherb]

I have done many independent excursions without any bad experiences. Now, there are 3 things I don’t do when it comes to the independent tours:

1. Jump into a tour being organized on the dock - you don’t know anything about the company providing the tour and I like to do my research.

2. Join a private tour organized by someone else on the roll call - I don’t know them or their attention to detail; just feel better if I’m the one organizing it.

3. Pay for a tour upfront that doesn’t have a written refund policy in the event of being late to or missing port.

1. We have had some very good tours from companies at the dock. We've also had some that were just OK. All of them were half the price or less of a Princess tour.

2. I'll join someone else's private tour on a roll call. If I feel like details aren't being handled, I'll pass on it.

3. Yes.

 

... The person they found to do our tour was a taxi driver from the airport. As we were driving to the park she kept talking about her dysfunctional family and children, where different people died along the side of the road, and how most people on the big island are alcoholics because there is nothing to do!

One of our worst guides ever was on a Princess tour to Tulum. I learned more about his ex-girlfriend and daughter than I did about the Maya. He also neglected to tell us that the beach was closed. We ended up getting back half our money after the cruise. (The shore excursion desk people were less than helpful in responding to my complaint.)

[jb008]

In this day in age, you can do a lot of research in advance on independent tour companies. I've booked some independent tours and had a great time, but had either booked through a third-party booking site or through a company that I could do some homework on before signing up with them. I think the benefit of the indy tours is smaller tours and sometimes some decent cost savings (varies by ports). I will pick up a taxi-transfer ship side, but don't think I'd do much beyond that without doing my research in advance.

 

Across 10 cruises I've had at least 3 separate tours that were late and ship was held for our shipboard tours. I'm not saying we'd have missed the boat if we'd been on an indy tour, but I think it gave us a little more time on the tour and/or less stress because we knew "we're good"; and specific to one of those tours we would never have trusted an indy tour to get us there and back in time and thus wouldn't have done the tour at all. Also one time traffic in St. Thomas meant our cab from the beach got us to the port about 10 mins before all aboard... that was a little stressful! ;p

 

I feel fine using indy tours under two conditions, 1 - someone's done some homework on the Co. (either myself or a roll call member), 2 - common sense says that a worst case scenario still isn't going to be a major issue (e.g., there's plenty of time between tour end and all aboard, a taxi can be subbed for a tour-transfer and I'm only out the tour, etc...).

[sandyoftheseas]

On one of our cruises (I don't remember which one) there were people on our roll call that planned a tour where they had to pre-pay. The captain decided to skip that port because of a transportation strike. The roll call member that had set up this tour called the company and the company said we were at the port ready to take you on the tour so no refunds. We used a ships tour for that port so we got a refund. We now always check the refund policy if we need to pre-pay for a tour. Depending on the policy we may or may not book but, we know beforehand what the consequences are if we can't go on the tour.

Edited October 30, 2017 by sandyoftheseas

[Sea Hag]

We've done excursions both through Princess and through third parties. The only excursion I'd call "bad" was a Princess excursion. And it was really bad!

[Corfe Mixture]

We have had just one bad experience, where we booked a private tour on St Thomas, and our tour did not go to where we wanted or expected.

 

We started late, because the driver had been on a taxi run for a local and instead of our expected itinerary, we did a 'tour' which was clearly based around the fact that we had to pick up a friend of the driver and take her to work.

 

The tour also finished early as the driver had to go any and collect someone else (I think she said it was children from school).

 

Whatever, I felt ripped off. Later looking on Tripadvisor I see that, whilst the operator had some very good reviews, we were no alone in our experience and four or five people had reported a similar experience.

 

Must stress, that we did not feel unsafe, just that we were used for a quick buck and did not get value for money.

 

The experience has not put us off using local tour operators but this ONE tour operator is firmly logged our never use again book.