Booking shore excursions...

[herb]

Can you book shore excursions before final payment is made or do you have to wait until you've made full payment for cruise?

 

Thanks ..

[3rdGenCunarder]

You can book shore excursions before final payment. It varies from cruise to cruise, but they usually appear well before final payment. For my cruise this May. I was able to buy tours in November.

 

And if you cancel the crusie, they will automatically cancel your tours, too.

[oceanmom]

And if you buy them now, and then cancel the cruise, your credit card is refunded.

[rkacruiser]

It's a good idea to book shore excursions that you are sure you want to experience before embarkation. This is simply to make certain that the tours won't be sold out once you are aboard. If so, you would have to be waitlisted for the tour.

 

Read the fine print before booking anything, at any time. Cancellation penalties do apply at times. Make sure you understand these; if you don't contact the Shore Excursion Department.

[Krazy Kruizers]

We always book excursions as soon as they open up. Too often we have seen people disappointed when they got on the ship and discovered certain tours were already sold out.

[herb]

thanks for the heads up..

We certainly don't wait until we're on board to pick excursions just wasn't sure whether they would accept the booking without final payment being made.

Thanks for your help.. :)

[TAD2005]

On the HAL website, when you drill down into the EXC tours for your cruise, you will occasionally see "Only 4 Spaces left" or some other low number on a tour. That is a sales tactic. I saw that warning of 4 spaces left, and booked a tour with 4 people. Over 2 weeks later, the web site was still warning "Only 4 Spaces left". It's a sales tactic of HAl to encourage you to use your cash to buy a tour in advance instead of waiting to purchase it onboard with your HAL provided OBC, which is non-refundable.

Also, tours that utilize a specialized form of transport, like a boat, catamaran, helicopter, etc should be booked as soon as you are sure you want to go. There is a limited space on these specialized transports, and there's usually only one or two of them. On a regular tour that uses a motorcoach, or minivan, there are plenty of those.

[OCruisers]

Happily, you can book your shore excursions as soon as they open up ... no need to wait until your final payment.

If there are some we know we really want, we book in advance.

When possible, we wait until we are on the ship for others so we can use our OBC.