What are Scenic FreeChoice tours like?

[DougK]

Does anybody have any experience with Scenic FreeChoice tours? How many people tend to be in a group? When they go to a museum or similar site, does everybody have to stick with a guide, or can people wander separately (as long as they return at the correct time)? And is there any place that lists details of what the tours are, and how long they last?

 

My wife and I are going on the Jewels of Europe cruise in September, and apparently we're supposed to sign up for tours in advance for a few of the cities. But I'm pretty much at a loss for how to do that, because there's so little information.

 

For example, in Amsterdam, one of the choices is an excursion to Zaanse Schans, and the entire description in both the brochure and on the web site is "See the historic windmills and traditional green painted houses." I've looked online for information about Zaanse Schans, and it sounds like it could be interesting to visit and wander around some of the houses, museums, and windmills. We enjoyed spending time at Skansen in Stockholm, and this sounds somewhat similar. But would we actually get time to poke around, or are we herded in a group? Or do we just do a drive-by? I can't tell from the description.

 

Similarly in Cologne, the description of the walking tour says "Famous for its grand cathedral, Cologne is full of

impressive sights and you’ll have the chance to

enjoy them while exploring the city on foot." or "Take a stroll through Cologne and get up close to the filigree

twin towers of the famous cathedral." Very vague. It doesn't even say whether we actually go inside the cathedral...

 

In both cases, I'm wondering if we should sign up for a tour, or decline it and just explore on our own.

 

My wife and I generally are not a fan of guided tours or other group excursions. We prefer to walk at our own pace, and spend time where we want, rather than what somebody else things is the most important. That's especially true in museums, where our interests don't necessarily match the "must see" pieces, but also extends to walking through cities, etc. The drawback, of course, is that we can miss out on valuable information that a guide might pass on. (Museum audio guides and guidebooks can help with that, and we're hoping the Scenic Tailormade device will be too.) On ocean cruises, we rarely sign up for the ship's shore excursions; the exception is when the "tour" is really just transportation to/from a place (e.g., snorkeling, or perhaps a tourist attraction that is a ways away).

 

But it seems like a whole lot of the focus on Scenic river cruises is their FreeChoice tours, so I'd like to better understand what they actually entail to see whether we want to partake.

 

Thanks much!

[sbjornda]

Hi Doug,

 

You might find a bit more information at https://www.scenic.com.au/river-cruises/freechoice but it won't answer all your questions.

 

You'll choose some activities in advance through the Trip Personalizer, https://tp.scenicglobal.com/. Most of them, though, you'll choose a few days in advance by means of a paper form distributed on board. More detail will be provided at that time, and an opportunity for questions with your Cruise Director.

 

The groups tended to be 10 to 25 people. Sometimes you could wander separately as long as you let the Cruise Director know in advance so they don't over-pay for admissions to certain venues (if relevant).

 

Most of the tours are somewhat regimented but have some "free time" at the end, usually 30 min. to an hour, sometimes more. If you've been bussed in they'll usually give you a time and place to gather back together to catch the bus back to the ship. If you are within walking distance of the ship you have more flexibility, depending on the sailing time (which they will let you know very clearly).

 

Zaanse Schans is a ways away from Amsterdam, so unless you arrange private transportation you're best bet is to go on the tour. Being inside a working windmill was a new experience for me, and worth it. There wasn't a lot of free time on that one, but there was a little (e.g. browse the souvenir shops of course :)).

 

In Cologne we took the FreeChoice tour and got a good look at the cathedral, inside and out, and learned some other cool stuff (the guide being a local), and we still had a good amount of free time to wander at the end, so I felt that one was well balanced between "planned" and "open". It was an easy walk to & from the ship, though, so it would also be a good candidate for self-guided.

 

For self-guided, the Scenic Tailormade devices are quite handy. And don't forget the bicycle option for self-guided as well.

 

If your interests sometimes differ between the two of you, don't hesitate to go different ways for the day once in a while, and compare notes when you get back to the ship. The FreeChoice selection form is set up to allow for that.

 

The thing with river cruising, though, is you can never nail something down 100%. You might be delayed by high or low water, a lock might be broken, there might be a damaged barge blocking the way, all of which could affect the timing of a tour. It's good to plan, but the river has its own plans too. With river cruising you have to "go with the flow". And if there's no flow, there's no go! Things work out fine most of the time, but there's no 100% guarantee that the schedule will work out perfectly each time.

 

Best wishes,

Sterling

[Grandma Nomad]

We have just returned from this trip and found we had plenty of free time after the tours. In the larger cities such as Cologne you could stay in town and come back on a shuttle bus a few hours later. In Cologne we had to be bussed to the centre of town. Each cruise docks at different places.

We arrived in Amsterdam the day before and caught a bus from Central Station to Zaanse Schans so we could have plenty of time to wander and then did the canal tour with Scenic.

[DougK]

Thanks for the info. I think we're going to take GN's approach to Zanse Schans, and do our own thing in Cologne.

[Canal archive]

All the above are absolutely correct, the tailor maids are excellent you don’t have to huddle round the tour guide very useful if your a bit of a photographer like me. The tailor maids are also pre loaded with city tours (they will also give comentry on places as you cruise along the river) and all the tour guides we have had over seven tours with Scenic have been excellent. We did your cruise last year and Zans Shans was well worth it we arrived fairly early so not many people there we left as it was getting more crowded, very pretty, interesting and informative. Enjoy your cruise CA

[flyerfan22]

DougK,

My husband and I have the exact same questions you posted. Now that you're back, what did you think of the Scenic excursions? Or did you do things on your own?  We are considering our first river cruise, and we're very "Type A" planners. On ocean cruises, we always plan our own tours. It sounds like we won't be able to that on a river cruise since there is no definite itinerary in advance that tells you how long you are in each port. Can you give us an idea of your experiences? Thank you.

[DougK]

As it turns out, we went on almost no Scenic excursions. A couple of times we used an excursion bus to take us to a destination, but then walked around on our own (after notifying the tour director, of course). I think the only one we fully went on was the excursion to the castle, which included both a tour and dinner. That was enjoyable, but we really prefer just to walk around by ourselves. The TailorMade devices are actually quite handy to point out places of interest (both walking around and, especially, cruising the Rhine), as well as providing navigation. One day I used one of the e-bikes to go on a ride by myself to a tourist attraction that's a little off the beaten path, and that was quite enjoyable. Overall, this ended up just not being anything to stress over, as long as you're OK wandering without much of a plan. I talked about it with our fabulous cruise director, Beate, the first day. She said to go ahead and sign up for excursions, but there was never any obligation to actually go on them. I think her words were something like "It's your vacation; do what you want and enjoy it." The upshot was that we did a lot of just wandering around with little planned other than seeing a few main sites, and enjoyed ourselves immensely. We're booked again for next year.

 

Oh, and I definitely wouldn't try booking specific times in advance for anything; we really didn't get info about when we'd be in any port more than the day before, and even that wasn't definite. Admittedly, we went during a time of low water, and that made the logistics more complicated than normal (including a ship swap), but I think there ends up being a fair amount of variability anyway.

 

So just go, partake of what you want, skip the rest, and have fun!

[djh1959]

DougK, that is wonderful information.  We are having our first Scenic cruise in October, Amsterdam to Basel and I hate organised tours.

 

It is nice to know that we can just use the bus to get into town, or walk would be even better, and then just do our own thing.

[DougK]

On 6/10/2019 at 2:05 AM, djh1959 said:

It is nice to know that we can just use the bus to get into town, or walk would be even better, and then just do our own thing.

 

The vast majority of the time you can just walk, depending on how much walking you want to do. The only time that really wasn't possible at all was for Cologne, and that was due to river traffic problems due to low water, so the ship didn't even really dock (just stopped to load/unload buses). For some stops we were docked right in town. For others, it was further away, but I have a pretty high tolerance for walking. In Bamberg, I think we docked about a mile and a half away from the old town; I joined a tour bus to go to town, but walked back. In Vienna, we were about two miles away from the city center; I both walked that and took shuttle buses on a couple of trips into the town. Nuremberg was the most difficult; we were docked 3-4 miles from both the old town, and the Nazi Documentation Center (which I really wanted to see). It was a nice day, and I was willing to walk those distances, but this is one place where calling a taxi would probably have made more sense; I don't think any tour bus was going where I wanted.