Booking excursions

[CarolandNate]

5 minutes ago, CATGUY7 said:

We have a cruise booked for July 2020.  The excursions are already available for booking - 490 days out.  

 

It is good to be vigilant.  Or obsessive...

Obsessive is so......  OK obsessive works.  490 days, so what are you going to do with yourself after you book.  I know that once I book, my obsessiveness will need to be fed.  And I only have about 300 days.

[CATGUY7]

3 minutes ago, CarolandNate said:

Obsessive is so......  OK obsessive works.  490 days, so what are you going to do with yourself after you book.  I know that once I book, my obsessiveness will need to be fed.  And I only have about 300 days.

I keep looking at excursions, thinking after looking at them 50 times I will know which ones to pick!  

[CarolandNate]

46 minutes ago, CATGUY7 said:

I keep looking at excursions, thinking after looking at them 50 times I will know which ones to pick!  

That's funny !!  FYI, I passed 50 times awhile ago.  I have charts and charts of my charts.  I make notes, create links, set up maps.  Clearly I have too much time on my hands.  Now that they are actually out there for the taking, I can move to the next phase and that would be obsessing as to what I will do the rest of the time at said port of call.  Fortunately, one will have a 10 hour excursion out of the 12 hours we are there.  Doesn't leave a lot of time for anything else, maybe get back to the ship and crash.  I'm good with rainforest in Costa Rica and beach in Puerto Vallarta and we have them narrowed down to one.  Research pays off.

 

Of course that does not take into account the ones that have three or four hours of "free" time when not on an excursion.  Planning every minute is just something I do.  I can't help myself.  There is also one place where there are three from which to choose, Nicaragua and volcanoes.  They are each the same price.  Oh the pressure !!  I was hoping to get some more feedback from people on Cruise Critic to help my "research", but it looks llike I'm on my own.  I got help with Panama and got swayed by people saying that the visit to an Indian Village was the highlight of their trip.  Also saw something on TV about it as well.  And finally there are the two ports where I am going to wait until we get on board.  Cartegena has something like 15 variations of city tours.  I am guessing one is as good as the other and can wait.  Huatulco has different things like city or countryside or nature or bay tours.  We can wing it.

 

Actually I find this stuff to be fun.  Hope you do too.

[lorri111]

No doubt about it, planning is at least half the fun. We also like to "value add" our holidays by using them as an excuse to learn (some!) of a new language, experiment with local cooking, reading books and watching movies on the topic. Antarctica is a good excuse for lots of stuff on penguins and South America is a whole new ball game! We are big into lists and charts too.

[lorri111]

Just had a thought and wonder if anyone has come across this - I have booked my excursions using most of my OBC but what happens if I manage to take up a cruise repricing offer which is better overall but has less OBC attached to it - would I loose the excursions I had booked with old OBC or would they send me email telling me to pay now I can no longer cover it with OBC?

[TERESAh]

We booked two tours for our June 2019 cruise but received an email from Princess asking to give ok to bill our credit card to pay fro the tour and if not received in 24 hours our tours will be cancelled. When we sail we are getting $750 OBC from our TA and planned to use that credit to pay for our tours but guess we’ll have to cancel the tours and hope we can book them after we sail

[kruisey]

Can one pay for excursions using onboard credit Princess has given one on a promotion before one sails?

[CarolandNate]

5 hours ago, TERESAh said:

We booked two tours for our June 2019 cruise but received an email from Princess asking to give ok to bill our credit card to pay fro the tour and if not received in 24 hours our tours will be cancelled. When we sail we are getting $750 OBC from our TA and planned to use that credit to pay for our tours but guess we’ll have to cancel the tours and hope we can book them after we sail

Just a little something on that.  I see that some people want to use their OBCs to book as many excursions as they can as opposed to using their credit card and saving the OBCs.  I also assume you are insuring your trip in some manner, so I would check with the insurer as to how they handle excursions that are booked with OBCs. 

 

I am insuring through Travelguard, which is very strict about how one accounts for everything and maintaining a pre-existing conditions clause.  If I add anything, that is non-refundable, it has to be accounted for within 21 days of booking.  This is relevant because onboard credits from the cruise line are considered to have a dollar value and thus there is no refund to be had.  With no refund to be had, they don't even allow you to insure OBC items.  If you want to insure an excursion, you need to have form of payment.  In the end whether you pay via OBCs or CC does not really matter.  If you don't use them for excursions, you'll likely have them later.  If you use them up for excursions, then at some point, you will be going to your credit card.

 

Also TG puts its premiums into bands depending upon the total insured.  It is possible, maybe even likely that $600-900 worth of excursions will jump you from one band to another.  The difference is usually, $50-70.  I chose to go that route.  The small $50-75 as well as putting it on the CC now is worth it as opposed to not insuring or blowing the Pre-exist clause.  .  Airline points work the same way.  Can't insure a flight booked on points, but in my case my points are still usable up to a year without putting them back into the account, which would trigger a penalty.

 

Just check things out with your insurer.

 

 

 

 

 

5 hours ago, kruisey said:

Can one pay for excursions using onboard credit Princess has given one on a promotion before one sails?

 

5 hours ago, TERESAh said:

We booked two tours for our June 2019 cruise but received an email from Princess asking to give ok to bill our credit card to pay fro the tour and if not received in 24 hours our tours will be cancelled. When we sail we are getting $750 OBC from our TA and planned to use that credit to pay for our tours but guess we’ll have to cancel the tours and hope we can book them after we sail

 

[erber]

5 hours ago, kruisey said:

Can one pay for excursions using onboard credit Princess has given one on a promotion before one sails?

We have OBC from Princess given in a promotion as well as OBC as a shareholder . We are going on a South America and Antarctica cruise in December. The excursions opened up a week or so ago. I was able to use OBC from both of these sources to book excursions on line.

[kruisey]

1 hour ago, erber said:

We have OBC from Princess given in a promotion as well as OBC as a shareholder . We are going on a South America and Antarctica cruise in December. The excursions opened up a week or so ago. I was able to use OBC from both of these sources to book excursions on line.

Thank you for the information.They have given me $1200 OBC for a back to back cruise so please some can be used this way

[classicmovies]

On 2/25/2019 at 11:11 AM, CarolandNate said:

Something to think about going forward.  probably too late to purchase Carnival Stock now and get any benefit for this go a round.  Is there a minimum of stock that has to be purchased to be eligible?  Getting your money back from the purchase might have been more likely a year or so ago.  Not so sure now.

 

I'm with you on the drinks.  We did Alaska for seven days.  We bought a bottle of wine in Vancouver and milked it through the trip in our room.  We got wine for use with dinner in the dining room and went through two bottles in a week.  Add in the occasional drinks in a lounge or at one of the game night things and that was it.  Doubt it came to more than $100 total.  We were helped by the fact that in the Alaska cruise we did the Chef's Table one night.  That included champagne for the hors d'oeuvres; wine for appetizers; a white and a red for the main course; a dessert wine for the five different desserts.  Basically, we were lucky we were actually eating while drinking all the wine.  Needless to say, our personal wine limit was covered by 9:00.  Well so was the food.

 

Granted this is two weeks and there will be more time spent on the ship, but I can't imagine we would come remotely close to what a bev package provides.  Might get a second bottle in LA.  Might get one or two more through the ship as "needed".  And because we will have more nights, might get a drink here and there at lounges.  Certainly not going to come close to bev package "value".  What is it worth, something like $800 or so.  I'm good !

We are going out of Seattle on the Star Princess in August.  Can we bring a bottle of wine onboard?

[riffatsea]

I don't understand the discussion of insurance when you use OBC or points??

Excursions can be cancelled with the OBC going back to your account.

Often a flight or hotel booked with pts can also be cancelled with the pts going back into your account or worse comes to worse you lose the pts but you are not out any money anyway so I don't see a problem doing that.

[MaineCruiser243]

52 minutes ago, classicmovies said:

We are going out of Seattle on the Star Princess in August.  Can we bring a bottle of wine onboard?

On any Princess cruise, you can bring one normal (750ml) bottle per person with no corkage fee unless you consume it in the dining room then it's a $15 corkage fee. Additional bottles have a corkage fee of $15, which is cheaper than what they charge on the ship to buy a bottle.

[classicmovies]

Thanks!

 

[CarolandNate]

21 minutes ago, riffatsea said:

I don't understand the discussion of insurance when you use OBC or points??

Excursions can be cancelled with the OBC going back to your account.

Often a flight or hotel booked with pts can also be cancelled with the pts going back into your account or worse comes to worse you lose the pts but you are not out any money anyway so I don't see a problem doing that.

So I thought when you pointed that out in an earlier post.  I called to make sure.  The issue is not that they can be cancelled, it is that something booked with OBCs which they determine not to have refundable cash value, they won't even insure it.  Not insuring it is not an option.  Anything booked prior to the trip would have to be accounted for and over an additional $50-75 of premium, I do not want to risk blowing the whole pre-exist clause.  I would have to have paid for some by CC anyway as I don't have enough OBCs to cover everything.  It is more of I can pay now or pay later.  I put it on a credit card that gets me airline miles.

 

As far as using airline miles, same deal with TG.  Airline miles have no dollar value to them.  If I cancelled, I could get the points back for forever use, with a $150 penalty, but the $150 would have to be accounted for to TG.  I can, however, use the booking up to a year from when I made it and pay no penalty.  I assume I will use it.

[63 Super Sport]

On 2/25/2019 at 2:31 PM, riffatsea said:

You just need to buy 100 shares.

It is not too late since I thought you said you are not sailing until December??

You buy the stock and then you fax in a statement from your broker proving you own the stock and they give you the OBC. Of course how you spend your investment money is up to you.

We purchased 100 shares in December - Thanks to a post on CC.  The posted recommend buying asap. We did. Stock has increased by $11.00+ a share plus we have received 2 - $100 OBC so far and more cruises planned.

[CarolandNate]

Our Panama Canal Cruise for December 3-18 on the Emerald Princess from LA to Ft. Lauderdale has opened up the excursions for booking well in advance of the 120 days, that is on website.  It is even a lot earlier than the 180 that I had heard about.  Given that we booked four of our six days in port.

 

Puerto Vallarta, Mexico--Las Caletas Private Beach Getaway ($105) 6 1/2 hours.   We wanted to do some beach and PV seemed like the best place for that.  There were a couple of other beach options, but this seemed to be the best because there is no bouncing around from place to place and spending time getting there.  A catamaran takes us to this private beach and we spend four plus hours in one place with several things to do.  beach, eat, drink, hike, eat, kayak, cooking lessons, did I mention eat.  Four hours later they take us back.

 

San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua--Nature Experience, Masaya Volcano, Apoyo Lagoon, Granada ($100) 7 1/4 hours.  Volcanoes are the big thing in Nicaragua, so I hear.  There were three options and each was the same price.  This was the middle between an 8 1/2 and 7 hour excursion.  All three visit the Masaya.  This one also also takes in Mombachu from a distance.  It also takes us to Granada and gives us more free time there to walk around.  Didn't want to wait and possibly miss out, so we jumped on it.

 

Puntarenas, Costa Rica--Rainforest Aerial Tram, Tarcoles River ($180) 10 1/2 hours.  Rainforest is Costa Rica, right?  There were several and this was the priciest.  There was one that was just the Rainforest , but it was pretty expensive as well, at $155.  For $25 more, we get to do a river cruise and see crocodiles (hopefully).  The only issue we had, is that it iis a lot of time in bus getting from the rainforest to the river and then back to the ship.  Heard from some that there are things to see on the bus part and when we put it together, it seemed like the best deal.  Could blow up on us, but we'll chance it.

 

Fuerte Amador, Panama--Embera Indian Village.  ($100).  5 1/2 hours.  Going east, the port of call is the day before the transit.  I am assuming there will be a lot of educational stuff on the ship throughout the trip and then more on the day of.  Most of the excursions for Panama City are lock/canal related.  And while I understand that from land, it is a different perspective, I wanted to see something different, totally different.  I was lukewarm about this over the months, but then several people on cruise critic wrote that this excursion was the highlight of their trip.  That meant something.  I also saw an eight minute thing on my streaming travel channel on it.  Like I said, it's different.

 

We have not and probably will not book the other two, Huatulco, Mexico and Cartagena, Colombia until we get on the ship.  Cartagena is really about the city and there are something like 15 variations of city tours.  There are minor differences between them.  I am assuming that I can wait and not be shut out.  There are also options that are on our own or we can just cab in or even walk from the pier.  If I detect that things are filling up by the summer, I might book ahead.  Huatulco has various options of different types of excursions.  There are some interesting options, but none make me say, "wow, gotta grab one".   That could change as I observe people on Cruise Critic and their comments over the next couple of months. The city, which apparently has some points of interest is not very far and could be cabbed to or even walked to.

 

So for now we are booked and I don't have to obsess over choices over and over again for the next however many months.  Well I'll find something to obsess about.