Tell me why you choose ship excursions?

[cruisemom42]

12 minutes ago, dogs4fun said:

Is this fairly recent (post 2011)? We didn't have armed guards on our tours in Egypt.

 

Before and after the Arab Spring. 

 

Here's an article from fairly recently that somewhat mirrors my experience:

 

https://onemileatatime.com/traveling-egypt-safe/

 

Edited to add:  I see you edited your post -- I thought you were more concerned with recent travel -- but yes, in 2005 when I visited Egypt with my mother (she wanted to take all ship excursions), we had quite a caravan of buses going from Alexandria to Cairo on an overnight excursion. The "caravan" was led by several cars of armed guards and followed by the same, plus there was a guard on each bus.  It was interesting as we whizzed through small dusty towns enroute as all traffic was stopped on side streets so that the buses didn't even need to slow down or stop for any reason. 

Edited December 28, 2019 by cruisemom42

[c-boy]

one bad personal experience prevents us from going our separate way on shore.

 

 

 

[dogs4fun]

Well, I must confess to being quite inattentive. I was so certain that there were no armed guards on our Egyptian tours that I just checked with my brother who was on also our Egypt cruise in 2017. I did not see any armed guards on our tour buses in 2017 either. My brother told me that the man who sat in the front of the bus was an armed guard. The gun was not visible. Guess I was expecting "armed guards" to refer to guards visibly toting military type automatic weapons. Moron here. 😗

It gives me the willies when I see guards toting weapons - I am not overly cautious but big automatic weapons really scare the heck out of me. Must be more observant in the future. 

[Flatbush Flyer]

2 minutes ago, dogs4fun said:

Well, I must confess to being quite inattentive. I was so certain that there were no armed guards on our Egyptian tours that I just checked with my brother who was on also our Egypt cruise in 2017. I did not see any armed guards on our tour buses in 2017 either. My brother told me that the man who sat in the front of the bus was an armed guard. The gun was not visible. Guess I was expecting "armed guards" to refer to guards visibly toting military type automatic weapons. Moron here. 😗

It gives me the willies when I see guards toting weapons - I am not overly cautious but big automatic weapons really scare the heck out of me. Must be more observant in the future. 

Try running through the Frankfurt airport sometime. Plenty of armed guards - and they'll start running too.

[dogs4fun]

2 minutes ago, Flatbush Flyer said:

Try running through the Frankfurt airport sometime. Plenty of armed guards - and they'll start running too.

Yes, I've seen them in airports dressed in military garb - most recently in TLV (they are hard to miss). It gives me the willies. 

[Bizmark'sMom]

6 minutes ago, Flatbush Flyer said:

Try running through the Frankfurt airport sometime. Plenty of armed guards - and they'll start running too.

I've done that, and I don't remember armed guards running after me.  I must have played the part of the panicked aunt herding nephews along because we were going to miss our flight correctly.  (We did catch the flight. Barely.)

[ducklite]

12 minutes ago, Flatbush Flyer said:

Try running through the Frankfurt airport sometime. Plenty of armed guards - and they'll start running too.

There are plenty of militarized NYCPD with automatic weapons in plain view at JFK.  I wasn't running so I can't comment on their reaction to that.

[calliopecruiser]

1 hour ago, cruisemom42 said:

I think you mostly sail the luxury or near-luxury lines. For mass market cruise lines in Europe and the Middle East, most excursions are either a large bus of around 50 souls or a "small group" of around 24. I find 24 to be still too large for me to have an optimal tour experience.

 

Yup, and that was exactly my point........not all cruise excursions are created equal and shouldn't be discussed as if they're equal.  Some people may not know that there are cruises that do things differently, or that there are other options even with mainstream lines.  Some  mainstream excursions are small (10-12 people) if they're focused on a particular activity, rather than just a "see the sights" kind of excursion.  Again, a reminder that all cruise excursions aren't created equal. 

[Markanddonna]

Our private excursion with Guided Tours Israel was a delight and a pretty perfect, low cost way to travel in Israel. We were given a lot of info ahead of our trip (by email) and one caution was that we were NOT going to be stopping much for souvenir sort of shopping. He said  that he wanted to focus on the sites rather than shopping and that "you can get almost everything on Amazon nowadays."  That is true.  I bought the same Dead Sea cosmetic before I left on Amazon! Don't tell my daughter...

 

Therefore, no one "got lost" while shopping and no one held up the group waiting on the van.  We pretty much all stayed together. 

 

The security in Israel and in Palestinian controlled Bethlehem was pretty tight but I never felt unsafe. Personally, I have no desire to travel to Egypt based on stories from other cruisers. They typically said they were glad they went but would not return. BTW- Kusadasi felt very safe and was a delight, especially after the day before in Athens where there were protests that caused traffic to come to a halt and then that graffiti all over the buildings.  So sad.

[BlueRiband]

SRQbeachgirl gave some good reasons such as a VIP experience.  In Liverpool I took a ship tour of the Town Hall which included afternoon tea with the Lord Mayor of Liverpool.  (Admitedly that was not something many people here would want to sign on for.)  But he visited us for about an hour and we had a chance to have some good conversation about the city, its politics and the duties of his office.   It's unlikely a private operator would have been able to offer this as they don't have the enormous influence of a major cruise line.

 

Unfortunately this board has posters who look at ship-sponsored tours with hostility.  Anybody who choses that route is branded as lazy and content to pay more but get less. 

[Floridiana]

2 hours ago, dogs4fun said:

On 12/27/2019 at 12:23 PM, Heidi13 said:

Security issues - where security is an issue, in my experience the ship's tours have a police escort and armed guards on the buses.

Really? Not questioning your veracity just never heard of this before. Where did your ship tour have a police escort and armed guards on the buses? If security is this tight, it will be a port I will want to avoid in the future.

 

No armed guards but police escorts in front of the busses in Indonesia and Guatemala. Guatemala for security and Indonesia for traffic control. Both excursions organized by the ship.

 

 

[cruisemom42]

23 minutes ago, Markanddonna said:

Personally, I have no desire to travel to Egypt based on stories from other cruisers. They typically said they were glad they went but would not return. 

 

I've been to Egypt five times and would go back in a heartbeat. 

 

But maybe I am not your "typical" traveler....

[calliopecruiser]

26 minutes ago, BlueRiband said:

Unfortunately this board has posters who look at ship-sponsored tours with hostility.  Anybody who choses that route is branded as lazy and content to pay more but get less. 

Yes, it's one of the biases of these boards.  And you forgot they're sometimes branded as stupid too.

 

[Floridiana]

4 minutes ago, BlueRiband said:

Unfortunately this board has posters who look at ship-sponsored tours with hostility.  Anybody who choses that route is branded as lazy and content to pay more but get less. 

 

I have noticed that as well.

 

In my experience on countless land trips, both by ourselves and with tour companies, and on many cruises with tours in small (6 person) and large (40) groups, the quality of a guided tour depends on the quality of the guide and the itinerary/activity.  The number of people in the bus is not the deciding factor. It is, however, a factor when touring a small facility. As to puncutality, we had trips where one person did not return to the bus on time on large busses and on vans with 8 -10 people. Even guides for the 2 of us ranged from excellent to very poor. 

 

We often do our own thing without guides and tours, but we have never joined a tour organized by a roll call member or organized one for other roll call members. Better not paint people who don't join roll call tours as inexperienced or lazy travellers. 

[cruisemom42]

43 minutes ago, Floridiana said:

 

In my experience on countless land trips, both by ourselves and with tour companies, and on many cruises with tours in small (6 person) and large (40) groups, the quality of a guided tour depends on the quality of the guide and the itinerary/activity.  The number of people in the bus is not the deciding factor. It is, however, a factor when touring a small facility. As to puncutality, we had trips where one person did not return to the bus on time on large busses and on vans with 8 -10 people. Even guides for the 2 of us ranged from excellent to very poor. 

 

We often do our own thing without guides and tours, but we have never joined a tour organized by a roll call member or organized one for other roll call members. 

 

I suppose we are all shaped by our own previous experiences, but I do agree that the guide often times makes the tour. I have had some hair-raisingly awful guides on shore excursions that were ship-sponsored. This includes:

• a guide who openly and repeatedly used racial slurs against a minority population in her country
• a guide who locked the doors of a carpet shopping stop that took up much more than the allotted time to stop people from exiting and moving on to the next stop on their own
• a guide who said to the busload of tour participants at the outset: "I could tell you all the history of the places we're going to visit but you'll just forget it anyway" (and then proceeded to spend the long bus ride talking on her cell phone instead of to us)
• a guide who "forgot" to take us to one of four scheduled stops on the tour. At the end of the tour when I asked why "X" wasn't included, he first tried to pretend that it was not part of the tour. When I showed him the tour description, he said there was no time. When I pointed out that he had left us alone for double the allotted time at one of the stops, he just shrugged and said "The ship will give you a refund if you're not happy."  
• numerous guides who have passed off falsehoods as facts
• numerous guides who've shilled for places where they get kickbacks (during the tour, not before or after)

These are just European/Mediterranean experiences; I won't even get into some of the incompetence I've wasted money on in the Caribbean.

 

I have not had similar experiences with my private tour guides. Most have been excellent. I usually seek out multiple references before booking someone and usually try to speak with them directly (or at least via extensive emails) to determine whether they have the "chops" I'm seeking.

 

[ducklite]

39 minutes ago, cruisemom42 said:

 

I suppose we are all shaped by our own previous experiences, but I do agree that the guide often times makes the tour. I have had some hair-raisingly awful guides on shore excursions that were ship-sponsored. This includes:

• a guide who openly and repeatedly used racial slurs against a minority population in her country
• a guide who locked the doors of a carpet shopping stop that took up much more than the allotted time to stop people from exiting and moving on to the next stop on their own
• a guide who said to the busload of tour participants at the outset: "I could tell you all the history of the places we're going to visit but you'll just forget it anyway" (and then proceeded to spend the long bus ride talking on her cell phone instead of to us)
• a guide who "forgot" to take us to one of four scheduled stops on the tour. At the end of the tour when I asked why "X" wasn't included, he first tried to pretend that it was not part of the tour. When I showed him the tour description, he said there was no time. When I pointed out that he had left us alone for double the allotted time at one of the stops, he just shrugged and said "The ship will give you a refund if you're not happy."  
• numerous guides who have passed off falsehoods as facts
• numerous guides who've shilled for places where they get kickbacks (during the tour, not before or after)

These are just European/Mediterranean experiences; I won't even get into some of the incompetence I've wasted money on in the Caribbean.

 

I have not had similar experiences with my private tour guides. Most have been excellent. I usually seek out multiple references before booking someone and usually try to speak with them directly (or at least via extensive emails) to determine whether they have the "chops" I'm seeking.

 

This is one of the reasons we've started to do a lot of the "Free Umbrella" Tours if we just want a good overview of a place, or maybe some basic information on part of the history, etc.  There truly is no cost, the guides make this clear but also let you know that they work for tips.  We took three of these tours in Warsaw last month and two were some of the absolute best tours we've ever taken anywhere, with an amazingly knowledgeable and passionate guide.  

[donaldsc]

5 hours ago, cruisemom42 said:

 

I think you mostly sail the luxury or near-luxury lines. For mass market cruise lines in Europe and the Middle East, most excursions are either a large bus of around 50 souls or a "small group" of around 24. I find 24 to be still too large for me to have an optimal tour experience.

 

Also, at least for me, the comment about seeing/doing more relates to not having long bathroom/shopping stops where folks wander off and don't come back to the bus on time. I hate wasting time on a tour and I hate "forced shopping" stops and long lunches on tours. When I'm in Istanbul I want to spend my time in the Haghia Sofia, not in the carpet shop down the street or the restaurant across the river.

 

 

 

My ideal group size is 4 people.  We are doing one tour on our next cruise where I have allowed the group size to bump to 8 people and I thought long and hard before I did it.  The only reason that I did go to 8 is that there will be 8 of us on a 19 passenger minibus so everyone gets a window seat.

 

DON

[Markanddonna]

I have found that the majority of cruisers, even the ones who are very well traveled, often don't know about Cruise Critic. I pondered that during our last trip and decided it was because our group onboard the ship must seem like a family or friend group rather than something unique. We tend to stay together, play games together, dine together, get off the ship together for excursions, and in general, stay to ourselves. I enjoy telling people I meet on board about CC and the wonderful things we do together.

 

The private excursions we did together appeared to be so much better than the ship ones, as far as I could tell. We ate dinner with a lovely couple who didn't know about CC and compared our excursion in Ephesus. They took the ship tour and saw just the ruins of Ephesus (which were quite splendid on their own) and took the majority of the time. The people on our private excursion also saw the Terrace Step Houses, St. John's Basilica, the Temple of Artemis, and the House of the Virgin Mary. Our tour was much less money with only eight people in our van and included a great Turkish lunch.

 

I think it depends on where you go, but in Europe, it seems that many Cruise Critic people prefer private excursions for good reason. I don't think it is a perception of people being lazy. I've discovered that some of us are detail people who enjoy researching these sorts of things and others don't enjoy our approach. 

[calliopecruiser]

1 hour ago, Markanddonna said:

but in Europe, it seems that many Cruise Critic people

Who are these "Cruise Critic people" you speak of?  LOL......there are lots of people on these forums who don't use CC for meeting people or arranging excursions, and they're still "Cruise Critic people", I would think.  Your post is kind of a sideways example of the attitude that was expressed by BlueRiband above, except yours is rather pitying:  That people who don't know about CC are bound to choose the inferior ship excursion because they are unfortunate outsiders who don't know any better.

 

(No, don't bother telling me you never used those words - you didn't, but that's the attitude I read dripping from between the lines.)

[babs135]

There really is no right or wrong answer to the question. People do what they are most comfortable with.  When we visited Nagasaki the ship (Princess) docked within walking distance of the local tram. We took it to the Peace Park and the Atomic Bomb Museum before taking a slow walk back to an area called the Shopping Street (?) and then back to the ship. Cost, negligible - ship excursion, expensive and rushed (based on talking to people who had taken the excursion).

[Markanddonna]

My observations mentioned by calliopecruiser are just that. Ship excursions make sense in some situations, but our experience in the eastern Mediterranean in the Holy Land helped me gain some insight.  I was the one on our roll call who probably did the most research, and I offered the small group, private excursions to others. Because of this, all of GTI's tours were fully booked. Then, when I was onboard, I had strangers putting notes on my door and leaving messages on my phone in hopes of going on one of our tours. The word was getting around. 

 

So, on this cruise, the choice was between more expensive ship excursions on a big bus with 50-60 other people where you saw less or a private excursions that were less expensive, between 8-18 people, and the passengers saw more sites. If you were presented with these two options, which would you choose if you were in good physical health? 

 

BTW- I would not recommend going to the Holy Land if you were not in good physical shape unless you hired a private driver. The paths are very challenging, even for the able bodied. 

 

Edited December 29, 2019 by Markanddonna

[Flatbush Flyer]

2 hours ago, Markanddonna said:

.... So, on this cruise, the choice was between more expensive ship excursions on a big bus with 50-60 other people where you saw less or a private excursions that were less expensive, between 8-18 people, and the passengers saw more sites. If you were presented with these two options, which would you choose if you were in good physical health? 

Perhaps your oversimplified question works for "this" cruise. But, if you review the previous posts on this thread, you'll find that there are far more tour choice factors to consider than just price and number of tourists.

 

BTW, In some really out-of-the-way locations, multiple cruise ship(s) may "corner the market" on the best guides and/or available tix to tightly controlled antiquities leaving those who choose private tours to a choice of dockside taxi drivers who may not be licensed guides (required in some countries) nor have the best language skills. 

 

And, as aforementioned, you'll find few premium/luxury lines that primarily use 50-60 passenger busses and many of these ships offer complimentary or discounted tours that easily undercut the private tour choice.

 

Etc., etc., 

 

As for the specific choice of selecting a tour YOU have set up:

 

We often do private tours (mostly 2-6 at most) when conditions warrant it or it makes the most sense. And even if someone else is putting it together, we consider who our "tour-mates" will be and whether their idea of things to see/do match ours. Honestly, in many cases, we'll opt for the likely most expensive "2 of us" with a licensed driver/guide or driver plus licensed guide. 

 

On the other hand, we'll often immediately choose ship tours for long distance transport to destinations that limit group size and are eligible for the ship's complimentary/discounted offerings. 

 

That said, not knowing who you are or what travel/organizational experiences/preferences YOU may have can be a really important consideration in deciding whether to take YOUR great deal.

 

Nothing personal but, spending an entire day with a handful of SOME strangers (you can't escape) can be significantly more "costly" than that 20-30 passenger ship's bus.

[Floridiana]

6 hours ago, Markanddonna said:

So, on this cruise, the choice was between more expensive ship excursions on a big bus with 50-60 other people where you saw less or a private excursions that were less expensive, between 8-18 people, and the passengers saw more sites.

 

 

What is this, advertisement for your tours?

[Markanddonna]

21 minutes ago, Floridiana said:

 

What is this, advertisement for your tours?

I assumed people would understand that I was discussing and explaining my experience. I am not a travel agent nor am I a tour operator. I'm like most people who frequent Cruise Critic: a person who wants the best travel experience possible, and I offered my findings to others. I have no idea how you extrapolated that I was advertising. 

[calliopecruiser]

7 hours ago, Markanddonna said:

So, on this cruise, the choice was between more expensive ship excursions on a big bus with 50-60 other people where you saw less or a private excursions that were less expensive, between 8-18 people, and the passengers saw more sites. If you were presented with these two options, which would you choose if you were in good physical health? 

It depends on what the sites were, how we'd be getting there, and what the schedule was.  The devil, as always, is in the details.  Is this a small island stop where there's no local transportation and going anywhere needs a 4x4, or a city in Europe where there's local buses and walkable cities?  

 

If this was in Europe or a major international city and you offered me those two options, I'd take neither, as both sound unappealing.