Shore excursions- Viking Ocean

[TomBeckCruise]

We are looking at cruises in the Med for next spring. Possibly the west coast of Europe. We have not sailed with Viking Ocean before, but have cruised about 30 times in the last 30 years.

What is the typical size of a group for a shore excursion?  How many different excursions are typically offered?

Any problem going on your own ashore if you prefer to do that?

 

 

[Heidi13]

25 minutes ago, TomBeckCruise said:

We are looking at cruises in the Med for next spring. Possibly the west coast of Europe. We have not sailed with Viking Ocean before, but have cruised about 30 times in the last 30 years.

What is the typical size of a group for a shore excursion?  How many different excursions are typically offered?

Any problem going on your own ashore if you prefer to do that?

 

 

Welcome to Viking Ocean.

 

Really tough questions to answer, as it varies significantly by port. Will try to give a summary based on our experience.

 

Included Shore-ex

You are guaranteed 1 included shore-ex in almost every port. Most of them are a 1 to 3 hr guided walking tour, bus tour, or combination of both. However, in some ports the included can be up to 10 to 12 hours. When a bus tour, we have never experienced a full bus, with normally about 35 on a 50 seat bus. For walking tours, most of ours were a max of 10 to 12 pax

 

In some ports you may have multiple "Included" shore-ex, but can only book 1 of them.

 

Optional Shore-ex

The number in each port varies considerably. We have experienced a couple of ports with only 1 optional, where the port had minimal, if any tourism infrastructure. Most ports will have at least 1/2 dozen and as many as a dozen.

 

Numbers vary based on the activity/interest - we had only 4 on a Hunter Valley wine tasting. Similar to the included, in our experience they generally don't fill buses to capacity. In Papeete we had 6 on an inland tour. In Bali, both tours had about 20.

 

Pre-COVID we could go ashore with private tours, but post-COVID?????

[CCWineLover]

2 hours ago, TomBeckCruise said:

We are looking at cruises in the Med for next spring. Possibly the west coast of Europe. We have not sailed with Viking Ocean before, but have cruised about 30 times in the last 30 years.

What is the typical size of a group for a shore excursion?  How many different excursions are typically offered?

Any problem going on your own ashore if you prefer to do that?

 

 

Tom - join us on the Jupiter April 7-21 as it goes Barcelona to Bergen.  Great itinerary!  Called Trade Routes of the Middle Ages.