Shore excursions

[ronheg]

I am just 45 days away from our cruise and just discovered that the shore excursions that I hoped to book have disappeared.  Is there any hope that when I get on the ship they will be offered or am I out of luck?  I’ve learned my lesson.  Book early.

 

[NayRN]

They sometimes hold a certain percentage of excursion spaces for those who want to book on the ship. I’d make sure the excursion desk is the first place I’d go to once onboard as that would be your best chance at getting what you wanted.

[julig22]

8 minutes ago, NayRN said:

They sometimes hold a certain percentage of excursion spaces for those who want to book on the ship. I’d make sure the excursion desk is the first place I’d go to once onboard as that would be your best chance at getting what you wanted.

As far as I know they do not hold excursion spaces- they would have no reason to do so, since excursions have to be paid in advance.  But they might add an additional bus if they can, so additional spaces might open up.

They do hold back dining reservations however

[phillygwm]

On my roll call, three people saw three different numbers of available excursions at roughly the same time.  Keep trying, you may see some of them come back.  NCL's website sometimes leaves something to be desired.

[julig22]

2 minutes ago, phillygwm said:

On my roll call, three people saw three different numbers of available excursions at roughly the same time.  Keep trying, you may see some of them come back.  NCL's website sometimes leaves something to be desired.

Once you book an excursion for a specific port, you will no longer see any excursions that have conflicting times. Hence people will see different availability once they start booking.  Not a good design (and I have told them so many times) but not a glitch either.

[BirdTravels]

53 minutes ago, ronheg said:

I am just 45 days away from our cruise and just discovered that the shore excursions that I hoped to book have disappeared.  Is there any hope that when I get on the ship they will be offered or am I out of luck?  I’ve learned my lesson.  Book early.

 

The cruise line does not hold seats for onboard booking. They only make money by selling shore ex and they will sell until sold out

 

You have waited too long to commit and the

shore ex you wanted are sold out. 
 

The only chance you have is if someone cancels their shore ex or someone cancels their cruise. It may pop up as available on line or

on the ship (in the case of a last minute cruise cancel). 

 

 

[Huntingdon1701]

It's sold out, but as Birdtravels says it can open up again. That happened to me - disappeared 12 days ago and then suddenly popped up again. Needless to say I went ahead and booked immediately.  Keep checking, and hopefully you'll get lucky. 

 

Another option might be to check places like viator and the specialist cruise excursion companies, as they often offer identical excursions, and can be cheaper.  

[Dcoy]

I think sometimes when an excursion sells out before the cruise, the cruise company may contact the tour operator and see if they can add additional buses, boats, or whatever. Both come out ahead that way. 

[debdel]

We are cruising to Alaska in August and all 3 excursions I booked early were cancelled. I rescheduled all of them, 2 with NCL and one private one. The number of excursions on NCL have gone up and down constantly, with as many as 60 and as little as 19. Just be sure on the private ones that you can get a refund if you decide to cancel-some are non-refundable.