Just noticed Carnival excursions went up in price

[Eli_6]

21 minutes ago, Megan_Strick said:

But you also have to remember that if you are late getting back to the ship from a private tour the ship will not wait for you unlike if you were late from a Carnival tour. I know there is a price difference but I'd rather pay $50 more with Carnival than have to pay my own way home from a foreign country.

Also, when I was on a Europe cruise last year, there were MAJOR problems getting on shore in most of the ports because all but two were tender ports and they didn't have tender companies.  They were only using two or three life boats that held about 40 people each to unload the Carnival Pride which has a guest capacity of 2680 people.   It was taking some people 4 to 5 hours to get off the ship. They literally only had two or three life boats unloading the entire ship.  And they were unloading the "Carnival excursions" first...followed by the platinums, diamonds and suites which was at least a quarter of the ship. Then you have the fact that a large number of the people cruising in Europe are older and mobility impaired and take a long time to get load/unload on the tenders. I am going to have to make sure the port isn't a tender port before I book an excursion or go out on my own.  If it is a tender port, I feel like my option (after my horrible cruise last year) is to either take a Carnival excursion or just stay on the boat...which is not what I want to do considering I am flying my family of 4 across an ocean to go on a European cruise.

Edited February 23, 2023 by Eli_6

[Eli_6]

17 hours ago, Joanne G. said:

By chance were Copenhagen and Nynashamn (for Stockholm) among the ports you visited where a shuttle was available into the main part of town?   I could probably handle public transportation for Copenhagen, but we will apparently be some distance from Stockholm city center, and currently Carnival is offering no excursions at all.   

 

I don't know about those ports.  I was on the British Isles cruise last year. We went to Edinburgh, two islands that were north of Scotland (I think they were in the Orkney Islands), Northern Ireland, Ireland, and Wales. However, there was not a problem getting to where you wanted to go once you were off the ship. The problem was getting off the ship.  All the ports were tender ports except 2 and it was a huge mess.   They unloaded the whole boat (2600 person guest capacity) with only 2 or 3 tenders. It took hours.  They had the same problem in Iceland, too, from what I heard from other guests.   

[Eli_6]

47 minutes ago, Bound4Bermuda said:

New to Carnival, but Royal Caribbean constantly changes the prices of their excursions based on demand. Not to mention they finagle the prices to prepare for “sales” that look like you’re getting a certain discount off but may end up being the same price. But other sales actually are sales—you never know! It’s not unusual for RCI cruisers to regularly check prices of everything (cruise, excursions, drink and dining packages, etc) just to see whether this week is a better deal than last week’s price. One thing I’ve noticed is that RCI’s excursions are never cheaper than what you paid if you already have it booked just so people won’t cancel them and rebook. But I have absolutely missed a deal, looking at a price, didn’t book yet, and then the next day is more. So based on my experience with RCI, I’m actually shocked to hear that people expect that Carnival has long-standing prices that don’t fluctuate, like pretty much everything else in the tourism industry (e.g., hotels, airfare) does.

I have never noticed the prices fluctuating before on excursions with Carnival. I also rarely see sales on them.  Only sale I have ever seen was you can book three excursions for 10 percent off shortly after booking if you book all ports with them...and it is usually only available for select excursions.  With that said, I am not at all surprised they raised their prices. My shock is more at how much they raised their prices on some of the excursions.  Some aren't that bad - like the $150 to $170 example I gave is tolerable imho. But others have gone up 40-50 percent like the $350 to $500 example the poster above gave. 

Edited February 23, 2023 by Eli_6
put wrong amount

[Bound4Bermuda]

7 minutes ago, Eli_6 said:

I have never noticed the prices fluctuating before on excursions with Carnival. I also rarely see sales on them.  Only sale I have ever seen was you can book three excursions for 10 percent off shortly after booking if you book all ports with them...and it is usually only available for select excursions.  With that said, I am not at all surprised they raised their prices. My shock is more at how much they raised their prices on some of the excursions.  Some aren't that bad - like the $150 to $170 example I gave is tolerable imho. But others have gone up 40-50 percent like the $350 to $400 example the poster above gave.

Hmm. The percentage increase on both of those examples are the same, ~14%. So there might be a correlation there. Did they raise all excursions by 14%? Or was it some type of early booking savings initiative that was lowered by 14%? Or, conversely, do they raise by the 14% once they hit a certain inventory threshold? Again, I don’t have the experience with this cruiseline to know the pattern but the two examples here do seem to indicate there could be a pattern—or at least an interesting coincidence.

[Eli_6]

5 minutes ago, Bound4Bermuda said:

Hmm. The percentage increase on both of those examples are the same, ~14%. So there might be a correlation there. Did they raise all excursions by 14%? Or was it some type of early booking savings initiative that was lowered by 14%? Or, conversely, do they raise by the 14% once they hit a certain inventory threshold? Again, I don’t have the experience with this cruiseline to know the pattern but the two examples here do seem to indicate there could be a pattern—or at least an interesting coincidence.

Sorry. I made a typo.  It was an increase of $350 to $500. It was 37.5 percent. The price went up by more than a third.  The $400 should have been $500.

 

And the other example I gave was an increase of $149 to $199 which is also a 33 percent increase in a short period of time.

Edited February 23, 2023 by Eli_6

[Bound4Bermuda]

1 minute ago, Eli_6 said:

An increase of $350 to $500 is not 14 percent. It is 37.5 percent. The price went up by more than a third basically overnight.  It was a typo. The $400 was supposed to be $500.

Yeah, I was using the numbers you had in your post. Oh well, now that typo was an interesting coincidence! Lol. I thought we were on to something with solving the mystery. 🔍 

[Eli_6]

1 minute ago, Bound4Bermuda said:

Yeah, I was using the numbers you had in your post. Oh well, now that typo was an interesting coincidence! Lol. I thought we were on to something with solving the mystery. 🔍 

Yeah, a 14 percent increase is more in line with inflation.  But the prices jumping up by a third or more is what is crazy to me.

 

But I guess everyone else is right.  Cars, property, eggs, gas...the world we live in now. Sigh. Frankly, I am starting to feel like sometimes (not always, but sometimes) this is just businesses taking advantage and increasing profit margins.  My husband and I own a small business and our expenses have gone up, too...but not to the tune of 33-50 percent.  In Carnival's instance, I suspect that they feel like they cannot raise their cruise prices because they need to try to get people (in particular, new cruisers) on the boat, so they are trying to pay off debt by raising the prices of other things.  For example, I was double-checking the price of the cruise we are going on since we have price protection and the current price of the cruise I am going on is within $100-200 of the price I paid when I booked it about 15 months ago.  Considering this is a 12 day European cruise to about 9 or so ports that doesn't even have very much availability left, I was surprised the price wasn't higher.        

[staceyglow]

1 hour ago, Megan_Strick said:

But you also have to remember that if you are late getting back to the ship from a private tour the ship will not wait for you unlike if you were late from a Carnival tour. 

This is true.  That's why I try to book with well-established tour companies with lots of online reviews.  They would never want to destroy their reputation by having this happen.  I also try not to cut it too close.  If you have to be on board by 5, for example, I would shy away from tours that plan to have you back less than an hour or so before that.

 

 

[Joanne G.]

4 hours ago, Eli_6 said:

I don't know about those ports.  I was on the British Isles cruise last year. We went to Edinburgh, two islands that were north of Scotland (I think they were in the Orkney Islands), Northern Ireland, Ireland, and Wales. However, there was not a problem getting to where you wanted to go once you were off the ship. The problem was getting off the ship.  All the ports were tender ports except 2 and it was a huge mess.   They unloaded the whole boat (2600 person guest capacity) with only 2 or 3 tenders. It took hours.  They had the same problem in Iceland, too, from what I heard from other guests.   

Oh dear, I am on what sounds like that same British Isles itinerary after my Scandanavian one.   Thanks for the warning.   Was Portree in Scotland one of your ports?  Carnival currently is offering no excursions for that port, and it looks like a pretty small town, not one where there will be a line of minibuses for private tours.  Well, flights and hotels are booked, and I am anxious to be on a ship for the first time since 2019.  I will make the best of it.   It does seem like Europe just isn't Carnival's strong point.   

[Eli_6]

6 minutes ago, Joanne G. said:

Oh dear, I am on what sounds like that same British Isles itinerary after my Scandanavian one.   Thanks for the warning.   Was Portree in Scotland one of your ports?  Carnival currently is offering no excursions for that port, and it looks like a pretty small town, not one where there will be a line of minibuses for private tours.  Well, flights and hotels are booked, and I am anxious to be on a ship for the first time since 2019.  I will make the best of it.   It does seem like Europe just isn't Carnival's strong point.   

I think one was Stornoway and the other was Kirkwall, but now I am not sure... The reason I am not completely sure is they changed the itinerary shortly before the cruise.  One of these ports was a dock and one was a tender. In the one that was a dock, there was a bus that went into town where there was lots to do.  In the other (that was a tender), the tender boat dropped you off in a little town where there were things to do and see. Some of the excursions didn't show up last year until only a month before the cruise so they may still show up.  Like I said, in all situations you could go out on your own with no problem...once you got off the boat.

[BlerkOne]

On 2/23/2023 at 12:53 PM, staceyglow said:

Carnival can charge whatever price they want. If you don't want to pay what Carnival is asking, don't book the excursion. If everyone does that, they have no choice but to lower the price. If people pay it anyway, then raising the price was a good business decision. 

 

If you want to support local tour companies, book a third party excursion. You pay less and the local folks make more. 

Cruise line tours are local tours under contract to the cruise line. How do you figure the locals make more?

 

 

[BlerkOne]

23 hours ago, Eli_6 said:

Also, when I was on a Europe cruise last year, there were MAJOR problems getting on shore in most of the ports because all but two were tender ports and they didn't have tender companies.  They were only using two or three life boats that held about 40 people each to unload the Carnival Pride which has a guest capacity of 2680 people.   It was taking some people 4 to 5 hours to get off the ship. They literally only had two or three life boats unloading the entire ship.  And they were unloading the "Carnival excursions" first...followed by the platinums, diamonds and suites which was at least a quarter of the ship. Then you have the fact that a large number of the people cruising in Europe are older and mobility impaired and take a long time to get load/unload on the tenders. I am going to have to make sure the port isn't a tender port before I book an excursion or go out on my own.  If it is a tender port, I feel like my option (after my horrible cruise last year) is to either take a Carnival excursion or just stay on the boat...which is not what I want to do considering I am flying my family of 4 across an ocean to go on a European cruise.

This is not exclusive to Carnival. On my current cruise, Oceania docked one ship in Ushuaia and tendered a second with ship tenders. Falkland Islands doesn't have a tender company and all cruise lines use their own tenders. It took hours to tender everyone ashore, and then hours to tender everyone back. The last tender time posted was a dream.

[Eli_6]

21 minutes ago, BlerkOne said:

This is not exclusive to Carnival. On my current cruise, Oceania docked one ship in Ushuaia and tendered a second with ship tenders. Falkland Islands doesn't have a tender company and all cruise lines use their own tenders. It took hours to tender everyone ashore, and then hours to tender everyone back. The last tender time posted was a dream.

Good to know.  So, basically, in European tender ports, if you want to do an excursion: Book with the cruise company or you may run the risk of missing your independently booked excursion. Probably true for any other place that doesn't have massive number of ships regularly coming through sufficient to support independent tender companies. 

Edited February 24, 2023 by Eli_6

[BlerkOne]

35 minutes ago, Eli_6 said:

Good to know.  So, basically, in European tender ports, if you want to do an excursion: Book with the cruise company or you may run the risk of missing your independently booked excursion. Probably true for any other place that doesn't have massive number of ships regularly coming through sufficient to support independent tender companies. 

or....

 

book the cheapest cruise line excursion to throw away

 

have status or other priority to tender including making friends with someone who does have status. on European cruises, one time we took a (small) bus load of people off with our priority.

 

get everyone up early enough to be at the front of the line for tender tickets. often the ship excursions do not begin tendering first thing and the early birds can indeed tender before the rest of the ship knows what is going on. Cruise lines do make it possible for people without priority to tender early if you follow the process.

 

Even if a port has tenders, things happen - e.g. the union decides to strike for whatever reason.

 

 

[Eli_6]

17 minutes ago, BlerkOne said:

or....

 

book the cheapest cruise line excursion to throw away

 

have status or other priority to tender including making friends with someone who does have status. on European cruises, one time we took a (small) bus load of people off with our priority.

 

get everyone up early enough to be at the front of the line for tender tickets. often the ship excursions do not begin tendering first thing and the early birds can indeed tender before the rest of the ship knows what is going on. Cruise lines do make it possible for people without priority to tender early if you follow the process.

 

Even if a port has tenders, things happen - e.g. the union decides to strike for whatever reason.

 

 

This is not how it worked on the Pride last summer on my sailing. They were checking all of our room keys to make sure we were either platinum, diamond, or a suite guest for the priority debark and you had to be there in person an hour or two before they even docked to get the ticket.  Platinum, diamond, suites got the early group numbered tickets and then they started the rest at whatever number.  So, if you were not priority, even if you were down there at 4 am and stood in line for a ticket (which people were) you still weren't getting off until an hour or two after they started the tender process since about 1/4 of the ship was priority and then they also debarked the excursions first.  They way they did it was actually really annoying because we had to get our kids up and out of bed at about 6 am or so to get our "priority" suite ticket and then go back a couple of hours later to actually catch the tender.  One morning we waited towards the end of the period and the people in the lobby were already gone and we couldn't even get a "priority" ticket.  They also would not give you a tender ticket to a person who came down with multiple S&S cards even if all S&S cards were eligible. You had to be physically present and have your eligible S&S card.  People could not just take a large group of non-priority people off with them. Nor could someone go down there with all the priority S&S cards and get a bunch of tickets. 

 

Granted, like everything else, this probably depends on the ship, person in charge, etc. as to how they actually handle this. The way it was handled on the Pride for the British Isles and Iceland July sailings were a complete mess.  

Edited February 24, 2023 by Eli_6

[Joanne G.]

@Eli_6, thank you for sharing your experiences.   You convinced me to buy the "Edinburgh on your own" excursion for the sole purpose of getting off the ship early.   I will then find my own way to the Royal Yacht Britannia, which is my main plan for Edinburgh.  Annoyingly, the excursion's return to the ship is sooner than I would like given our departure time, but I don't have any priority on Carnival, so without the excursion, I would be among the last to get on a tender.   

[BlerkOne]

1 hour ago, Eli_6 said:

This is not how it worked on the Pride last summer on my sailing. They were checking all of our room keys to make sure we were either platinum, diamond, or a suite guest for the priority debark and you had to be there in person an hour or two before they even docked to get the ticket.  Platinum, diamond, suites got the early group numbered tickets and then they started the rest at whatever number.  So, if you were not priority, even if you were down there at 4 am and stood in line for a ticket (which people were) you still weren't getting off until an hour or two after they started the tender process since about 1/4 of the ship was priority and then they also debarked the excursions first.  They way they did it was actually really annoying because we had to get our kids up and out of bed at about 6 am or so to get our "priority" suite ticket and then go back a couple of hours later to actually catch the tender.  One morning we waited towards the end of the period and the people in the lobby were already gone and we couldn't even get a "priority" ticket.  They also would not give you a tender ticket to a person who came down with multiple S&S cards even if all S&S cards were eligible. You had to be physically present and have your eligible S&S card.  People could not just take a large group of non-priority people off with them. Nor could someone go down there with all the priority S&S cards and get a bunch of tickets. 

 

Granted, like everything else, this probably depends on the ship, person in charge, etc. as to how they actually handle this. The way it was handled on the Pride for the British Isles and Iceland July sailings were a complete mess.  

Years ago, I was also know to print my own tender tickets. Carnival tended to use the same Avery blanks.

[BlerkOne]

42 minutes ago, Joanne G. said:

@Eli_6, thank you for sharing your experiences.   You convinced me to buy the "Edinburgh on your own" excursion for the sole purpose of getting off the ship early.   I will then find my own way to the Royal Yacht Britannia, which is my main plan for Edinburgh.  Annoyingly, the excursion's return to the ship is sooner than I would like given our departure time, but I don't have any priority on Carnival, so without the excursion, I would be among the last to get on a tender.   

I'm not sure what the excursion return time has to do with anything since you aren't going to be taking the excursion anyway.

 

If I remember correctly, Edinburgh port was under construction last year which messed everything up. Not sure how long the construction is going to take. Or maybe that was a different port.

[staceyglow]

3 hours ago, BlerkOne said:

Cruise line tours are local tours under contract to the cruise line. How do you figure the locals make more?

 

 

Because the cruise line negotiates a lower rate with them. I have had several tour operators tell me this. 

 

For example: Let's say you book a tour with a local guide who charges you $50. Carnival  has the same tour an official cruise line-sponsored excursion, but they will only pay the tour operator $35. They then turn around and charge the passenger $60.

 

If you book the tour directly with the tour operator, you save $10 and the tour operator makes an additional $15 .

 

[BlerkOne]

2 minutes ago, staceyglow said:

Because the cruise line negotiates a lower rate with them. I have had several tour operators tell me this. 

 

For example: Let's say you book a tour with a local guide who charges you $50. Carnival  has the same tour an official cruise line-sponsored excursion, but they will only pay the tour operator $35. They then turn around and charge the passenger $60.

 

If you book the tour directly with the tour operator, you save $10 and the tour operator makes an additional $15 .

 

The cruise line tours also have a higher passenger load since the local operator benefits from the free Carnival advertising. Some tour operators manage to negotiate out of a exclusive contract with Carnival and have the best of both worlds. The Alaska Crab tour was one - maybe still is.

[Joanne G.]

1 hour ago, BlerkOne said:

I'm not sure what the excursion return time has to do with anything since you aren't going to be taking the excursion anyway.

 

I am not sure what you mean.  The excursion is transportation into Edinburgh and return transportation to the tender port for return to the ship, the time ashore to be spent however one wishes.  So, I am taking the excursion.  

Edited February 24, 2023 by Joanne G.

[Eli_6]

2 hours ago, Joanne G. said:

@Eli_6, thank you for sharing your experiences.   You convinced me to buy the "Edinburgh on your own" excursion for the sole purpose of getting off the ship early.   I will then find my own way to the Royal Yacht Britannia, which is my main plan for Edinburgh.  Annoyingly, the excursion's return to the ship is sooner than I would like given our departure time, but I don't have any priority on Carnival, so without the excursion, I would be among the last to get on a tender.   

I don't think you can get on it, but I may be wrong. It is parked next to a shopping mall, I think. 

[BlerkOne]

37 minutes ago, Joanne G. said:

I am not sure what you mean.  The excursion is transportation into Edinburgh and return transportation to the tender port for return to the ship, the time ashore to be spent however one wishes.  So, I am taking the excursion.  

Okay. I thought you just wanted a tender ride to shore. You can probably hire a taxi to pick you up at the tender area, take you to the yacht, and return you to the tender area.

[Joanne G.]

I have a ticket to tour the royal yacht, so it is open to the public.    I didn't think about using the excursion as simply a way to get ashore early, but @BlerkOne, that's a good idea.  I might just do that.   Or I may use it for the transportation into the city center but look into public transportation or a taxi back to the ship in order to have more time in port.   I have to do more research on the city and the distances.

[Joebucks]

Prices always fluctuate. To expect an announcement or to stay in line with inflation is asking for disappointment. Some things go up in price more than others depending on the demand.