NCL website organization of available excursions

[quack2]

Perhaps it's just me but is NCL's excursions listing on the website a little disorganized?  All I want is to be able to see the available excursions sorted by port stop.  It would be even better if time and duration were also shown as part of the port by port listing.  Other company's websites seem to do a much better job of organizing excursions.  In the before times, I even remember receiving a personalized pdf showing available excursions by port.

[Wardruna]

Yes the website is very annoying!

[Bob121]

It filters by port when you click on the day on the left hand menu. At least if you’re viewing the excursions under the “Explore & Plan” tab. 

[rnfulk]

It is not the greatest website ever, but it does allow you to sort excursions by port and the duration is listed on the right side of the listing for each excursion. 

[mawvkysc]

I noticed most excursions didn’t have reviews. (Bermuda cruise) I always find those helpful 

[eileeshb]

16 hours ago, mawvkysc said:

I noticed most excursions didn’t have reviews. (Bermuda cruise) I always find those helpful 

you can often find reviews on trip advisor, sometimes the excursion names are identical to those used by NCL but not always so it can take a bit of digging. Helpfully trip advisor has a "shore excursion" filter that you can use, or if looking at the reviews you can filter with keywords like "cruiseline"

[ontheweb]

17 hours ago, mawvkysc said:

I noticed most excursions didn’t have reviews. (Bermuda cruise) I always find those helpful 

I'm not sure if there are any reviews at all for the excursions on our cruise this summer from London (Southampton) to Reykjavik.

[BirdTravels]

21 hours ago, quack2 said:

Perhaps it's just me but is NCL's excursions listing on the website a little disorganized?  All I want is to be able to see the available excursions sorted by port stop.  It would be even better if time and duration were also shown as part of the port by port listing.  Other company's websites seem to do a much better job of organizing excursions.  In the before times, I even remember receiving a personalized pdf showing available excursions by port.

On your MyNCL account

 

1) Click on EXPLORE AND PLAN

 

2) On the left navigation bar, select SHORE EXCURSIONS

 

3) On the left navigation bar, select the port you are interested in

 

4) Above the shore excursions, use the display drop down to change from display 12 to display all 

 

5) Use the Sort drop down to sort by price low to high

[cmph]

I didn't find it too hard to navigate through the excursions listings by port on myncl, but you're right that it doesn't give you enough info in that brief view. It's a minor frustration only because that site is slow as molasses, and More Details loads a new page. I learned to just open all of the excursion options we'd possibly consider in new tabs, b/c at least I didn't have to keep going back and forth to the main page. 

 

Aside from the extremely slow loading time, my other issue is that, once you book an excursion, you can't see any other excursions for that port that might even vaguely conflict. I guess they do not expect anyone to change their minds and cancel the original booking in favor of an alternative. 

[ontheweb]

27 minutes ago, cmph said:

I didn't find it too hard to navigate through the excursions listings by port on myncl, but you're right that it doesn't give you enough info in that brief view. It's a minor frustration only because that site is slow as molasses, and More Details loads a new page. I learned to just open all of the excursion options we'd possibly consider in new tabs, b/c at least I didn't have to keep going back and forth to the main page. 

 

Aside from the extremely slow loading time, my other issue is that, once you book an excursion, you can't see any other excursions for that port that might even vaguely conflict. I guess they do not expect anyone to change their minds and cancel the original booking in favor of an alternative. 

So they do not take into account say you have a short excursion in the morning, you might still be able to fit in a short afternoon excursion? And what if not everyone in the cabin is on the excursion? Still no other alternative excursions?

[ontheweb]

2 hours ago, BirdTravels said:

On your MyNCL account

 

1) Click on EXPLORE AND PLAN

 

2) On the left navigation bar, select SHORE EXCURSIONS

 

3) On the left navigation bar, select the port you are interested in

 

4) Above the shore excursions, use the display drop down to change from display 12 to display all 

 

5) Use the Sort drop down to sort by price low to high

LOL, I do not need #4 for our cruise since none of the ports has as many as 12 excursion options.

[cmph]

13 minutes ago, ontheweb said:

So they do not take into account say you have a short excursion in the morning, you might still be able to fit in a short afternoon excursion? And what if not everyone in the cabin is on the excursion? Still no other alternative excursions?

We have not tried to book different excursions for people in the same cabin, so I'm not sure what would happen in that case. 

 

The only exception I have seen is if you book a HOHO bus. Other than that, I can't see anything other than my booked excursion for the ports that we have something booked. The first time I noticed, I though "wow, did we choose a bad one, b/c it's the only one available!" Then I noticed the pattern. It's too bad they can't just grey out the option to book but still show the full list in case you change your mind, or your mobility level changes. If I had known, I would have taken notes or screenshots.

[julig22]

59 minutes ago, cmph said:

Aside from the extremely slow loading time, my other issue is that, once you book an excursion, you can't see any other excursions for that port that might even vaguely conflict. I guess they do not expect anyone to change their minds and cancel the original booking in favor of an alternative. 

An issue that I mention anytime I call the excursions desk...and sometimes remember to mention in my post cruise survey.

But there can not be any overlap.

One option is to mark all the excursions as favorites before booking anything - but you still won't see if anything new is added.

[eileeshb]

46 minutes ago, ontheweb said:

So they do not take into account say you have a short excursion in the morning, you might still be able to fit in a short afternoon excursion? And what if not everyone in the cabin is on the excursion? Still no other alternative excursions?

They will list other excursions that don’t overlap the time for the excursion you already booked. Some excursions are setup as 0 minutes duration, these are usually things like the HOHO buses, viewpoint trams/gondolas. For example I’ve booked the goldbelt tram in Juneau as well as a whale watching excursion.  On a Mediterranean cruise I did previously I booked 2 excursions at Livorno but the first was so badly delayed by a traffic accident on the normal route we didn’t get back to the ship until the 2nd excursion return time, both were NCL excursions so they refunded me for the 2nd excursion that was missed. 
I travel solo so I don’t know how the excursion selection works for a cabin with multiple guests. If this wasn’t a cruiseline (with all of their inherently illogically programmed IT) I’d say the obvious thing should be that each guest can select their own excursions. Where there could be restrictions is if there are u18/21s in the cabin as they’re unlikely to be able to book onto an excursion without an adult companion. 

[BirdTravels]

2 hours ago, cmph said:

Aside from the extremely slow loading time, my other issue is that, once you book an excursion, you can't see any other excursions for that port that might even vaguely conflict. I guess they do not expect anyone to change their minds and cancel the original booking in favor of an alternative. 

Yes. They are preventing people from booking overlapping shore excursions, then complaining that they were

allowed to make impossible bookings.

[ontheweb]

3 hours ago, cmph said:

We have not tried to book different excursions for people in the same cabin, so I'm not sure what would happen in that case. 

 

The only exception I have seen is if you book a HOHO bus. Other than that, I can't see anything other than my booked excursion for the ports that we have something booked. The first time I noticed, I though "wow, did we choose a bad one, b/c it's the only one available!" Then I noticed the pattern. It's too bad they can't just grey out the option to book but still show the full list in case you change your mind, or your mobility level changes. If I had known, I would have taken notes or screenshots.

We generally book the same excursion when we do book cruise line excursions, but I remember once when (not on NCL) we did different excursions at the same time. DW took an excursion that was devoted to photography (not my thing, but one of hers), while I had to find something different.

[ontheweb]

1 hour ago, BirdTravels said:

Yes. They are preventing people from booking overlapping shore excursions, then complaining that they were

allowed to make impossible bookings.

Yes, I did call once and inquire whether 2 different excursions could be booked. If you took the start time of the first and then added the amount of time it said it would take, it gave a 15 minute leeway to the second excursion being considered. They said too close together. I expected that answer, but it cannot hurt to ask.

[Markj]

13 hours ago, cmph said:

I didn't find it too hard to navigate through the excursions listings by port on myncl, but you're right that it doesn't give you enough info in that brief view. It's a minor frustration only because that site is slow as molasses, and More Details loads a new page. I learned to just open all of the excursion options we'd possibly consider in new tabs, b/c at least I didn't have to keep going back and forth to the main page. 

 

Aside from the extremely slow loading time, my other issue is that, once you book an excursion, you can't see any other excursions for that port that might even vaguely conflict. I guess they do not expect anyone to change their minds and cancel the original booking in favor of an alternative. 

Agree with you

 

This is very silly especially if anything new is added to the options after you have booked!!!

[cmph]

10 hours ago, Markj said:

Agree with you

 

This is very silly especially if anything new is added to the options after you have booked!!!

Yup, and while I 100% understand NCL doesn't want people to book conflicting activities - it's not like this was the ONLY way to prevent that. The architecture of the site is the problem, and there are a number of ways to revamp that and still prevent people from booking conflicting activities. ah well, we're not in charge! 😉

[HERKIMER417]

I thought I was the only one thinking that NCL had missed something.  I'm on a 14 alaskan tourcruse.

On my actual sea days,  I can see my ports of call and review the excursions.  But,  when I look at the days I'm on the land portion the program just list the day number and says "AT SEA". 

  The trip outline says I can choose several excursions during my free time.  But none of these options are listed. 

    I'm not "at Sea" - I'm on land yet this wonderful program can't figure this out.  I'd heard that the tourcruse and the cruse folks do not talk but this is nuts. 

[julig22]

28 minutes ago, HERKIMER417 said:

I thought I was the only one thinking that NCL had missed something.  I'm on a 14 alaskan tourcruse.

On my actual sea days,  I can see my ports of call and review the excursions.  But,  when I look at the days I'm on the land portion the program just list the day number and says "AT SEA". 

  The trip outline says I can choose several excursions during my free time.  But none of these options are listed. 

    I'm not "at Sea" - I'm on land yet this wonderful program can't figure this out.  I'd heard that the tourcruse and the cruse folks do not talk but this is nuts. 

The land tours on a cruise tour aren't run by NCL - they are contracted to a 3rd party.  You will be able to choose/book any available land excursions through your tour guide.  As far as NCL is concerned, you are on a 7 day cruise.  And in case you were wondering, you do not get latitudes points for the land portion of your trip.

tours.pdf

Edited May 4, 2023 by julig22
add file

[fredkelk]

What I have discovered is that it's like pulling teeth to get information about the land portion of a cruise tour other than what is in the brochure. I was able to check in at 21 days before the start of the entire trip (land portion first) but haven't received my edocs. I called NCL and after a supervisor couldn't release the docs, I was told they aren't released until 21 days before the actual sail date. No hotel information, no info about the additional excursions available during land portion until 2 weeks before the tour actually starts. I know they contract it out but think there should be better communications. 

 

I was able to find out the name of the first hotel in Fairbanks by doing a little research and contacting the company doing the land portion. I will be arriving a day early so that info was very helpful so I don't need to change hotels.

 

I was really looking forward to cruising with NCL but this and problems contacting my PCC costing me several hundred dollars, leads me to not wanting to deal with them again.

[Travelling2Some]

NCL's communication is just abysmal in general, unfortunately.  Thanks for posting your experience.  I'm a planner and would find that intolerable.

[ChiefMateJRK]

On 5/2/2023 at 10:56 AM, BirdTravels said:

5) Use the Sort drop down to sort by price low to high

Some of us sort by activity level.

[bomabound]

Just to add to the sorting advice…. On my iPad there is no visible drop-down menu with sort option until I click on “show all”.  Only after I click on that does the “sort by” box show up.  It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure this out.