Celebrity La Spezia Cinque Terre Villages Excursion - Warning

[RaleighCruiser19]

Caution to anyone booking this excursion from La Spezia. We took it last week and had two major issues. 

 

First - the Celebrity vendor did not follow the itinerary. As booked, we would be bussed to Levanto, take a train to Monterosso, bus to Manarola and bus to Riomagiorre. Our guide reversed the order and ended the tour early in Monterosso. I talked to the guide about why and she said I was on the wrong tour! (I wasn't) This was a pricey excursion and we did not get what we paid for.  

 

Second - bad weather was handled terribly. We experienced torrential, sideways-blowing rain the morning of our excursion. Forecast was too late to cancel and Celebrity wouldn't. We understand nobody controls the weather and we don't mind getting wet. However, if we had been on the correct tour, we would have been covered and dry for the first 2 hours of the tour during the worst of the rain. I assumed adjustments would be made so we could stay a little drier, but we were booted off the bus into the blowing rain. Our guide was also quite aggressive with us about "being happy" and threatened to send us back to the boat via the train if we weren't happy. Appalling.

 

I sent an online comment card while on the ship and got no response. Book this tour at great risk. I recommend a private small group tour (ItalyTours has one from La Spezia) where they will adjust for comfort and stick to the itinerary. How Celebrity handled this is the biggest disappointment of my cruise.

[sgmn]

11 hours ago, RaleighCruiser19 said:

Caution to anyone booking this excursion from La Spezia. We took it last week and had two major issues. 

 

First - the Celebrity vendor did not follow the itinerary. As booked, we would be bussed to Levanto, take a train to Monterosso, bus to Manarola and bus to Riomagiorre. Our guide reversed the order and ended the tour early in Monterosso. I talked to the guide about why and she said I was on the wrong tour! (I wasn't) This was a pricey excursion and we did not get what we paid for.  

 

Second - bad weather was handled terribly. We experienced torrential, sideways-blowing rain the morning of our excursion. Forecast was too late to cancel and Celebrity wouldn't. We understand nobody controls the weather and we don't mind getting wet. However, if we had been on the correct tour, we would have been covered and dry for the first 2 hours of the tour during the worst of the rain. I assumed adjustments would be made so we could stay a little drier, but we were booted off the bus into the blowing rain. Our guide was also quite aggressive with us about "being happy" and threatened to send us back to the boat via the train if we weren't happy. Appalling.

 

I sent an online comment card while on the ship and got no response. Book this tour at great risk. I recommend a private small group tour (ItalyTours has one from La Spezia) where they will adjust for comfort and stick to the itinerary. How Celebrity handled this is the biggest disappointment of my cruise.

Sorry you had bad weather.  We also did in May that caused considerable delays on the trains.

We usually take ship tours but La Spezia is easy to DIY. Either walk to train station (20-30 min walk from where free port shuttle drops you off). Easy to find the station. You can buy hop on hop off trains tickets for the Cinque Terra ports in advance on line or at station. 

Or take the hop on hop off boat. You walk past the boats doing this on the way to train station, about five min from port entrance. 

We bought a one stop train ticket to the second furthers port because of the train delays (€5 I think) and bought a boat ticket back 

Below is a pic of the boat ticket office and one of the villages from the boat.

 

 

 

Edited July 7, 2023 by sgmn