Are Online Sold Out Europe Shore Excursions Available on Ship?

[pitmindi]

Hello, do any of the experienced cruisers on this site know whether additional tix are available to shore excursions that are sold out online.  Will they be available once I am on the ship?  I have asked NCL and received different answers from the shore excursion dept on the phone.  I just added my friend to my mid-sept northern europe cruise and many of the excursions that I already bought tix for myself are sold out so I can not get another tix for my friend.  Some of the ports have no excursions available and others excursions that I don't prefer.  Any advice would be appreciated.  Thank you.  

Edited July 31, 2023 by pitmindi

[UKstages]

to my knowledge, they do not hold back any excursion reservations for sale onboard.

 

what they will do is start a wait list and they will process cancellations, if any.

 

or, if there is sufficient interest, and they can book an an additional bus and guide (or whatever is required), they will open up more reservations. but it is conditional upon available capacity with the tour operator... and they must have critical mass... they will generally not operate an additional tour with three or four people on the bus.

[julig22]

They don't hold tickets but people cancel and they sometimes will add another tour if they can, depending on the excursion.  So keep checking online until your cruise, a spot might open up. Otherwise, head straight to the excursion desk when you board and get on the waiting list.

[zqvol]

13 hours ago, pitmindi said:

Hello, do any of the experienced cruisers on this site know whether additional tix are available to shore excursions that are sold out online.  Will they be available once I am on the ship?  I have asked NCL and received different answers from the shore excursion dept on the phone.  I just added my friend to my mid-sept northern europe cruise and many of the excursions that I already bought tix for myself are sold out so I can not get another tix for my friend.  Some of the ports have no excursions available and others excursions that I don't prefer.  Any advice would be appreciated.  Thank you.  

Your best hope would be to get on a waiting list upon boarding and hope that someone cancels.

[ronheg]

We were on the waiting list for a shore excursion.  We signed up for the waiting list the minute we boarded.  No luck so we booked a different excursion.  When we were in the theatre waiting for our excursion to be called, we heard them announcing the excursion we really wanted.  I went over to the ncl employee after they had processed the cruisers and low and behold 2 people didn’t show up.  They allowed us to return our shore excursion tickets on the spot and take the excursion we really wanted.  They even got the price difference correctly stated on our on board account.   The waiting list doesn’t really work.  They don’t know until the last minute and they don’t want to take the time to find you.  Go to the 5heatre and keep your ears open.

[DCGuy64]

If you speak other languages, one option can be to find an excursion being offered in another language than English. For our upcoming sailing, I noticed that one of the excursions we're interested in is only available in German and Spanish, but not English. (Since I speak those languages fluently, it wouldn't be a problem for me) So that might be worth a shot. Twice my wife and I had booked excursions that got cancelled (not enough English speakers for an English tour), so we went on tours in German, Italian and French.