Crystal's Outrageous Excursion Prices

[Bruce4fun]

IMHO the prices for the World Cruise overland excursions will be shockingly high. A&K are great at what they do, but they charge a pretty penny for the experiences. I would predict several of them are easily $10,000 per person.

 

[Florida90210]

Thanks BoilerBill for the information.  This gives some perspective as to what other cruise lines are charging compared to Crystal.

[Leejnd4]

2 hours ago, Bruce4fun said:

IMHO the prices for the World Cruise overland excursions will be shockingly high. A&K are great at what they do, but they charge a pretty penny for the experiences. I would predict several of them are easily $10,000 per person.

 

Well I suspect that if you can afford to do a Crystal World Cruise, the prices of the shore excursions won't break the bank. 😉 Not that anybody wants to throw money away, but if you're doing a World Cruise, it's all part of the equation.

[ijkh]

I agree LeeAnn it is all part of the cost.   There are no short cuts except one.   Especially on a WC there is plentiful shipboard credit to be had from one of the many excellent Travel Agents out there.    Be a good consumer and don't leave money on the Crystal table.   Use your shipboard credit for excursions.

 

We did a mix of excursions on our WC.  Group organized, independent over nights and crystal day and overnight tours.   We really enjoyed the day safaris along South Africa with being able to return home to Serenity.  Such an experience.  I will never be sorry.  It remains one my favorite travel adventures ever.  

[MsCrystalina]

I am so glad I did a trip from Dubai to Athens on Symphony years ago!  There was an overnight in Luxor which was at a luxury hotel which was not expensive nor overpriced as I would not have paid it!

If really fascinated with Egypt and able to travel more , hold off and take a Uniworld River Tour on the Sphinx which includes 2 overnights in Luxor, the Four Seasons in Cairo and flights within the country. All while having a luxurious stateroom and all is inclusive.

[MsCrystalina]

for clarity- the Sphinx is a luxury river boat- board it in Luxor.

[Leejnd4]

5 minutes ago, MsCrystalina said:

I am so glad I did a trip from Dubai to Athens on Symphony years ago!  There was an overnight in Luxor which was at a luxury hotel which was not expensive nor overpriced as I would not have paid it!

If really fascinated with Egypt and able to travel more , hold off and take a Uniworld River Tour on the Sphinx which includes 2 overnights in Luxor, the Four Seasons in Cairo and flights within the country. All while having a luxurious stateroom and all is inclusive.

I did a Uniworld cruise a few years ago on the Rhone & Moselle rivers, and it was wonderful! I'd love to do another one, but Egypt is not on the agenda for at least a few years. Too many other trips planned. 🙂 I do hope to get there someday!

[PaulMCO]

Do not know what the fixation about the Crystal Tours are??  A&K is not in every port and they are using the same guides and companies other ships use. Just a higher mark up and maybe less persons (still to be proved).  But certainly a 1 to 1 private tour by such reputable firms like Tours by Locals or those *5 Trip Advisor reviewed companies can much better.  Share with 1 or 2 other couples and you have a quality small group tour. That will beat any regular Crystal or A&K Tour.

 

We even do this many times when we have included Regent tours.  Ships tours IMHO are meh...

 

And to answer @Leejnd4  you can do private tours from any of the Egyptian (Safaga/Luxor, Cairo) or Jordan (Petra) ports.    If you do a Nile River cruise -- Uniworld is one of the better and most experienced companies and knows how to work in Egypt.

 

Private tours -- Is not that what the roll calls are for???  🙂

[Leejnd4]

1 hour ago, PaulMCO said:

Do not know what the fixation about the Crystal Tours are??  A&K is not in every port and they are using the same guides and companies other ships use. Just a higher mark up and maybe less persons (still to be proved).  But certainly a 1 to 1 private tour by such reputable firms like Tours by Locals or those *5 Trip Advisor reviewed companies can much better.  Share with 1 or 2 other couples and you have a quality small group tour. That will beat any regular Crystal or A&K Tour.

 

We even do this many times when we have included Regent tours.  Ships tours IMHO are meh...

 

And to answer @Leejnd4  you can do private tours from any of the Egyptian (Safaga/Luxor, Cairo) or Jordan (Petra) ports.    If you do a Nile River cruise -- Uniworld is one of the better and most experienced companies and knows how to work in Egypt.

 

Private tours -- Is not that what the roll calls are for???  🙂

 

Well I'm relieved to see I'm not the only Crystal fan in here who prefers private tours! I fully agree: I just don't get why people even care what Crystal is charging for their tours. It's so rare that I use any ship tour that it's literally not even a factor for me. 

 

Occasionally it's worth it to pay the extra for the convenience of a ship tour, and if money was no object I might do more of them, but most of the time I know I will get a better experience for less money going private.

 

I'm on a 10-day Paul Gauguin cruise coming up in a couple months, and we're doing ONE ship tour - and that's only because that particular tour gets really great reviews, plus we dilly-dallied in deciding what to do in that port and the good private tours were already booked up. All other ports where we're doing tours, we've got private ops booked.

 

And YES! That's exactly what roll calls are for! Which is why I'm bummed that Cruise Critic just doesn't get the same level of engagement that I recall from several years ago. On my last Crystal cruise (South America in 2019) we had a very active roll call, and a number of private tours booked with people from that roll call. And we remain friends with one of the couples, who happened to live near us. Heck, I'm still friends with a couple whom I met on a roll-call back in 2004!

 

I remember on our first PG cruise, we had something like 20 people on that roll call. And that's on a ship that only takes 330 pax. Fortunately my upcoming PG cruise roll call has 3 other couples, some of whom are joining us on our private tours. 🙂 

[Keith1010]

When we did a lot of tours we evolved over the years.  We began with ship tours but eventually went with a mix of private tours; some arranged on our own, some via TA and some via Crystal.  In all cases doing a private tour on our own were lower in cost and part of the reason is simply there is no middle person(s) involved nor the extra costs such as the escort from the ship, insurance that they have etc.

 

I do not believe one size fits all. In other words I look at these options as tools and for us would select the tool which we think makes the most sense.

 

We determine what it is we want to see and see if one or all of these options satisfies this requirement. This applies for a group tour too. We have been on group Crystal tours where the only way we could experience a specific item at the time was that tour.

 

We also consider other factors such as what we want to see, distances and when the ship is leaving. For example if we have a lot to see and the ship has an overnight we might go private on our own but if the ship is leaving and we are concerned about timing we would go with a Crystal group tour or Crystal private tour.

 

So in the end, we consider what we want to do, what the cost is, and many other factors.

 

For me when we were in Africa, even though it was higher cost for two years we did the Crystal overland Safari tour because we didn't want to have to worry about things if something changed. And it did.  On one of them the ship couldn't get into the port we were supposed to return to and Crystal got us new flight reservations to another city and hotel and food.  On another case the tour started late as the ship was not cleared for several hours. For those on the Crystal tour who couldn't make their first flight that was revised.

 

In Egypt I would not do a private tour on my own and would go with Crystal for something such as Luxor.

 

Now someone else might do a private tour but in my case I don't want to spend time worrying about getting back to the ship in time.

 

But in my case we often arrive to the port of embarkation a few days in advance while some might fly in that day.

 

As to A&K we've done tours organized through them and we did pay more than on my own but for what we wanted to do and see it was money well worth it.  

 

Bottom line, when we toured a lot we would take the time to look at all options.

 

Choice is good.

 

Keith

[Emdee]

We are similar to Keith. Do a mix and match of tours depending on the timings, places and what we have already done in the past.

In Africa we did our safaris separately and again did a couple before our Crystal cruise. We tend to mix and match our travel doing pre cruise and post cruise sightseeing recognizing that one cannot do everything from a cruise ship.

In Tahiti we have always done private tours except for an occasional ship’s tour to use OBC.

[ctjon]

Many years ago when we did an Egypt off of a Crystal ship - the busses, Nile ships etc. were always surrounded by armed guards.   Don't know if any ports are still considered potentially dangerous but security should be a concern when you choose a tour.

[boatbob]

I am on the World Cruise & am concerned that the ship tours will be too costly.  Am willing to research other tour options - is anyone else interested in joining me on non ship tours?  If there is interest I will start a new thread.

[seasack]

3 minutes ago, boatbob said:

I am on the World Cruise & am concerned that the ship tours will be too costly.  Am willing to research other tour options - is anyone else interested in joining me on non ship tours?  If there is interest I will start a new thread.

My suggestion would be to post on the W/C roll call. I would post a link but I don’t know how to do that. 

[boatbob]

1 minute ago, seasack said:

My suggestion would be to post on the W/C roll call. I would post a link but I don’t know how to do that. 

Neither do I

[seasack]

Try that. 

[boatbob]

13 minutes ago, seasack said:

Try that. 

Thanks - I posted on that.

[Leejnd4]

4 hours ago, Emdee said:

In Tahiti we have always done private tours except for an occasional ship’s tour to use OBC.

That's the other reason we're doing one ship tour on our upcoming PG cruise - gotta use up that OBC. 🙂 We'll use the rest for massages.

 

1 hour ago, boatbob said:

I am on the World Cruise & am concerned that the ship tours will be too costly.  Am willing to research other tour options - is anyone else interested in joining me on non ship tours?  If there is interest I will start a new thread.

This is EXACTLY what roll calls are for. I've never done a cruise that didn't have a roll call, and I've always found people willing to join in on private tours. I tend to be the researcher in the group (I adore researching travel) and will usually find a list of tour options. I will post them in the roll call, and we'll take votes on who wants to do what. Sometimes I've ended up pulling together groups for private tours that I'm not even going on. LOL! It's one of the best things about Cruise Critic.

Oh, and for the record, I know lots of folks have transitioned their pre-cruise discussions onto FB - I find that the formatting there just does not work well for managing private tours. The message-forum format here on Cruise Critic works WAY better.

Edited August 15, 2023 by Leejnd4

[ak1004]

Private tours are almost always better than ship tours, but they are not always possible. Some ports have very limited selection of private tours. Some are not really safe. On our last O cruise we booked a private tour in Bilbao, the group of 14-18 people filled up, they opened a second group but did not have enough people. So it's always good to know that a cruise line provides an option for good tours with reasonable number of people and reasonable prices.

 

As for lines with included excursions - I agree, it's not ideal, but what if the overall price is still cheaper than another line with no excursions included? Yes, it's possible, all 3 ours SS cruises were slightly cheaper than comparable cruises on SB and way cheaper than Crystal. So it's all on case by case basis.

[PaulMCO]

2 hours ago, ak1004 said:

Private tours are almost always better than ship tours, but they are not always possible. Some ports have very limited selection of private tours. Some are not really safe. On our last O cruise we booked a private tour in Bilbao, the group of 14-18 people filled up, they opened a second group but did not have enough people. So it's always good to know that a cruise line provides an option for good tours with reasonable number of people and reasonable prices.

 

As for lines with included excursions - I agree, it's not ideal, but what if the overall price is still cheaper than another line with no excursions included? Yes, it's possible, all 3 ours SS cruises were slightly cheaper than comparable cruises on SB and way cheaper than Crystal. So it's all on case by case basis.

Yes Case by case.  On Regent for Japan I have a mix.  Where I can get a great guide and do a tour at our own pace -- it will be Tours by Locals.   For the same port where everyone goes to the same attraction we use the Regent "free" tour.

 

As far as safety -- where terror is concerned there is no safety in numbers.  The bad guys want to make a splash.  Two people plus guide on a tour is not a splash.   And yes our Luxor private 12 people tour in a small van had an armed guard. 

 

Safety on cruise tours -- Look at the SS cruise excursion in Durban this year that were all robbed and had their passports also taken.  .

 

 

[Leejnd4]

3 hours ago, ak1004 said:

Private tours are almost always better than ship tours, but they are not always possible. Some ports have very limited selection of private tours. Some are not really safe. On our last O cruise we booked a private tour in Bilbao, the group of 14-18 people filled up, they opened a second group but did not have enough people. So it's always good to know that a cruise line provides an option for good tours with reasonable number of people and reasonable prices.

 

As for lines with included excursions - I agree, it's not ideal, but what if the overall price is still cheaper than another line with no excursions included? Yes, it's possible, all 3 ours SS cruises were slightly cheaper than comparable cruises on SB and way cheaper than Crystal. So it's all on case by case basis.

 

Absolutely! It's all gotta be case by case. I've done ship tours in a number of ports where there were no other options, or I just didn't feel comfortable going on a private tour. Earlier I mentioned a day trip to Moscow on a Baltics cruise - I don't think it would have been possible to do this privately. Agadir and Casablanca - I didn't feel comfortable trying to do a private tour. A few other ports come to mind.

 

Regarding cruises with included excursions - I can't say I agree with you. If they are included in the cruise fare, we're paying for those tours whether we take them or not. If the fare is less expensive than other cruise lines that don't include tours, then I can't help but wonder what we're giving up in terms of quality, food, or other inclusions. Of course everything is subjective. 🙂 But I have heard way too many stories of those included tours filling up before most pax can book them, and the ones they CAN book being of such low quality, on crowded buses, with substandard tour guides, that I just have no interest in even trying. I generally dislike bus tours, and would MUCH prefer to be with 2 or 3 other couples in a van, with a dedicated guide. 

[ak1004]

1 hour ago, Leejnd4 said:

 

Regarding cruises with included excursions - I can't say I agree with you. If they are included in the cruise fare, we're paying for those tours whether we take them or not. If the fare is less expensive than other cruise lines that don't include tours, then I can't help but wonder what we're giving up in terms of quality, food, or other inclusions. Of course everything is subjective. 🙂 But I have heard way too many stories of those included tours filling up before most pax can book them, and the ones they CAN book being of such low quality, on crowded buses, with substandard tour guides, that I just have no interest in even trying. I generally dislike bus tours, and would MUCH prefer to be with 2 or 3 other couples in a van, with a dedicated guide. 

 

We took a cruise on SS from Dubai to Mumbai for $450 CAD per night. This was way cheaper than similar cruises on SB (not to mention Crystal) and we were very happy with the excursions. I don't think we would take private tours in Khasab, Ras Al Khaimah, Fujairah or Muscat.

This is why I mentioned case by case. On average, SS is more expensive than SB because it includes excursions, but for this particular cruise, it was way cheaper. Same thing for 2 other sailings we are booked with them.

[CruisePfan]

If your main goal is to see a museum, skip the ship tour.  We were in Bilbao today and the target was the Guggenheim.  The Crystal shuttle into town dropped us one block from the Guggenheim.  Admission tix were 18 Euro or 9 Euros for seniors.  You could download an audio tour onto your phone for free and see the museum at your leisure.  The ship tour was $149, although it did include the Old Quarter, a short distance away. We found a similar price differential in New Orleans for the excellent World War II museum. With a tiny bit of research you can even order tix online to save waiting in line.

[Leejnd4]

2 hours ago, ak1004 said:

 

We took a cruise on SS from Dubai to Mumbai for $450 CAD per night. This was way cheaper than similar cruises on SB (not to mention Crystal) and we were very happy with the excursions. I don't think we would take private tours in Khasab, Ras Al Khaimah, Fujairah or Muscat.

This is why I mentioned case by case. On average, SS is more expensive than SB because it includes excursions, but for this particular cruise, it was way cheaper. Same thing for 2 other sailings we are booked with them.

 

I don't think I'd do private tours in those ports either! In fact, I doubt I'd be comfortable doing private tours in any port in the Middle East. I wouldn't even do it in Casablanca! I'm pretty bold and adventurous, but I have my limits. 😁

[Keith1010]

10 hours ago, ak1004 said:

 

We took a cruise on SS from Dubai to Mumbai for $450 CAD per night. This was way cheaper than similar cruises on SB (not to mention Crystal) and we were very happy with the excursions. I don't think we would take private tours in Khasab, Ras Al Khaimah, Fujairah or Muscat.

This is why I mentioned case by case. On average, SS is more expensive than SB because it includes excursions, but for this particular cruise, it was way cheaper. Same thing for 2 other sailings we are booked with them.

Choice in cruise lines is good.

 

I don't care for SS and so glad there are big differences between the lines.

 

As to shared tours. Done that many times and have no interest in doing it anymore.

 

So in the case with Crystal I like that tours are not included.

 

I prefer private tours so we can see precisely what we want and even change it up during the tour and not wait on others.

 

In the case of Muscat we didn't need a tour.  Negotiated with a taxi driver and saw those sites we wanted to see.

 

Keith