When to book shore excursions?

[grannyc]

Perhaps I should have read the answer to this before but somehow may have missed it. First cruise for 17 of us and none us know what we are doing!!!

How soon in advance do people book shore excursions? Do people wait until on the ship to book Carnival excursions or is that way too late? I have read a number of times if you are first time cruisers to book everything through Carnival so as to not worry about getting back to ship on time etc. But some of the cost differences are so great I wonder if it is really that risky going off ship to book with local tours etc.

What is the best time to book? I think we may be spending too long in looking them over and I'm afraid of not getting what we want.

Thanks for any advice..........

[Quilting_Cruiser]

Hi, Granny:

 

When we cruised with Carnival you HAD to book on the ship, but I understand that they've changed that in the last couple of years and offer pre-booking of excursions. I encourage you to reserve your excursions as early as possible. There is a limited amount of space, so you don't want to have your heart set on a particular excursion and then have it sold out when you get on the ship!

 

Until our upcoming cruise (Caribbean Princess in July), we have always booked through the ship--too afraid an independent excursion would run late and we'd miss the ship! However, we have a couple of independent tours scheduled for our next cruise. I went only with operators who were highly recommended on this board (visit the ports of call section) and could read several reviews. To be honest, I'm more nervous about getting off the ship in time to meet them for our tours than I am about missing the ship! A huge part of their business consists of cruise passengers. They have to be as aware of the time limitations as those of us on their cruise--they wouldn't stay in business long if they were getting passengers back late to their ships!

 

If you decide to go with independent guides, just be careful about tours where you go so far away from the port it would be difficult to get back (you never know if a bus will break down out in the middle of the jungle or somewhere else far from the port--it's not like you can just grab a cab to get back to the ship!).

 

I hope that helps, and have a fabulous cruise!!

 

Jayne

[mrsfuzzmo]

If you know what you want to do, DEFINITELY pre-book your excursions! Especially with a large group. I would also definitely do the ships excursions on your first cruise. You may not know the tender process, you may not realize that when they say all-aboard, they mean it, and you may really start to panic if a non-ship tour is running a little late and that could ruin your whole day. Pre-book, read up on things about the tour, get excited for it, and maybe next time once you get the hang of the cruising thing (some ports you need to go through immigration, some ports you need to tender, some ports you may just want to stay onboard, etc.), then next time I would try a private excursions if one suits you.