Excursions (Eastern Caribbean Cruise) About This Page:

[trinigirl]

On our last cruise, we didn't do any excursions. For our upcoming cruise, we'd like to do a couple excursions. It'll be me and my DH along with our 7-year-old and 5-year-old sons. Is it more expensive to book excursions through DCL than to book them yourself (or with your travel agent?). Any thoughts? I'd like to find fun activities in which both boys can participate. Any experiences (positive and negative) on excursions you've taken that you can share would be wonderful. Thanks!!

[iamgrumpy]

The only thing i'd suggest that even though the excursions might be more expensive going through DCL is to book with them. If for some reason your excursion returns late or something happens and its delayed in getting you back to the boat they will hold the ship for you. If you were to book on an excursion seperately from DCL something happened and you were late they would leave.

They are pretty strict about the times they leave the port as they have to maintain schedule and the port themselves need the boats out by a certain time if they are awaiting another ship.

In St. Martin and St. Thomas we took excursions that gave tours of the island very low impact and gave a nice overview of the islands.

We had a great time on the Cruise and are going back in 2008

[Dave Marx]

Savings are possible when you do things on your own, but sometimes those savings aren't as big as they might seem, since you may not always be getting transportation from the pier the way you would with a cruiseline-booked excursion.

For the purpose of comparison shopping, head over to ShoreTrips.com, which is probably the biggest independent source of excursions.

People can and do make their own shoreside excursion plans, often with great success. It is significantly more work, though, and definitely higher risk. Considering you have a couple of youngsters in tow, I'd only suggest this for the most experienced travelers. Your day in port is short, and airfare for your family to the next port-of-call (or back home) is never a bargain.

[dmpyron]

The "ship not leaving" is a popular myth. Yes, they might stay for a while, but the ship has a pretty tight schedule to follow. If you read the contract, it clearly states that the excursions are provided by independent contractors and the line is not responsible for any delays.

[Dave Marx]

[ QUOTE ]
The "ship not leaving" is a popular myth. Yes, they might stay for a while, but the ship has a pretty tight schedule to follow. If you read the contract, it clearly states that the excursions are provided by independent contractors and the line is not responsible for any delays.

[/ QUOTE ]

To disprove a myth we'd need some examples of cases when ships did leave entire cruise line-booked shore excursions stranded. A busload of guests, stranded in port? Maybe if there's a hurricane bearing down on them.

Yes, the contracts may say the line is not responsible, but in practice, they're putting a big chunk of future business on the line if they don't wait, both as resellers of shorex, and as purveyors of vacations. "Disloyal Caribbean, the line that leaves its excursion passengers in port." No, that wouldn't go down very well.

The bottom line is that when a cruise line shorex goes missing, the ship's crew is in a position to make a phone call to the tour operator to learn just how long they'll be delayed (presuming the tour operator hasn't already contacted the ship). And if their schedule is so tight that the ship can't delay, the cruise line will most likely pick up the tab for the necessary hotels, meals and airfare (or force the tour operator to swallow the cost), even though they're not officially required to. Otherwise, it's a public relations disaster. (Besides, how many ports of call are so far apart that they can't make up a few hours lost time? There are only a few cases when the ships need to run at 22 knots to make the next port.)

When passengers out on their own go missing, there's rarely a way for the cruise line to know what happened to them, or how long they might have to wait. Under those circumstances, ships are much less likely to wait.

[latinqt]

Dec 08, 2007 Cruise date. GF before hand on Dec. 5, 2007 Anyone else?