Our Question List—Extended Shore Excursions

[Revised]

I’m glad that I posted my idea of a list of questions for Kathleen and me to answer independently. I’ve added one of those suggestions to the list. We also had two questions about extended shore excursions which I’ll deal with here since Kathleen and I will have the same perspective on this. (So the extended list is revised below.)

I also agree that we’ll post something one week or so after we are home. We may have some “reentry” reactions that could be of note.

So the issue of extended shore excursions:

You are right to focus on the shore excursions as a major part of what makes the cruise interesting, as well as the cost. For the initial 107 world segment, we’ll have had 30 excursions: 13 through Princess and 17 on our own. However, 4 of these were the big ones (all through Princess) in Galapagos, Beijing, Angkor Wat, and Taj Mahal all of which involved airplane flights. These represented about 3/4ths of the excursion money that we spent.

We spent around $16,000 for the two of us ($8,000 each) on all of these excursions. Some people booked their basic cruise for as little as $15,000 (they think it was a computer mistake!), so you can see how significant the excursion cost can be.

So, first rule is “book most of the simple port tours on your own.” Often you can walk out of port and negotiate for a taxi. Alternatively you or another passenger may set some group trip up. This helps, but, as I said, that was only 25% of our excursion expenses. Kathleen’s add to this is to do as much as possible from the US prior to getting on the cruise. She spent 30 hours or so prior to the cruise, and we could have done more. Booking on your own usually saves half the costs, you see more, and you have fewer people who could be unpleasant to deal with.

The big excursion money is on the longer overland trip where you take an airplane flight. We did all of ours through Princess. That was “safe” in the sense that we did not have to worry about a late flight or immigration papers. But, there were other passengers who did similar trips for about half the price. So this is the big cost leverage item. Focus on these, go on the web, and book your own plan.

A number of passengers are already booking next year’s world cruise. One passenger said that this cruise opened his eyes on how to think about the cruise. His conclusion (I agree) is that you think about the ship as a mobile homing location. So, for example, he has not been to Hawaii, and next year’s cruise goes from LA to Hawaii with 5 days at sea. So he is going to fly from LA to Hawaii and get 5 or 6 nights in Hawaii while the ship is in transit. You may actually take a greater number of extended excursions, but set them up yourself so each is much less costly, yet still spend a bigger percent of your total cost on these.

So if you are going to be more aggressive on the extended shore excursions (and therefore be off of the ship longer), spend less on your cabin (it will bother you less missing nights there), plan you own excursions (spend time figuring this out in advance) and think of the cruise as saving you the super long airplane flights that you would have had to do if you set any one of the excursion up as a single vacation out of the US.

Ideally, any excursions that you book yourself, try to arrive at the port where you are going to rejoin the ship a day early, and spend that day visiting that city. In this way if anything goes wrong with your flight, you still have a cushion to get back to the ship. If you miss the ship and are on a trip that you set up yourself, then it is your responsibility to get yourself back to the ship at some future port.

You may choose not to take the long excursions while you are close to the US. You can do Machu Pichu or Galapagos at some later time as a stand alone trip because the travel from the US to these is short and simple.

One passenger did a unique plan. The first 80% of the itinerary for the Tahitian Princess and the Royal Princess was identical, but with the Tahitian Princess 6 days ahead of the Royal. So the passenger booked the first leg (Ft. Lauderdale through Sidney) on the Tahitian Princess and the last three legs on the Royal Princess. This gave them a 6-day layover in Sidney without the need for a single airplane flight. That would have been a quite cost effective to spend time in Sydney.

If you have a good travel agent at home, you can use them prior to the cruise to set up personal excursion. However, passengers have been successful also simply Googling the destination and “travel” or “tours” and finding someone who deals with that location who can set up the tour for you. There is enough references on the web that you can assure yourself that they are reputable. The only issue that sometimes is tricky is if they want a security deposit, and you have to share your credit card number.

While airfare, food and lodging are independent of the number of people, the cost of a guide, the driver, and the guide’s vehicle usually are independent from the number of people. So once you have determined what you plan as a private excursion, share that idea with other passengers with whom you get along. If some of them decide to do the same thing with you, you might be able to reduce the cost of the excursion by a few $100’s per person.