Cruise line scams: Shore Excursions

by Chris Owen on

Going ashore can be one of the best parts of a cruise and one of the reasons many travelers choose a cruise vacation in the first place. From the comfort of your floating hotel, you can see multiple destinations but only have to unpack once. Cruise lines offer a wide variety of excursions at each port of call and encourage passengers to join. Some are over-priced but carry an implied level of safety that might not be entirely accurate.

The potential scam-like claim here is “Oh, you don’t want to go out on your own on a shore excursion. If they’re late getting you back, the ship will leave without you”

Yes, they could do that. Will they? Probably not. How likely is that to happen? Not likely at all.

Often, the same companies and people that do shore excursions for the cruise lines also do them independently. Still, the cruise lines say they do investigate and follow up on excursion providers to see how they are doing, holding them to high standards.

Alternatives to ship-sponsored excursions. Shoretrips.com, is a third-party service that provides excursions world-wide. Owners Julie and Barry from Milwaukee, Wisconsin travel to each of the destinations and insure that their tours are safe and interesting. Often, Shoretrips.com excursions are less expensive and less crowded too. Booking more than 200,000 people a year, they have yet to leave someone behind.

Let’s talk price. A pretty easy-to-compare excursion in Cozumel, Mexico, Swimming with the Dolphins is $129 for adults or children on Carnival Cruise Lines. Shoretrips.com has that dolphin swim for $79 for adults and $77 for children. That’s about 40% less than the cruise line. Prices vary among lines too. Royal Caribbean has that dolphin swim for $99. Their price is better than Carnival but not as good as Shoretrips.com.

Another option is to go with someone recommended by a trusted friend or a travel blogger you’ve come to know. Reliable independent operators know what they are competing with on the cruise line excursion offerings and almost always offer a better value. That might come in the form of a lower price or a similar price with a better experience.

Get good information. A good source for reliable travel information about specific ports of call is AOL travel guides. Good discussion and very current, personal information can be found at CruiseCritic.com. Your good travel agent/expert should have recommendations also.

I’m really not trying to talk you out of the ship-sponsored shore excursions. They’re good. Nothing wrong with them. But there are alternatives that are just as safe (or not) as third-party vendors.

Cruise lines have their share of problems with excursions.Going with the cruise line does not guarantee your safety. In 2009 18 cruise passengers were robbed at gunpoint in the Bahamas on ship-sponsored shore excursions. The passengers, sailing on Royal Caribbean’s Navigator of the Seas and Disney Cruise Line’s Disney Wonder, were held up by masked men who demanded money, passports, cell phones, credit cards and personal items.

Just last November, masked gunmen held up guests on St Kitts on a Celebrity Cruises excursion.

Cruise lines were quick to suspend tours and worked hard to increase security and scrutiny of tour operators in those cases. But that was a couple of incidents in thousands of tours, hardly something to keep guests on the ship for safety concerns.

Cruise lines will commonly skip ports of call where there are known problems with crime like in Mexico with drug cartels. In that case, the cruise line does not charge you for the excursion you obviously can’t take. Ships any where close to Tunisia right now would have taken a close look at unrest in the area before even docking. If booking separately from the cruise line, make sure you understand the tour operator’s policy if the ship does not call at a port.

Let’s break it down. Look at it this way; cruise lines contract with local operators who run the excursions. The cruise lines have to add on something to make money. Duh. So basically, its the same people, running the same excursions, but you pay more if you get it through the ship. If that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy then buy through the ship. Most people do. If you want to save 20% to 50%, do some research first. There might be a better value out there.

Like the cruise line Booze and Beverage Packages, whether shore excursions are an evil scam plotted by the cruise lines or a reasonable value depends primarily on how you look at them.

Flickr photo by Ha-Wee

Cruise Line Scams: Booze and Beverage Packages

by Chris Owen on

On a cruise, many passengers follow the pay-as-you-go way of buying alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, much like they might on land. Others may choose packages that appear to be either convenient or a good value. To determine if a package is simply convenient, a good value or possibly a scam, you’ll have to do the math.

Featured Drink of the Day
There’s something to be said about getting on a ship heading to the Caribbean and having that first frozen drink on deck as the ship sails away. For many, that’s part of the experience. But paying several extra dollars for the cheap plastic glass it comes in over and over is a a waste of your money and a big profit item for the cruise lines. Most all lines also offer the same drink in a regular glass for much less.

Convenience almost always adds up to a higher price. But you may be willing to pay that higher price just to stop stressing over each and every purchase. If so, Celebrity Cruises has some packages that might be just what you are looking for.

Beverage Packages
The thought is “You can drink all the soda you want and not have to worry about how much it is.” True, but do the math. A Classic Non-Alcoholic Package is $91.00 for a seven day cruise on Celebrity Cruises. By the glass they charge about $2.00 for a soda. Do you drink more than 6.5 soda’s a day? If so, you come out fine. If not, you’re better off paying as you go.

Celebrity also offers other packages as well. A Classic (booze too) Package gets Non-Alcoholic beverages, beer up to $5 each and spirits, cocktails and wine up to $8 each for $273 on a seven-night cruise. For a beer drinker, that comes out to 7.8 beers a day. I know people who would come out way ahead on this one and some that would come out way behind too. Again, do the math.

And they wonder why people try to smuggle booze on to the ships.

Speaking of which. We ran across a nifty idea that might just be perfect for smuggling booze.A product offered by by EasyTraveler, Inc. looks to be just what we need, especially if cruise lines move closer to implementing TSA standards, limiting us to no more than 3oz of any liquid upon boarding.

Royal Caribbean already has this requirement listed on their website where they say:


Did you catch that last line?

Please Note: All guests must comply with TSA guidelines for transporting liquids

That’s kind of scary to think of. It’s one of those gray area rules that are on the books but are rarely enforced or are subject to interpretation at the time they come up. Trying to imagine a 7-day vacation with only 3oz of hair products is the stuff of nightmares for some people.

OK fine, how about this little device then?

This should work and the $23 cost is nothing compared to what one might save vs.the $273 package on Celebrity. Or back to convenience, these would work well for a nice cocktail in your stateroom before dinner too.

Yes, where there’s a will there’s a way and you too can beat cruise line scams.

Another cruise ship redeployed, US West coast loses again

by Chris Owen on

Continuing an cruise industry trend to deploy ship to more profitable waters, Carnival Cruise Line is moving Carnival Spirit from the U.S. West coast to Australia in 2012.

Currently sailing 3 to 5-day Mexican Riviera, Alaska and Hawaii sailings from San Diego, Vancouver and Seattle ports, 2667-passenger Carnival Spirit will based full-time in Australia starting October 2012.

“Carnival Spirit adds another dimension to cruising in Australia” Carnival Australia CEO Ann Sherry told Travel Blackboard. Carnival plans to customize the ship to the Australia market with Aussie beers and changes in lingo, entertainment style and kids activities.

This makes one more ship previously serving US passengers to move away. Last month Norwegian Cruise Line announced that they were sending 4 ships to Europe in 2012 and 2013, their largest deployment ever.

The common fear with these moves is that less supply of ships in North America will force higher prices as cruise vacations continue to be in high demand. This move of the Carnival Spirit takes yet another ship from the U.S. West coast who recently lost Royal Caribbean’s Mariner of the Seas to Europe.

On the bright side, Carnival fans have a friend in the land down under now and you can bet past-guest special pricing will be available. The line brings it’s own brand of fun wherever it goes too along with special pricing aimed at including guests world-wide.

Just yesterday AOL Travel’s cruise expert Fran Golden reported Carnival was “sweetening the pot on Europe cruises this summer with free upgrades and on-board credits of up to $300 per cabin, for reservations made by Jan. 30.”

Which ship will be next to be redeployed? We know the UK would sure like to see Oasis of the Seas.

Flickr photo by AC/BC

Cruise Line Price Guarantees: nice but a little bit sneaky

by Chris Owen on

Cruise line pricing has always been front and center when making a buying decision. With many variables to figure into the equation, finding a price point you can live with is often difficult to determine. “Is NOW the time to book?” we often ask ourselves. One factor to consider is what happens with pricing after booking. Prices go up and down all the time in a comoddity-like fashion sometimes. A price guarantee to stabilize that aspect of the process is a good thing being offered by some lines now. Just the notion of a “price guarantee” sounds like something we would want to have as consumers. But some are better than others and how they all go about it is a little bit sneaky.

Carnival Cruise Line was the first to do it, a guarantee that once booked, guests would be given 110% of the difference in price in onboard credit should they find a lower price within 48 hours. Aptly titled their 110% Best Price Guarantee, the line even provides an easy online form to make a claim.

Norwegian Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean Internationals price guarantee programs are similar with the same 110% on-board credit offer. Those lines also gives guests the ability to have the booking repriced at the lower rate too.

This is good to know if booking late, within what cruise lines call the “penalty period”; usually within 90 days of sailing. But booking outside of that 90 day penalty period, say 6 months in advance for example, guests are in a different situation.

In that case, price guarantees lose a bit of their bite as booked guests can cancel and rebook at the lower price without penalty anyway. That’s significant because up until recently, cruise lines commonly honored lower pricing and simply applied it to existing bookings if they were asked to. It wasn’t automatic, you or your travel agent had be looking for a lower price then call to make it happen.

The idea was that the cruise lines were grateful to those who booked well in advance and held them in high regard.

Cruise lines live to sail full ships, that’s universal among all lines, and traditionally honored guests who booked well in advance. They were not about to turn their back on those who booked way ahead by granting those booking at the last minute a lower fare and not honoring it on an existing booking, should it be asked for.

Now here’s the sneaky part.

In the past, a quick call to the cruise line, any cruise line, got that new lower pricing applied to an existing booking before final payment. If that lower price came along after final payment, either a refund issued or on-board credit added for the difference. Special sales or promotions like Royal Caribbean’s weekly Sales Event never qualified and there were a few other exceptions with minor variances from line to line. But for the most part, guests who booked far in advance could count on the cruise line to stand by them and do the right thing.

Not so much any more.

Now, say I book a fare 6 months in advance, pay on time and the price goes down after final payment has been made. On Royal Caribbean or Norwegian, I’m out of luck. That guy who waited until the last minute got a lower price and there is nothing I can do about it. I’m not feeling quite as valued now. Carnival runs about the same way too.

At least Carnival gave me an option, and it was a better option that I ever had before, when they invented the Early Saver Fare. This one is guaranteed by Carnival to be the lowest price, no matter what, no matter when, up to two days before sailing or they give on-board credit (like cash on the ship) for the difference. They’ll add that on as often and for as much as I can find when I compare my fare to any other fare they advertise.

It’s not without cost though, the Early Saver Fare has absolute restrictions they don’t waver on. A Non-refundable deposit is required and no changes can be made to the booking once deposited are the two biggies that scare wishy-washy people off. It shouldn’t. The gains way outweigh the possible losses. Like they say “Non-refundable” on the deposit but that’s not totally accurate. If you have to cancel, you can pay a $50 per person administrative fee and carry that deposit forward to another booking to be used within a year. Its not a total loss. No Changes is pretty much what they say. They might let you change a letter or two in the spelling of a name but otherwise that $50 per change administrative fee is charged.

Still, the Early Saver Fare is a good way to go if you are for sure going on your cruise no matter what and odds are your plans will not change. The trick is finding a Travel Expert who will watch pricing for you and snag those lower prices when they come along.

Most people don’t really think about the price over the life of the booking. They should. Prices change.

Royal Caribbean making fitness at sea a quiet priority

by Chris Owen on

They don’t talk about it much. On board, they have all the usual decadent food delights we associate with a cruise and it’s still possible to do absolutely nothing for your entire vacation. But in the background, just a step or two away from the spotlight, Royal Caribbean is offering guests more healthy, active lifestyle options than ever before.

A special program called “Royal Life”, is being offered on an upcoming sailing of Vision of the Seas. The program features an intense schedule of sports and fitness activities with a focus on nutrition. Sailing February 5, the program features activities such as spinning classes, rhythms, hydro bike and pilates. Yoga, both on the ship and on the beach is featured plus kids yoga and contests for families.

A featuring fitness is nothing new for Royal Caribbean who last month hosted a 5K run on St Maarten aboard Allure of the Seas. Rainy weather kept that one out of the headlines but the line keeps offering active options for guests.

On-board fitness programming is highlighted by their signature rock-climbing wall on all ships. Ice skating rinks, Flow-rider surf simulators and full-size basketball courts on some ships grab the attention of guests too. But the line’s keen interest in fitness and a health runs much deeper, weaving its way through everything from their Adventure Ocean kids program to on-board culinary options.

In the dining room, Healthy spa menus, Vegetarian Meals (including Indian-style vegetarian) are available as well as in the Windjammer Cafe buffet every day. Lactose-free/soy milk and other special dietary request meals are available with advance notice prior to sailing.

Also included on all ships is a fitness center that rivals membership-only facilities on land with all the latest equipment and knowledgeable crew members standing by to help. Classes typically offered include aerobics, resistance training, cycling, an aqua program water-workout and more.

It’s almost as though all these options have been secretly planted in all they do. They’re just waiting for much of the world to wake up from fast-food meals, couch-potato evenings and a general lack of interest in healthy choices. When they do, Royal Caribbean will be there with programs in place for just about everyone.

Flickr photo by naama