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All Access Ship tour


nrgMike

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I think it really depends on you if its worth it or not.  If you want to see the galley, where the luggage is stored, how they manage to get so much luggage to so many people in such a short amount of time, the laundry, where all of the food for thousands of people is kept, as well as the bridge, then I'd say its a good use of a sea day.  However if your situation is between a shore excursion in a place you've never visited before, and the ship tour.... I'd personally go with the shore excursion.  There are several ship tours (usually with the exception of the bridge) available to watch on youtube, but shore excursions are usually experience based and you may have more fun with a shore excursion.  

If you've booked well in advance, you may even find you can do both!

I think for first timers, the ship tour is a must to better appreciate the grand scale of the ship and how so much gets done on these floating cities!  But I'm just a fan of logistics so seeing how everything works like a fine tuned machine is really exciting.  But also if I had to sacrifice a shore excursion to do that, I would have to take the shore excursion first.

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And watch for a sale on this under Activities in your cruise planner.  The cost varies by ship even though they all say it is 2 hours.  We are cruising a few times this year and opted to do the tour on the Empress for only $49.  It is held on a sea day and we got to choose morning or afternoon. 

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My son in law is an engineer. Last Year we all we on the Allure and for his birthday I gave him an All Access Tour and went with him. 3 Hours and well worth it in my opinion. He still talks about! Just be sure to wear long pants and shoes (no sandals or flip flops allowed). Totally amazing "behind the scene look" tour of the ship. :27_sunglasses:

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We did this tour on Ovation on one of the sea days and really enjoyed it. Luckily we did it early on in the cruise as there was a Norovirus outbreak so they cancelled the later tours.

Our tour took in the Bridge, Galley, Food Stores, Laundry, Engine Control Room (but not the engine room itself), Recycling Plant and a walk down the i95.

I would certainly recommend doing it at least once if you get the opportunity and you enjoy seeing the work going on behind the scenes.

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I took my son on Harmony all access tour because he is mad about ships. It was expensive ($163 AUD each).. I wouldn't do it again but worth doing once. 

We were last out of the engine control room and they let him sit in the chairs to get photos even though it was a roped off section. The Bridge is also pretty cool.

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I did the all access tour on either Mariner or Independence, can't remember which right now, and it was very much worth it for me. I am fascinated by cruise ship operations and so to see I95, the food storage area, giant freezer and refrigerator rooms, engine control room and last but not least the brdige was fascinating. I wish I had done it years before. We spent probably 15-30 minutes on the bridge and got to ask the Captain any questions we wanted to. By the way the only two places we had serious security was the engine control room and the bridge. If anybody would have had intentions of doing something nefarious they would not have gotten very far!

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And just to reiterate the importance of booking something like this when you see a price you're comfortable with.  On my Grandeur sailing in October, the price went UP!  To $75!  So now I'm watching and waiting for it to go back down and then definitely snagging it.  I love the ship tours.  Especially the bridge.  And seeing the bridge on different ships is awesome too.  Like seeing it on Allure is very different from seeing it on Grandeur, how everything is laid out.  

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I'm sure my wife and I will go on it on Liberty, got it in the plans. They list it at $97 apiece and I questioned that on another thread, response was definitely go for it. I'll be watching the price as time nears and be ready to make a move. Having served on a US Navy cruiser in main propulsion, I'm real curious to see what makes that thing go. And....want to see that roll machine I've heard about. The bridge tour will be interesting, hope I can take pictures!

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I've been on the All Access Tour on Oasis, and thoroughly enjoyed it!

I've watched the price of this tour on my upcoming Harmony cruise, and the price has always been $119 since the first day it became available to book.  It has been labeled "On sale", "Pre-cruise pricing", and other "discounted price" sales, but has ALWAYS been $119.

 

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21 hours ago, MarvinS said:

I've been on the All Access Tour on Oasis, and thoroughly enjoyed it!

I've watched the price of this tour on my upcoming Harmony cruise, and the price has always been $119 since the first day it became available to book.  It has been labeled "On sale", "Pre-cruise pricing", and other "discounted price" sales, but has ALWAYS been $119.

 

Same for Anthem in July :33_unamused:

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  • 11 months later...

This is one of the first things I booked after I booked my May cruise on Grandeur. A lot of the Canada/New England ports, I'm planning on just doing "on my own" style, so I had a little extra OBC to play with. I've only done one other cruise (Carnival Fantasy in October 2018), and I really enjoyed the ship tour -- though thanks to Hurricane Michael, the captain closed the bridge, so I had to miss out on that part! ? So, I'm hoping to make up for it this time! Even without the bridge, I totally thought it was worth it!

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We paid $119 on Liberty.  I watched, but the price never went down. It was pretty expensive IMHO.

The cruise planner said that you had to wear long pants.  Of course, I forgot to bring a pair (we were cruising in June).  So, I bought a pair of sweat pants for the tour.  I was a little irritated because someone was allowed to wear shorts on the tour. It worked out because I had the pants for ice skating, too.

We didn't see the laundry room. But we did see almost everything else others mentioned.  We also spent a long time in one of the kitchens.  Everyone we encountered on the tour was very kind and welcoming. In addition to the lanyard, we received a luggage tag and a rope with knot tying instructions.

I am glad we did it once.  I wanted to keep my teens busy during our two consecutive sea days.  For us, it was worth the price.  We visited three ports. We had a snorkeling excursion in Cozumel, a Stingray City/Turtle Farm excursion in Cayman, and a cheap Red Stripe beach excursion in Jamaica.  Since the beach excursion was relatively inexpensive, I justified the cost of the tour.

If you are visiting familiar ports, you may want to skip an excursion and do the ship tour instead.  I am able to entertain myself just walking around most port areas.  But if the ports are new, you may just want to save the ship tour for another time.  YMMV

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Our whole family just did this on the Grandeur.  Two of us had recently done it on the Empress as I stated in above posts.  It was different but still good. One thing about Grandeur is that we did not get lanyards just a paper bracelet for the tour.  We also were not allowed to carry anything but our phones with us where on Empress I had a small purse. 

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24 minutes ago, Hoski said:

Our whole family just did this on the Grandeur.  Two of us had recently done it on the Empress as I stated in above posts.  It was different but still good. One thing about Grandeur is that we did not get lanyards just a paper bracelet for the tour.  We also were not allowed to carry anything but our phones with us where on Empress I had a small purse. 

Thanks for this info -- I'm signed up to take it on Grandeur in May. Back when I cruised on Carnival and took a ship tour, we couldn't even bring our phones.

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We did the ship's tour on Liberty in December, thoroughly enjoyed it and highly recommend it. To me the highlight was the Engineering Control Room and the bridge. When we were in the Engineering Control Room, the supervisor was explaining operations of the ship......the incident with the collision of the two Carnival ships in Cozumel had just happened, so I asked the supervisor what they knew about the cause of the collision. He told me to pose that question to the personnel on the bridge. I got a very interesting and informed reaction on the bridge, basically it was human error and would never happen on a RCL ship. 

The kitchens, storage and laundry were interesting, they took us into the booze storage room but didn't give out samples. Needless to say, the booze storage room had tight security. No pun intended.

It was amazing to see how busy the personnel were and how well coordinated. They took a lot of pride in that.

Well worth the money and time!!

Liberty Control Room.jpg

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