Jump to content

Excursion Questions- new cruiser


ZK121016

Recommended Posts

Hello! I am looking at booking our excursions through Royal Caribbean, do I have to figure out my own transportation to the excursion site or does RC help with this? We cruise on this coming Sunday, they changed the ports do to the hurricanes we wanted to wait to book the excursions. 

 

I also had a question about tipping at the end of the cruise. What is appropriate to tip? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All excursions booked through RC provide transportation.  You meet on the ship and walk off as a group, or you meet on the pier and they walk you all to busses or whatever they're using to get you to the destination.

Tipping at the end of the cruise is up to you.  You don't have to.  If you receive exceptional service, then whatever you feel comfortable giving.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you can, try to book your shore excursions now. I think you can do it online 3 days before you sail. The lines at the shore excursions desk can be long and you can probably do better research at home. You can change your shore excursion if you change your mind. This has to be done I believe 48 hours in advance...used to be 24 hours but I've read that it changed but I'm not sure. 

If you prepaid your gratuities, no additional tipping is needed but would be appreciated for great service. I typically tip our room steward extra (4 messy kids so I feel he deserves it). If you haven't prepaid, you will see a daily charge for on your statement. Once again, no additional tip is expected but appreciated for those who go above.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you, we prepaid our gratuities so that's great. I was just wondering overall what would be good like $20 or way more? When I stay overnight at a hotel I try to leave close to $5, so I was thinking maybe $5 a day would be ok.

Also with excursions can you book more than one per day and just meet back at the ship to go to the next excursion or is that too much?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, ZK121016 said:

Also with excursions can you book more than one per day and just meet back at the ship to go to the next excursion or is that too much?

Most excursions take up enough time that two in one day through RC is not feasible.  Also, start times often overlap.  In short, I wouldn't consider that option.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, ZK121016 said:

Thank you, we prepaid our gratuities so that's great. I was just wondering overall what would be good like $20 or way more? When I stay overnight at a hotel I try to leave close to $5, so I was thinking maybe $5 a day would be ok.

 

Your room steward already gets a decent portion of your daily gratuity but I believe anything extra is appreciated. Many people leave nothing extra and that is fine but if you want to leave extra there is not a recommended amount so whatever you believe is fair is up to you. The last night  you will see WOW envelopes on your bed and I use those for tips.  If not, they should be at guest services.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, ZK121016 said:

Thank you, we prepaid our gratuities so that's great. I was just wondering overall what would be good like $20 or way more? When I stay overnight at a hotel I try to leave close to $5, so I was thinking maybe $5 a day would be ok.

Also with excursions can you book more than one per day and just meet back at the ship to go to the next excursion or is that too much?

We've done 2 in one day, twice, but we checked and double checked the times, and asked the shore excursions desk if it was possible.  However, I agree with @Matt, most of the time it's not the best idea to book multiple per day.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 hours ago, ZK121016 said:

Also with excursions can you book more than one per day and just meet back at the ship to go to the next excursion or is that too much?

Though I'm still waiting for my first Royal cruise (354 days boohoo!) we frequently booked two excursions a day on our other cruises. We enjoy two completely different impressions of the port stop and not loosing time with a lengthy lunch as on most full day tours. Hope Royals IT is better than its reputation, with TUI Cruises you could only combine two different excursions if the timing works out. We still had to visit the shore excursion desk on day 1 to make sure that no start times were changed and everything could go ahead as planned. If you don't mind missing lunch you could give it a try.

Up to now it has always worked out for us, the only problem we ever had was Visby (Gotland, Sweden) which was a tender port at that time. We arrived late at the pier from our first excursion so there was no time to tender back to the ship to meet our second group - someone from the shore excursions team just called it in and we were able to meet our group at the bus. Funny thing: we had to wait for our group for about 90 minutes because the tender process was total chaos so though late we still were the most punctual by far :4_joy:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...