Cruise Excursion Hack
We took our first cruise together in 2015 and learned very quickly how expensive excursions can be through the cruise ship, even on a budget cruise liner. We ended up not taking advantage of the beauty and excitement of our ports and wasting time trying to figure out how to fill our time at a port of call on our own. From that point on we knew there had to be a better way.
BEGINNER HACK: If you’re new to cruising or deciding to not use the cruise ship’s excursion packages, this is the least nerve wracking of our hacks. Simply go to a website like Viator or GetYourGuide. Then search “cruise excursions” for the port you will be docking in. There are so many local vendors who cater to cruisers. They’ll pick you up at the port with your name or their company name held up on a sign. As long as you tell them the date and cruise line, they’ll be sure to pick you up and drop you off at the correct place and time.
This is also less stressful than trying to haggle with the local vendors that wait outside the cruise ports to get your business. You already have your price locked in and the guarantee of a spot on the excursion that you want. Our biggest fear when we first tried this was that we wouldn’t get back to our cruise ship in time for whatever reason. We’ve done this countless times in many different countries and have never had an issue with returning to the ship on time. You can experience the exact same excursions that the cruise ship advertises, at a fraction of the cost! Be sure to bring cash to tip your guide.
Intermediate/ Advanced Hack: If you’re feeling a bit more comfortable with traveling in foreign places and want to save even more money, or just build the exact shore excursion package that you want then this tip is for you. Once we started feeling more comfortable in our ability to navigate new places, we decided that we’d rather build our own excursion itineraries. We’d want to mix and match from different guides and would find ourselves being disappointed that a certain excursion didn’t stop at all of the places that we wanted to.
Our solution- do shore excursion research on a website like Viator or GetYourGuide. After combing through the different points of interest, we’d plot out on google maps where the different places we wanted to see were and decide what would be feasible in the time we had on shore. Then we would either taxi/uber (intermediate) to each location or rent a car (advanced) and drive ourselves to wherever we wanted to go. Many ports have car rental companies located either at the port or a short walk from it. This left us the freedom to decide not only where we got to see, but how long we spent in a particular place before moving on.
No matter your level of comfort while traveling somewhere new, you won’t be disappointed with venturing away from your cruise lines excursion packages.
