Booking excursions outside DCL?

[yyoung424]

My family and I are going on the Fantasy for the Christmas cruise & unfortunately were slow at booking excursions. Now, some of the excursions we were interested in are sold out

Has anyone tried booking activities/excursions with vendors outside DCL directly? If you have, which vendors would u recommend? Any you would not recommend?

Also, does DCL sometimes just save space for people to book onboard, or when it says sold out that it truly is sold out?

Any advice or suggestions is greatly appreciated!! Thank u so much!
Yvette

 

[mdsoccermom]

Try www.shoretrips.com. No, I am not affiliated with them. I've used them before and was really happy. They are an excellent company.

 

[kcashner]

On excursions (unlike Palo and spa), DCL does not save spaces to be booked on board. They have to notify the vendor in advance as to how many spots have been sold. However, people do cancel, both before and after boarding and DCL will try to resell those spots.

Depending on which cruise you are on (which ports), we can possibly recommend individual vendors. For instance, we have used Captain Marvin on Grand Cayman several times and highly recommend this company.

We have also used Shore Trips. As I understand it, this is a company that books excursions in ports all over the world. The excursions are done with private vendors, but the Shore Trips company has checked them out and knows they are good. You pay in advance and get an on line voucher with all your info--print it out and take it with you! Great service on our trips. They do ask for follow up when you get back. Best things--about 30% cheaper than booking thru the cruise line (on those we did), and one turned into a private tour as we were the only family who had booked thru them. This was nice as they customized it for us.

 

[Jax]

Viator.com also offers Shore Excursions. Their excursions come with a guarantee that if they do not get you back to the ship in time they will pay for you to get to the next port of call to meet up with your ship.

 

[epgirl]

My family and I sailed the Fantasy in April and we traveled the same itinerary that you're going on. I pre-booked all of our shore excursions through Island Marketing. The websites for each port of call are:

http://cozumelcruiseexcursions.com/
http://grandcaymancruiseexcursions.com/
http://costamayacruiseexcursions.com/

I am not affiliated with them. They were recommended to me and I used them with no problems whatsoever. It even poured rain in Costa Maya and I asked for a refund after returning home from the cruise a week and a half later (we did the theme parks after the cruise) and was granted one right away.
I highly recommend them! I will be using them for my Caribbean shore excursions in the future.

 

[yyoung424]

Thanks everyone for all the great suggestions! I will need to check it out this weekend. We are going on the 7 night Western Caribbean cruise on Fantasy so ports of call in Grand Cayman, Cozumel & Costa Maya.

 

[rhinodadz]

Another vote for shoretrips.com. Excellent excursions and outstanding customer service in the rare event something goes wrong.

 

[mammacaryn]

We booked Mr. Sanchos on cozumelwatersports.com

No issues, paid a small $5 deposit per person through them then paid the balance at Mr. Sanchos

 

[quickcat]

We used Native Way in Grand Cayman and they were great. They keep the groups small and there are several different tours they offer. Have a great cruise!

 

[gilsan]

We went to Maya Chan when we were in Costa Maya it was fantastic. It is a private beach we only had 14 people on it. The food was great the kids had an amazing time.

 

[mammacaryn]

Oh, and if you are interested in the Boatswain turtle farm in Grand Cayman, we booked with them directly.