excursion charges

[CisforCookie991]

Good morning! Does DCL charge for excursions at the time you sign up? We've only been on Royal, and it was a very long time ago, and they didn't charge until sometime after we boarded.

Also, do excursions ever really book up? The one I was looking at said "limited space" - is that just a scare tactic?

 

[Calantha]

Good morning! Does DCL charge for excursions at the time you sign up? We've only been on Royal, and it was a very long time ago, and they didn't charge until sometime after we boarded.

Also, do excursions ever really book up? The one I was looking at said "limited space" - is that just a scare tactic?

No, you will be charged once you get on board. There’s a certain time that they become nonrefundable I think it’s one or two days before you get on the ship.

Yes, some popular excursions do fill up, when we were in St. Thomas, we were not able to book our whole group, and my mother-in-law stepped aside so my son could go with us. And when we were in Alaska, our initial booking was canceled and there were no additional bookings available to do a similar activity. Eventually a few weeks later more availability was created, but there was a period that we couldn’t get the excursion we wanted.

 

[Dug720]

We've only been on Royal, and it was a very long time ago, and they didn't charge until sometime after we boarded.

Just in case you go on Royal again, they now charge up front for the excursions.

 

[kiford]

Yes, they do fill up but also check when on board since they will allow you to cancel without charge if someone else will take the spot. And very popular ones will sometimes have new spots or times added. On our Baltic cruise, our friends had signed up for an excursion that didn't have enough people signed up so it was cancelled but then they had a few people want to sign up for it. Still not enough to fill it up but there was another identical excursion that was full so they combined them and divided them in two (so both were not full but not so low as to be cancelled) and then I think a few more people joined. More likely to happen on a longer cruise where the excursion is towards the end of the trip (that was an 11 day cruise).

Also keep checking before your cruise goes. I wasn't able to sign up for one of my preferred choices but a second time slot got added a few weeks later. And on that same cruise, I had signed up for an excursion and a few weeks later an identical adults-only version popped up which I switched to.