How quickly do excursions fill up?

[pigget74]

In Nassau looking at doing either Caribbean Snorkel or Blue Lagoon Beach Day. Do these need to be booked in advance or can they be done on the ship? At Castaway Cay simply doing the Getaway package, does it need to be booked early? Only a party of 2 adults, 2 kids. Thanks for helping first timers.

 

[Magic_Fan_Bruce]

Hi Pigget,
It total depends on how popular the excursion is and how full the ship is. Maybe somebody here knows how popular the excursions you are looking at are, but I don’t.

I will tell you this; we have never booked an excursion ahead of time. I know many of my fellow DISer’s jaw just dropped and can’t understand how anyone could possibly not die of anxiety with such a detail unplanned weeks before the cruise.

As a matter of fact, since we only book when the Florida resident rates are available, we don’t even book the cruise until 4-6 weeks out (did I just hear more jaws dropping?). We always just visit the excursion desk once we get on board and see what’s left. So far we haven’t been disappointed, but after four cruises we may start to need to book in advance just to get excursions we have not done yet.

 

[tvguy]

When we cruised you could book excursions 60 days in advance. They have changed that to 90 days if you have paid your fare in full.
We tryed to book excursions 60 days out and one, the Atlantis submarine was already completely sold out the first day.
Everything else was still open.
I suspect how full the ship is, is NOT a factor for a popular excursion like this, since it is a very limited capacity excursion, and there were 4 other ships in St. Thomas that day also with passengers looking to got on it.
And from rumors I have heard, the lowest passenger capacity a Disney ship has sailed with in recent history is 98%. Some of the other lines in the off season go out at 75 or 80 % or less, so a Disney cruise is always full.