What are the shore excursion cancellation policies to get a refund?

[platamama]

If you book a port excursion through DCL, when is the payment due? And when can you cancel and receive a full refund?

We're going on our first cruise in Nov. and I don't know how well DD4 will take to the kids club. I'm assuming she'll love it, but until we're there we won't know for sure. I've read some of these excursions are popular and fill up quickly so I'd like to reserve a spot early but only if I can change my mind without penalty.

Thanks!

 

[shoes99]

If you book a port excursion through DCL, when is the payment due? And when can you cancel and receive a full refund?

We're going on our first cruise in Nov. and I don't know how well DD4 will take to the kids club. I'm assuming she'll love it, but until we're there we won't know for sure. I've read some of these excursions are popular and fill up quickly so I'd like to reserve a spot early but only if I can change my mind without penalty.

Thanks!

You can cancel online up to 3 days prior to sailing. If you try to cancel when you get onboard they will tell you that you have to choose a replacement excursion for the same day/time. Your onboard account will be charged at time of sailing, not before.
Some folks said they were able to cancel while onboard, but that was not our experience. We sailed Sept 2008... Our excursion was Tulum Ruins.

 

[kcashner]

There seems to be a little flexibility possibly depending on which CM you deal with. The policy is as above--3 days before sailing. The excursion will be billed to your onboard account.

We have had 2 experiences with cancellation. In one instance, the morning excursion was canceled due to weather on Castaway. When the weather cleared in the afternoon, we were told that we could do it then. We asked if we could just cancel as by then we really weren't interested and would rather enjoy the beach time we'd planned for the afternoon. The CM made a call on her walkie-talkie and told us that we would not be charged since the time changed. In another instance, we had a child who decided they didn't want to do an excursion. I went to the excursion desk and was told that since they had a waiting list for that one, we could cancel and not be charged--they would "sell" our spot to someone on the waiting list. The implication was that had there not been a waiting list, we would have been charged whether we participated or not.

 

[outahere]

I think there may more flexibility if the excursion is run by DCL, not by an outside vendor like most of them are. On our last cruise, DS decided he didn't want to do the Wild Side teen excursion on CC, after he went to the meeting place. There weren't any other kids around his age so he didn't feel comfortable doing it, and we were able to get the charge removed from our account.

 

[Fabinva]

There was no flexibility for us onboard, my son was not feeling well the day before scheduled excursion and best they offered us was to switch to a different one for same day.

 

[dta87]

On our cruise last May we were able to "cancel" our jet ski eco-tour reservations on-board but like a PP was told we had to book a different excursion so we booked the bike rentals and got a ~$180 refund.