What happens to excursions if itinerary changes?

[ciniminis]

We are on the 9/23 Fantasy Eastern Caribbean cruise, and expecting there may be changes to the itinerary due to hurricane damages in Tortola and St Thomas. If someone has had experience with DCL changing itineraries - obviously any excursions booked for the original destinations should be canceled (do I have to cancel them myself?), but do they offer new excursions for the new destinations? If there are new excursions offered, will they be available to sign up from the website prior to the cruise? Just wondering...

 

[PrincessShmoo]

We are on the 9/23 Fantasy Eastern Caribbean cruise, and expecting there may be changes to the itinerary due to hurricane damages in Tortola and St Thomas. If someone has had experience with DCL changing itineraries - obviously any excursions booked for the original destinations should be canceled (do I have to cancel them myself?), but do they offer new excursions for the new destinations? If there are new excursions offered, will they be available to sign up from the website prior to the cruise? Just wondering...

Any DCL excursions would be automatically cancelled. Any private excursions you may have booked, it's on you to cancel.

Yes, there may be new excursions available for new ports. Since most such changes are usually within just a few days of any given cruise, I'd doubt there would be time to pre-book online (since excursion bookings typically close 3 days prior to any given cruise). But they would be available onboard.

 

[over50visits]

I have experience with this. We missed a port because of weather, a last minute change. All excursions there were automatically canceled, we didn't have to do anything. Then on board ship the shore excursion desk had a handout with excursions we could sign up for at the new port. So from the one cruise this happened to us, Disney does just what you would hope/expect them to do, it was smooth and easy.

 

[jrabbit]

With the last minute port changes - your gold / platinum "benefits" don't count - first come, first served for excursions in the newly changed ports.

 

[apathetic]

This happened to us last minute on the 2015 EBTA. Of course, they cancel excursions with DCL automatically but you must also cancel anything you booked on your own. They did offer excursions for the new ports, but not until we got on the ship. Now you are in competition with everyone else, no matter what level (gold, platinum, etc) you are in. It can be frustrating. Also, it is hard to research the excursion and you only get the 3 sentence description to base a decision that costs hundreds of dollars.

 

[ludari]

This happened to me once where DCL skipped a port for passenger safety reasons and they canceled the excursions I had previously booked.