Avoiding the "shore excursions" in a boat cruise?

There is one key advantage to booking a shore excursion through the cruise line. If, for some reason, your tour is delayed and returns late, the ship will wait for passengers on cruise line sponsored shore excursions. They may wait for awhile for others who are late, but they are not under any obligation to do so. It would then be your responsibility to get to the next port or home.

Lots of people do explore on their own or sign up for tours they see on viator, etc. Often when you arrive at a cruise port there will be local tour operators or tour companies on or near the pier that will be selling tours as well.

You can certainly explore any of those places on your own. Just be very mindful of the return time. Do some research on what you want to see at your stops. You’ll have no problem getting a taxi. You can also book tours offered by private companies. Again, make sure you’re back near the dock in plenty of time. We did this while on a cruise in the Caribbean. Instead of paying $150 for a snorkeling day, we paid $30 for gear rental and a local shuttle to the same beach. These ports are used to tourists, and have lots of options for you outside of what the cruise ship offers.

You might find the guide useful:
https://store.ricksteves.com/shop/p/mediterranean-cruise-ports

“tours by locals.com” may be helpful. Friends who like to cruise always use them . I have not used them yet.

We took several cruises in the Caribbean - rarely if ever did the ship sponsored tours. We would book tours (or vehicle rentals) on our own, often run into the "ship people" but at significantly less cost.

Most recently did a Norway cruise, used the same process.

Again be mindful, the ship will leave you if you book on your own and are late. Probably be productive for you to visit cruise specific websites such as cruise critic.

Go to the roll call section for your specific cruise dates on Cruiscritic. Often there are members organizing private tour/s which you can join if you are interested.
I organized a trip at a stop in Iceland. Way cheaper than the ships tour and we saw more.

I'd say in 90% of our cruise ports we've done it ourselves. Only once have we used the cruise excursions, the rest we've arranged in advance via Viator or directly with a local company.

***be mindful of the time change in Greece. It's an hour later than in Italy and Croatia. The ship announced it several times before our stop in Corfu, but we watched with amusement from our balcony as many arrived back looking surprised moments before the ship shut its doors.

There is one key advantage to booking a shore excursion through the cruise line. If, for some reason, your tour is delayed and returns late, the ship will wait for passengers on cruise line sponsored shore excursions. They may wait for awhile for others who are late, but they are not under any obligation to do so. It would then be your responsibility to get to the next port or home.

Three or four time we were on ship excursions and traffic delayed our return and the ship waited for us. But on several occasions, however, we've seen passengers running along the dock to get aboard as the ship was leaving. Not sure when the rejoined the cruise.

If we do explore on our own, we make sure we get back to the area of the port well ahead of time. And that the area is close enough to the pier that we can get back by hoofing it if need be. Traffic can be terrible in some places.

When compared to the overall cost of the air fare and cruise costs, the cost of the ship excursions is not that much. And consider the cost of getting yourselves to the next port to rejoin the cruise if necessary.

Don't mean to rain on your parade, just offering food for thought.

If you share your itinerary, some of us that have cruised the Mediterranean and Adriatic may be able to offer some port specific advice.

Some experienced cruisers fetishize the idea that a local tour is always better than a ship tour, even total costs aside. There is some value to the cruise's experience and size, for example in skipping (possibly) some lines, or getting in to an occasionally exclusive location. (I don't discount that luxury private guides have their own exclusive values.)

There are some cruise ports where distance to the sights is a major factor. Some typical examples are Rome, Berlin, Beijing, Granada, and (now), Venice. It is SO FAR to the place you're seeing that both efficiency and not-being-left-behind by the ship are worth something. We went on a cruise that stopped in Busan, Korea and offered an excursion (involving a high-speed train) to Seoul, which was so crazy an idea that we settled for the inferior destination of Busan.

Even on "river cruises" (I mean, where the port is at least in the same city as you want to see), it can be necessary to take a shuttle bus to a subway station to take a train to explore on your own. Be careful what you wish for.

I am not bad-mouthing cruises at all. We've been on eight ocean cruises and two river cruises. They have their values, especially for people who don't go to Europe frequently, or don't wish to spend time planning an independent trip.

Edit: I remembered two cruise war stories:

We wanted to go to a major seasonal music festival event on our own, overnight port. Because we paid the SHIP Cruise Director to buy our custom tickets and hire a round-trip taxi for our one-off excursion (hundreds of dollars), it turned out that he had given his personal phone # to the taxi driver. (Cruise Director spoke the local language.) On the way back from the event, it developed that the ship had been ordered by the port authorities to MOVE to another pier, on the opposite side of the port area! The cab driver (who spoke virtually no English) FOUND OUT and delivered us directly to the ship!

We booked a very distant SHIP excursion from one of two Honduras ports to Copan, an ancient city. The trip was great, even including a superb hot lunch. The trip back (3 busses, AFAIR) took much longer than the trip out (over two hours, in any case) and not only were we late, but the ship was forced to move miles away, because it was departure time! The guides on the busses found out where the ship re-docked (!) and took us there. I also think they held dinner for 3 busses worth.

(It may have sounded unkind that I used the word "fetishize", but this is why I chose an extreme word.)

we've done both private tours and cruise ship tours. I'd check in with the Cruise Critic group to find private tours as they will know the rules about missing the boat :)

You can certainly do things on your own. Some ports lend themselves to self exploration. Others, not so much. viator, shoreexcurionsgroup.com and others should be looked at for other providers of excursions.. I haven’t cruised the med since a very short one in ‘70 so I don’t know the current situation 😂😂 but in many ports I have visited there are plenty of tours available dockside.

I haven't cruised, but this is an example of a company offering private tours at some ports: https://mondoguide.it/shore-excursion

It also has some shared tours that Rick recommends in his guide books. Two of those tours either depart from the Naples port or are in Naples (scroll down to see them): https://www.sharedtours.com/. The Pompeii Walk tour should also be doable; you'd need to get yourselves to Pompeii, but there are trains. Check your guidebook for info on that and on the conditions (crowded, etc.) you might run into if you take the Circumvesuviana.

I always opt to self-book for shore excursions and have never had a problem. The warnings about time voiced by other posters here are worth heeding. When booking, I make sure that we are scheduled to be back with plenty of time to spare before the ship's departure. Viator offers lots of options, usually. In the search box, type the location and "shore excursions" to pull up companies what will meet you at the ship.

Well, it is not necessary to look for people from the local tour at stops to roam the city. There are a lot of free tours on the internet that you can benefit from on this cruise trip. I was recently in Athens. I am not the person who usually spends too much money when going on trips. That's why I chose the cheapest option, i.e., some cheap plane tickets and a cheap Airbnb, and in order not to travel around the city alone, I found some free tours on this link, and I will benefit from them. So I recommend you find such tours in the cities you visit.

Try Tom's Port Guides for your stops. We always arrange tours in advance, never in port.

https://www.tomsportguides.com/

search for ‘shore excurions (port name ) ‘.
As mentioned, be mindful of the time to get back. Sometimes the LOCAL time IS DIFFERENT from the SHIP time, so be sure to have a watch set to ship time ( not your phone that automatically sets to local time ). My niece almost missed the ship at Santorini bevause of this.

You can easily explore on your own. That’s what I have done 75% of the time. Note that some ports are not at the city - for example Rome is an hour or so train ride away from the port.

We have experienced river cruises changing docks during the day but never an ocean cruise. The effort to untie and retie an ocean cruise ship to a dock is so massive that I doubt if ocean ships ever move. However, unless the ocean cruise is waiting for their own excursion buses, we have never had a ship depart late. They give plenty of warning with a constant blowing of the ship's horn. And we have had them leave early but I am sure they knew everyone was on board.

Most of the reply’s say make sure you get back in time. While this is true, the opposite can also happen where you miss your paid for private excursion because the boat doesn’t arrive on time to the port,…. and DOES NOT let people off the boat when indicated… and the tour leaves without you. Happened to us on a VERY expensive dive for my husband, myself and my 2 kids. This doesn’t happen with a boat sponsored tour.

Also, we’ve missed tours because the boat skips a port due to rough seas and and not being able to dock…has happen 3 times to us.

Most of the independent tour companies make their money off shore excursions and they have a reputation to keep regarding punctuality. They know the ship schedules and some even have written guarantees to get you back on time. We've only booked a ship's excursion once. All other times we either walked off the ship and did our own thing or we booked an independent tour. Of the independent tours, only one was running a bit behind schedule with multiple drop-offs before we and one other couple would be dropped off. they called another driver to meet them on the side of the road to grab us and the other couple and got us back with half an hour to spare.

Most ports also have plenty of tour companies waiting outside the ship to sell you a tour, or shuttle buses to get you into town.

We recently completed an ocean cruise through Viking. Yes, the shore excursions are expensive, but depending on the port it can be quite a distance from where you want to tour. We didn’t want to risk not being able to get a ride back to the ship in time. That happened to two couples on our cruise.

We recently completed an ocean cruise through Viking. Yes, the shore excursions are expensive...

We've taken a VRC. The added shore excursions were expensive. They were also bad, the guides were disinterested and uninteresting and they had problems with their headset transmitters. In addition, each guide had between 30 and 40 people they were herding around. That experience stands in stark contrast to tours we've taken through Walks of Italy and the tours we took in London.

I would think that popular excursion ports of call would have independent tours with smaller groups and the ability to get their customers back to the ship on time. If I were to ever take that kind of cruise, that's what I would opt for.

BTW, welcome to the forum! Just curious, have you ever been on a cruise before?

Doug, in all fairness that is not our experience with Viking. We have been on two with Viking -- their signature two week Amsterdam to Prague and one week in south of France. Both were outstanding cruises with great guides. We always took the provided or included, mostly walking tours and enjoyed them. None of our groups were more than 12, 15 people. Some of the people had trouble with the headsets -- mostly forgetting to recharge - but the guides always had spares. We would eagerly take another cruise with them.

whenever you read about this, lots of folks just get off the ship and hail a cab along with like-minded souls and off they go

Doug, in all fairness that is not our experience with Viking. We have been on two with Viking --

Frank, I'm glad you had a better experience than we did. Our problem was we were in Italy 8 months before the cruise and had take Walks of Italy tours. That set our level of expectations pretty high since they do a great job. Maybe it was because of the August high season and VRC couldn't scare up enough tour guides, but the smallest tour group in the included tours was around 25, with most being more, up to 40!

We paid extra for a wine tasting tour that was advertised as 4 tastings. In my book that would be tastings at 4 wineries. To them it meant stopping at a retail store in a town and tasting 4 different wines. They rushed us through the tasting because there was another tour on our heels. They hustled us upstairs and tried to sell us inferior wine at high prices. They were after the unknowing, the quality was what you can get at the supermarket for $10.00 and they were selling it for $35.00.

Also, unfortunately, it doesn't take but a handful of jerks to dampen the mood for everyone else. There was one guy who got on the boat drunk and stayed that way for the next few days. He was a "good time Charlie", loud and boisterous even at dinner. You could escape him. Finally he and his wife had a knock down drag out fight in the lobby and he got a little better. I guess it was bonus free entertainment for half the guests. One night they had a nice string quartet and another jerk insisted on talking. When he was politely asked to take his conversation to the deck, he challenged a couple of guests to a fist fight. He abused the staff, frequently reminding them he paid "a lot of money" and expected constant attention from them. Finally, the food was average at best.

Our VRC was the same length as our independent trip to Tuscany but cost three times as much.

Another thing to consider in the covid/post-covid world is that all tours are competing for the same staff, whether booked through the cruise line or booked independently. In smaller ports you may only be able to get some tours through the cruise line. Definitely use cruisecritic for additional cruise tour info. And as mentioned, if you book independently, make sure you understand their cancellation policies if the ship arrives late/early, changes departure times or skips the port.

We have done 21 ocean cruises and rarely use the ship's excursions.

First, research the ports were you are stopping and determine what you wish to see or do.
Second, you may not need a tour at all, example Dubrovnik, Croatia is perfect for doing on your own. Still, most of the time, you will want either a private tour or ship's excursion.
Third, the only time we would take a ship's excursions is if what you wish to see takes you some distance from the port and you are out almost all day. For example, stopping at Le Harve, France, we wanted to go to Normandy. It is some distance away and the risk of being late returning to the ship is higher. If the ship's excursion is not much more expensive than the private tour, then do the ship's excursion.
Fourth, most of the time, you can find reputable firms with excellent reviews that can provide you with a BETTER tour (fewer people on the tour- than a bus load of 40 people on the ship's excursions).

Go on the internet and search for cruise excursions. You will probably find several choices. Check them out.

For example, going to Spain, look at SpainDayTours.com for such tours.

By the way, going to Athens (be sure to protect yourself from pickpockets-wear a money belt). Also, you can take the METRO from the port to Constitution square and walk to the Acropolis. Don't miss the New Acropolis Museum as well as the Parthenon.
Do your research and you can do it on your own.