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Cruise Port Talks Birmingham AL

All ships offer “PORT TALKS”—briefings on the country or island and port where the ship will dock.

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PREPARING for TIME ASHORE PORT TALKS AND SHOPPING GUIDELINES<.b> ALL SHIPS OFFER “PORT TALKS”—briefings on the country or island and port where the ship will dock. The quality of these talks varies enormously among lines and ships, depending largely on the cruise director’s knowledge and the importance the line puts on such programs.

Most mainstream lines with large ships do a lousy job with port talks. On the other hand, adventure and expedition cruises offer superb talks. Small ships generally have a better track record than large ones.

Avoid being misled. If, during a port talk, the cruise director or anyone else recommends one store over another, shop around before buying. The store recommended may be the best place to buy—or it may not.

Also, be cautious of advice that fabulous buys are available in duty-free shops on board and in ports. Most often, you can do as well or better at discount stores and factory outlets at home. If you are considering sizable purchases of jewelry, cameras, china, or crystal, bring a list of prices from home and comparison shop. Be sure you are comparing similar products. Prices in shipboard shops are a good gauge; they usually are competitive with those in ports. In the Caribbean, expect to save up to 20% on such well-known brands as Gucci, Fendi, and Vuitton, and on French perfumes, which must be sold at prices set by the makers. Any store caught undercutting the price will be dropped from distribution. The biggest savings are on cigarettes and liquor, not because the price is so much less, but because you save the hefty U.S. taxes imposed on them. When preparing for your day ashore, be aware also that purses, bags, and packs that you carry along will be searched before you’re allowed back on board. Purchases you make while shopping will likewise be inspected.

SHORE EXCURSIONS: SOME PITFALLS AND COSTS ALTHOUGH THERE HAS BEEN much improvement recently, “shore excursions”—the tours passengers buy from the cruise line to take at ports—are often the weakest element of the cruise vacation. Cruise lines are finally recognizing the needs of younger, more active passengers by providing more adventurous excursions featuring horseback riding, hiking, mountain biking, scuba diving, snorkeling, sailing, and even a MiG flight over Moscow. But the core product— large to medium group sightseeing tours—needs more work, given the shore excursion’s importance to the cruise experience.

All the latest cruise lines’ research indicates that what attracts customers to buy a particular cruise are the specific ports of call on the itinerary. Travelers often view their shore trips as one of the more important aspects of the cruise. In response, major cruise lines have beefed up their shore excursion departments to offer more compelling tours, which often include exploring a destination on foot as well as by bus, van, or boat.

Shore excursions are available at every stop on a ship’s itinerary, almost always at additional cost. The exceptions are adventure and expedition cruises, where shore visits are an integral part of the experience (and one reason these cruises appear to be more costly than mainstream ones). Also, cruises in China usually include the cost of shore excursions, not because cruise lines are altruistic, but because the Chinese want it that way.

Shore excursions have traditionally been sold aboard ship either by a shore excursion office or, rarely, from the purser or cruise director. It has been assumed that people prefer to buy excursions on board because their interests and plans change once the cruise begins. However, that assumption may have no foundation in fact. After you have been subjected to the way shore excursions are sold aboard many ships, you might say as we do: there must be a better way.

Often you must choose your excursions on the first night of the cruise, especially for the first port of call. Unless you have done your homework in advance of your cruise, you will be buying blind. The shore excursion office usually has limited hours. For the first few days of a cruise, particularly on large ships, ticket lines are long. Therefore, it really pays to read your cruise literature plus books and magazine articles about your destinations in advance.

If possible, take advantage of the opportunity to book shore excursions in advance. In addition to significantly increasing your chances of getting the excursion you want, you also avoid the hassle of booking on board. Usually, a pamphlet on shore excursions is included in the literature sent prior to your cruise. Not all brochures list prices, but they are listed on those cruise lines’ Web sites that provide a booking facility. Absent that convenience, you can request prices through your travel agent, if you need them for budgeting purposes. We are happy to report that more lines are including prices in their literature. Also, more often pamphlets are specific to cruise itineraries, making it easier to select tours of interest. Shore excursions normally are operated by local tour companies. Motorcoaches seating 30 to 50 passengers are the most common form of transportation, particularly on general sightseeing tours offered by large ships. Minibuses and vans are common for smaller groups; location and terrain are also factors in the choice of conveyance. Most tours assume that passengers are on their first visit to the locale—one reason shore excursions are a weak link. Standard shore excursions vary little among cruise lines and are, for the most part, passive and unimaginative city and/or countryside tours to the best-known sights. There are exceptions, like the excursions on Greek Isles cruises, where escorts are university graduates who must pass stiff examinations to qualify as guides, and customized tours offered by smaller ships and luxury liners. Happily, many cruise lines have added a variety of sports activities and tours that emphasis nature and culture in an effort to appeal to younger travelers and in response to passengers’ requests.

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More and more, cruise lines are enabling passengers to purchase shore excursions in advance on the line’s Web site, and some even by phone or mail.

After years of being bad to awful, shore excursions available on Caribbean cruises have recently shown a great improvement, as cruise lines have worked with local operators to be more creative, provide greater variety of tour offerings, and enhance the tour experience with more substance and better-trained guides.

As a rule of thumb, most standard half-day tours cost $25 to $35 in the Caribbean, but they can cost twice that in Alaska and Europe. Adventure excursions run $50 and up, mainly because the groups are small and hence cost more per person to operate. Full-day tours can run as much as $70 to $150, and some, like helicopter tours, might cost $200 or more. Often the most expensive are the first to sell out. That’s usually because the number of participants is limited, or they are perceived as a great value or a once-in-a-lifetime experience, or it’s an excursion that would be difficult to arrange on one’s own. Variables that affect price include the locale, the number of participants, local costs, and mode of transport.

As you study excursions offered by your line, look for options that keep things simple. Excursions that involve multiple activities, sights, and stops could drive some people nuts. It’s on the bus, off the bus, back on the bus, head counts. “Wait, Thelma’s in the restroom!” “Where are Harry and Louise?” “I left my credit card in the stuffed parrot shop! I’ll be right back.” With few exceptions, you’ll spend more time driving among sites and loading and unloading the bus than you will touring or doing something interesting.

When you read descriptions of available excursions, check how long the primary activity or event is. If the written material doesn’t say, ask the cruise director. You’ll sometimes discover that the half-day “riverboat excursion” spends only an hour on the water. The remainder of the time is spent commuting and waiting for fellow passengers to shop. In ports where most attractions you want to see are clustered in a small area, you may save time by taking a cab or walking. Rental cars are another option. By forgoing a $48-per-person half-day shore excursion, two people can apply the $96 toward cab fares, rental cars, and admissions to attractions. In most ports, you can see and do a lot for $96.

Ask probing questions about each port. Is it a good and safe place to explore on foot? What are the local people like? At some ports, tourists are subjected to swarms of in-your-face hucksters and peddlers. In such places, escorted tours, though regimented and inefficient, can be a less stressful way to visit.

When the ship arrives in port, people who have purchased shore excursions are allowed to disembark first and are usually asked to follow a departure schedule to avert a traffic jam at the gangway. This is seldom a problem when the ship docks and passengers can disembark quickly. It can be a problem when the ship must tender, because it cuts an hour or more (depending on ship size) from the time you have in port if you plan to tour on your own.

At the END of YOUR CRUISE
TIPPING THERE ARE NO DEFINITIVE RULES about tipping, but because it causes so much consternation for passengers, cruise lines offer guidelines, distributing them aboard ship. Some even publish them in their cruise brochures, which is helpful if you want to budget for tipping in advance. In Part Two, the cruise ship profiles’ Standard Features includes Suggested Tipping. The guidelines are similar: Tip slightly less on budget cruises, slightly more on luxury cruises. Lines will also tell you if gratuities are included or if they are automatically added to your bill. Follow guidelines or your inclinations. Ship officers and senior management are never tipped. For all service personnel, tips are their main source of compensation. Only a few deluxe ships include tipping in the cruise cost (noted in the cruise line profiles). In a session at voyage’s end, the cruise director will discuss disembarkation procedures and outline tipping guidelines. There no longer is anything subtle about tipping. Either the line will automatically add the tips or it won’t; if not, on the final cruise day, your cabin steward will leave a supply of envelopes for distributing your tips, possibly with guidelines. Lately, the envelopes are crassly stamped with titles—Cabin Steward, Dining Steward, Waiter—in case you did not know whom to tip!

On ships without “automatic” tipping, tips are usually given to individuals—your cabin stewards and dining room waiters. On ships with Greek crews and on many small vessels, tips are pooled for distribution to include those behind the scenes, such as kitchen staff. The advent of alternative dining venues has confused tipping customs in recent years. Passengers sometimes were deducting from the amount given to their dining room waitstaff to compensate for gra- tuities rendered at the alternative restaurants. To create a more uniform approach, a number of cruise lines add gratuities directly to your shipboard bill. Most of these offer the option of decreasing or increasing the amount on your bill depending on how you felt about the service. Whatever the tipping protocol on your cruise, you can be sure it will be explained to you in detail, probably several times. If tips are not added to your shipboard bill, custom dictates that you distribute tips the last night of the cruise. Some lines, particularly deluxe ones, will arrange prepayment of tips. Check the Standard Features section in our cruise line profiles for each line’s “Suggested Tipping” information.

DEPARTING
TO SMOOTH DISEMBARKATION, your captain and cruise director will ask you to follow procedures outlined in the cruise director’s final talk and repeated on closed-circuit television in your cabin and in the daily agenda. On the last day, your cabin steward will give you luggage tags to be completed and attached to your bags. You are asked to place your bags (except hand luggage) outside your cabin door before you retire. Times vary; some lines want them out by 8 or 10 p.m.—an unreasonable hour for passengers dining at the late seating. Such requests are for the ship’s convenience, because no luggage can be unloaded until the ship docks. Do what’s convenient for you and tell your cabin steward what to expect.

The last night of a cruise is almost always casual; plan your packing accordingly. And don’t pack everything. Remember you still need to dress the next day. It’s not unheard of for people to pack shoes, underwear, and even needed travel documents in their exuberance to put their bags out.

Luggage tags use a color-coded, alphabetic system that enables the ship to disembark passengers by cabin locations and airline departure times for those on air/sea packages. (Passengers on the earliest flights disembark first.) Tags also identify your airline so that your bags will go to the correct place at the airport.

Ships normally dock about 7 or 8 a.m. the last day and require about an hour to unload luggage, meaning no passengers will disembark before 9 a.m. The ship is very eager to unload passengers as quickly as possible. Some people find disembarkation so abrupt that it’s unpleasant. Try to remember that the next group of passengers will arrive soon, and staff and crew have only about four hours to prepare the ship and be all smiles for them.

Breakfast is served either at normal hours with the full menu or at abbreviated hours with a short menu. Room service usually isn’t available. You will be called to depart by the color of your luggage tags. After leaving the ship, you encounter chaos that varies depending on the port. Usually, you proceed first to immigration and then to the baggage holding area, where your luggage has been placed according to the color of your tags. You are responsible for finding it and taking it to customs. In Miami, for example, baggage handlers help you, and the customs official stands by the exit to take the declaration form you completed aboard ship. He or she may check your passport, so have it handy.

After clearing customs, your luggage will go with you to the airport on the transfer bus. Find the motorcoach going to your airline’s departure area, show your transfer voucher, give the driver your luggage, and climb aboard. If you aren’t on an air/sea package, you may be allowed aboard the motorcoach unless you have lots of luggage. Otherwise, taxis are nearby.

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