When I was in Puerto Rico, I went on an excursion that did not live up to advertising. When I returned home, I complained to RC. They said that the vendor provides the written summary of the excursion. I said that RC needs to verify what is written as it is also RC's rep on the line. I contacted the company that provided the excursion and voiced my displeasure, but that really didn't do anything. I had even looked at their Web site beforehand, but the ranch did not live up to their Web site.
Totally soured my view of PR.
Moral of the story: you have to read between the lines when booking the excursions.
I had another excursion in Samana that wasn't all that and it cost a lot of $$ too.
RC should modify or remove the excursions that I complained about that don't match what you actually get, but I doubt they will.
I'll bet RCI does like Princess, but not sure. Crew members from the ship will go on the excursions they offer. They are not dressed up as crew members, so the tour operators don't know they are with the ship. They will chat up the passengers that have booked the excursion and also see first hand how they think the excursion is. If there are too many complaints, the tour is pulled.
The sad thing is if you look at the RCI contract they claim they are totally not responsible for anything with the tours and are just providing a convenience. Of course they are getting a cut of the sales money but let's not talk about that.
The sad thing is if you look at the RCI contract they claim they are totally not responsible for anything with the tours and are just providing a convenience.
Exactly!
The shore excursion operators are contractors that RCI has entered into contracts with. I knew that RC was not "responsible" for the excursion, but they need to change the description since it did not match with the actual experience.
Some people liked the excursion, but I guess they didn't read the descripation carefully or they had lower standards or .
It is maddening. Just like my stupid chocolate "experience" in Saint John. Nowhere in the RCI description did it say we had a 140 mile round trip to the chocolate museum. Of course that would kill sales now, wouldn't it? I wonder if the cruise line has had people actually go on some of these tours.
I don't care what they put in the passenger contract, they have a legal relationship with the vendor and are getting compensation for it. I'd like to think a court would find that "sorry cruise line, it is "your" tour" if anyone was injured or worse.
I don't care what they put in the passenger contract, they have a legal relationship with the vendor and are getting compensation for it. I'd like to think a court would find that "sorry cruise line, it is "your" tour" if anyone was injured or worse.
I believe that the cruise lines and/or their insurance carriers have a tendency to settle cruise tour issues with the injured parties outside of court when lawsuits have been filed. Unfortunately it requires the time and expense of instituting a lawsuit to obtain any kind of injury resolution!! Smaller issues take longer to be resolved - the cruiselines do listen but response times seem to take forever!!
Nowhere in the RCI description did it say we had a 140 mile round trip to the chocolate museum.
What you have to do, since you can't trust the summaries, is look at the map and see where the port is and where the excursion is. It's sad that you have to do that or that you have to carefully dissect the excursion descriptions.
With my excursion in PR, we had at least an hour drive to and from the ranch. Summary did not list length of drive so that was a surprise to us. The ranch looked run down. In the bathroom, soap dispenser didn't work. After the ride I really wanted to have soap to wash my hands so I broke into the soap. Bathroom facilities were not very good. Maybe this isn't important to some, but it does add to my overall opinion of the excursion.
We went horseback riding and were supposed to go to some water where we could take a swim. Forget that. Some got in the water, but it was more like a stream than anything one could swim in. We were also supposed to get a beverage. They were selling beverages. When I enquired about this later, the ranch said that excursions from my ship did not get a beverage. HELLO! In the summary it said I did. Plus, the area we rode through was pretty crappy. It was really disappointing. We wished we had gone on a city tour instead. The PR we saw was ghetto. Literally.
.
not very good. Maybe this isn't important to some, but it does add to my overall opinion of the excursion.
Linear Mode
