I'll admit that the one cruise that we went to Rome, we did a ship's excursion, but I doubt that I'd be comfortable doing it on my own.Anyone ever taken the train from the port into Rome for the day and toured on your own instead of booking an excursion? Would love to hear your experiences and tips!
It's at least an hour from Civitavecchia to Rome. And I've ridden Italian trains - they don't always run on schedule. I'd be so nervous about getting back in time, unless I built in a couple of extra hours.
I like the idea of an "on your own" tour, but with cruise line transportation excursion, but From a cruise line point of view, this seems kind of risky (from a "the ship will wait for people who are late if they are booked on a cruise line-sponsored excursion" point of view. In my experience, it seems like there is almost always at least one group that doesn't make it back to the rendezvous point on time. If it's a cruise-line sponsored excursion, does that mean that they HAVE to wait for the stragglers? or do they leave the stragglers behind?
Yes, they do.Does Disney offer an “On your Own” tour where you are in their transportation to and from the city, dropped off at the meeting point for the return trip, and then free to do whatever until then? Royal Caribbean had that a few summers ago and it was nice to have my freedom but know I had a ship-based ride back in case of a delay with getting back.
This would have been our preference by far, but the dates on this particular itinerary didn't work for us.This is why I did the Barcelona to Rome cruise last summer. I couldn't imagine only having one day in Rome. Our cruise ended in Rome so we chose to spend three days in Rome after our cruise. We did everything on our own, but had plenty of time to do it without worrying about getting back to the ship.
We looked at the Rome on Your Own excursion last year and ended up doing Imperial and Renaissance Rome instead. What I thought was crazy is ROYO is $18/pp more than IARR, but you get much less - you only get the bus ride to and from, you get one less hour in Rome, and you get none of the intermediary travels from point to point.