Our Experience With VentureAShore Excursions

One of the things that we found after our first cruise in 2022 was how expensive excursions were. That year we only did official excursions with our cruise line (Norweigan). They were all good excursions and what we were expecting, but for the most part none of them were worth the massive prices we paid. And that’s why this time we wanted to try something different and we picked VentureAShore.

When I looked at excursions for our recent trip which was for the most part across Iceland and Norway prices were crazy expensive. Most trips were £200+ per person, per tour. And to do stuff in a bunch of cities it would have cost us so much money. So I decided to do a bit of research. In some places there were hop-on-hop-off bus tours which left from the cruise terminal. But for some places we still needed to do tours to get to see what we wanted to.

How we found VentureAShore

I looked around for other tour companies and found loads that did trips for cruisers including Viator and VentureAShore. The later stood out as they only do excursions for cruising passengers. I looked up reviews and for the most part they seemed pretty good. Almost everywhere has the odd person complaining so I wasn’t too concerned.

Their website was really easy to use as you just select your cruise line, ship and departure date. Then the site brings up all the stops on your cruise. I found this really useful as I could click through the destinations and see the available options at each stop.

The main thing that swayed me when looking was I found a near identical tour in Geiranger, Norway that both VentureAShore and Norweigan were running. You stopped at the same highlights, but the VentureAShore trip was about half the price of Norweigan, so we decided to give it a go.

Some great things to know about booking

When cruising nothing is guaranteed. Ports can change due to weather or stuff happening on land, and timings can also change.

With VentureAShore if you don’t end up making the port you can get a refund on your trip. And if your boat docks later and you miss your trip you’re also entitled to a refund. So you’re not going to be stuck paying for a trip you can’t make.

They also have a guarantee that you’ll make it back to your ship on time. And if for whatever reason you don’t it’s their responsibility to get you to the next port. Not that I’ve read anywhere that this has happened.

Our experience with VentureAShore

We did two trips with VentureAShore in total (although I wish we’d done more) and both were fab. With both trips that we did in Norway the buses and tour guides were really easy to find, and the trips left and got back at the exact times outlined, so we had no worry about rushing to make it onto the boat.

For the short two hour trip in Geiranger we had an audio guide to talk us through the area and around four stop points to see the views etc. And it covered exactly what we wanted to see, and on the trip we saw loads of Norweigan tour groups doing the same thing. The second one in Norway was a bit longer and we had an in-person guide who was really knowledgeable and the trip was again exactly what we wanted to see.

If you’ve cruised before have you ever used a different company for excurions?