Swan Hellenic Pre- and Post-Cruise Tours

Swan Hellenic Pre- and Post-Cruise Tours
Swan Hellenic’s land-extension programs range from five to seven days and include itineraries much like the ones aboard your cruise ship. Prices vary according to the length of your program and the port where you extend your trip-with options literally all over the world. You can often choose whether to do the land or sea

portion of your vacation first, and sometimes one option is less expensive than the other.
Examples include a five-day stay at the Amazon Eco Park Lodge in South America, with a rustic wooden bungalow, a guided forest walk, and a small boat trip through creeks and inlets. Prices are inclusive, just as with Swan Hellenic’s cruises; this particular land extension will cost you at least $2,400 for a twin-bed room.
Another example is a six-day land extension in the Middle East, including visits in Damascus, Syria, to one of the few remaining Aramaic-speaking villages, to the Valley of the Tombs museum, and to Umayyad Mosque, one of the greatest ever designed. Your inclusive rate for this land extension will be at least $1,768.

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Silversea Silver Sights Program

Silversea Silver Sights Program
Silversea calls its land extensions the Silver Sights Program. It offers two dozen options in the Mediterranean alone that range in length from three to eight days, though you usually cannot choose whether to do the land or sea portion of your vacation first. Other Silver Sights Program options exist in Northern Europe, the Far East, the South Pacific, South America, the Amazon, Canada and New England, Africa and the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, Mexico, Alaska, and the Pacific Northwest. Prices vary according to the number of days you choose on land and your destination.

Examples include a three-night stay at the Fairmount Royal Pavilion on the Caribbean island of Barbados with a tour of Bridgetown and the Sunbury Plantation House. In Africa, you can choose a four-night program that includes a stay at the Londolozi Game Private Reserve and drives with an experienced tracker to see lions, elephants, rhinoceroses, leopards, and buffalo.

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Royal Caribbean Cruise tours

Royal Caribbean Cruise tours
Royal Caribbean’s Cruisetours come with tour guides you can follow if you choose to stay with your group, but you also have the option of exploring on your own. In some cases, you can choose whether to do your land extension before or after the sea portion of your vacation, but sometimes you are only offered one option.
Royal Caribbean offers nineteen Cruisetours in Alaska, four in the Canadian Rockies, and four in Europe. Prices vary according to your destination and your trip’s length. In Europe, examples include a three-night package in the Spanish cities of Madrid and Barcelona, which you will travel between by high-speed train. You’ll see the Royal Palace, the 1992 Olympic Ring and Stadium, and artist Antoni

Gaudi’s La Sagrada Famila. Cruisetours in Canada include trips to the resort town of Whistler, a mecca for skiers.

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Radisson Seven Seas Land Programs

Radisson Seven Seas Land Programs
Radisson offers both pre- and post-cruise hotel stays without any attached scheduling, as well as land-extension programs with itineraries similar to what you will find aboard its cruise ships. In Europe alone, you can choose among more than a dozen land-extension programs that run from two to five nights, with prices that vary accordingly.
Some examples include a two-night stay at Italy’s Lake Como, including a private, guided boat tour, and a four-night extension in Moscow, Russia, that includes a city tour and lunch at Cafe Pushkin, a tour of the Kremlin and Red Square, and an evening performance of the Moscow Circus.

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Princess CruiseTours

Princess CruiseTours
Princess CruiseTours come in myriad lengths, destinations, and prices. They are arranged as one organized itinerary whether you choose to do the land or the sea portion of your trip first, and the price of your entire vacation is rolled into one fee.

In Alaska alone, Princess offers sixteen different CruiseTours that include Denali National Park and Mount McKinley, plus another four options if you would rather spend your time on the Copper River
(where the king salmon are delicious), the Kenai Peninsula, or caribou country near the Arctic Circle.
The minimum trip length is ten nights, seven of them at sea, with a minimum price for your land and cruise combined of $1,399. The longest Alaska CruiseTour is fifteen nights, including seven nights at sea, with a base rate of $2,649 per person. CruiseTours are also available before or after your cruise in Asia, Canada, New England, South America, Europe, Australia, and the South Pacific.

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Norwegian Cruise Line Pre- and Post-Cruise Packages

Norwegian Cruise Line Pre- and Post-Cruise Packages
NCL offers hotel packages that include hotel taxes, bellman gratuities, and a one-way transfer from your ship’s pier to the hotel in a variety of cities worldwide.

Some more extended packages are available depending on your ship and your cruising itinerary. For example, if you cruise aboard the Norwegian Sun to Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada, you can book a three-night land extension that includes a trip to the world-famous Butchart Gardens as well as a trip to Chinatown. If you are cruising in South America, you can choose an extended stay in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that includes a tango show, a walking tour at Iguazu Falls, and a tour of the capital city itself.

Rates are sometimes as low as a few hundred dollars for the extended land packages, depending on your port of call.

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MSC Cruises’ Hotel Packages

MSC Cruises’ Hotel Packages
MSC Cruises offers hotel packages for one or two nights before or after your cruise, with hotels available in dozens of gateway cities. Packages include hotel taxes, and rates start at $90 per person, per night. The company does not suggest specific itineraries in your city of choice.

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Disney Land and Sea Vacation

Disney Land and Sea Vacation
If you are planning to cruise with young children, you will be hard-pressed not to book a land-extension package before or after your Disney Cruise Line vacation. The company has you embark and disembark so close to Florida’s Walt Disney World that it almost seems silly to buy separate plane tickets at a future date.
Should you only have a single week for your vacation, you might consider the seven-night Land and Sea Vacation package. It includes three or four nights at Walt Disney World followed by a three- or four- night cruise, depending on whether you would rather spend the majority of your trip on land or at sea. The cruise portion of each itinerary includes ports of call at Nassau and Castaway Cay in the Bahamas; if you choose the longer cruise-ship option, you will spend your extra day entirely at sea.

The Land and Sea packages are priced according to the level of accommodations you want. If you are willing to stay in a standard inside stateroom aboard the ship, you will be given a room at a moderate hotel ashore, such as Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort. If you want a mid-level cabin on the ship, you will be put in a deluxe hotel ashore, such as Disney’s Polynesian Resort. If you choose a top-priced suite aboard the ship, you will stay at the flagship Disney
Grand Floridian Resort and Spa while you are on land.
Prices for the lowest-level Land and Sea packages range from at least $799 to $2,399; the mid-level option ranges will cost you a minimum of $1,249 to $3,499; and the top-shelf pricing will cost you at least $2,699 to $5,199.

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Celebrity Sea and Stay Program

Celebrity Sea and Stay Program
Celebrity’s land-extension packages include one, two, or three nights at a resort before or after your cruise. You can get a rental car if you are at least twenty-one years old, but you will have to pay some additional fees, such as rental-car tax.

If you cancel your land-extension program eight to thirty days before your cruise, you will be charged 50 percent of the program’s fee. If you cancel within seven days of your departure, you will receive no refund.
The company suggests extra time in cities such as Genoa, Italy; Amsterdam, Holland; and Seattle, Washington, but it offers no specific itinerary suggestions for you on land.

Crystal Extended Land Programs
Crystal Cruises offers three- to eight-night coordinated land vacations with itineraries much like your cruise-ship itinerary. The cost of the packages varies widely depending on the location and duration of the stay. In some cases, a certain number of people must sign up from your ship in order for the program to operate.
Examples include a five-night Australian Wine and Opals program in which you stay at the Four Seasons Hotel arid visit the Sydney Opera House, the Barossa Valley vineyards, and the outback opal-mining town of Coober Pedy. Another example is the four-night Antiquities of Greece and Egypt package, in which you visit the Acropolis, the Parthenon, and more in Athens before a flight to Cairo, where you will see the Citadel, the Pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx, and some of King Tutankhamen’s treasures at the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.

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Carnival Pre- and Post-Cruise Vacations

Carnival Pre- and Post-Cruise Vacations
Carnival’s land-extension packages usually include hotel, room tax, and either round-trip airport transfers or a rental car with unlimited mileage. (You must be at least twenty-one years old to choose
the rental car option.) You will be required to pay some additional fees, such as resort and car rental taxes. The company recommends extra time on land in major hubs such as central Florida, New York, and Rome, but it does not promote special itineraries on land within those cities.

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