Port excursion to Rome - DCL or other?

[daffodil92]

Hi there,
Me, my DH and DS (13) will be on the 7 day Mediterranean DCL cruise in May half term.
I’ve never been to Italy and am looking at the shore excursions. There are so many into Rome that it is mind blowing!
Has anyone taken any of the Disney excursions and be able to let me know what you thought?

[Smilesonfaces]

If you dock at Civitavecchia you can walk in to town to catch the train. It’s about a 10 minute walk and then a 40 minute train journey. It was cheap as anything. We didn’t sail until evening and ensured we arrived back at port about 3 hours before sailing. We went around Rome on the hop on/off bus.
It was a great day and would love to go to Rome on a longer stay.

[Omega1]

We’ve been to Civitavecchia four times on different cruises, each time we’ve got the the train into Rome. We bought the ‘Birg’ ticket at the station for 12 euro which covers train into Rome and the metro and buses when there. It’s very easy.

[Gill H]

Can’t help as we decided to stay on the ship. I do want to go to Rome, but I figured I could afford a few days in Rome at a quieter, cooler time of year, whereas I couldn’t afford DCL again for a good while!

[daffodil92]

Thanks for your replies. I know that I definitely don't want to get the train because as I don't know Rome at all I would be overwhelmed with where to go and what to see when we did arrive and so probably waste a shed load of time

Any body else done an organised excursion please?

[MrsBC]

We've visited Rome from a few different cruises - DCL included, and each time we've done the 'Rome on your Own' option (or a similar name). The cruise bus drops you into the city centre and collects you at a specific time, meaning that you won't miss the ship if the bus is late, and you have plenty of time to visit a few places all within walking distance of where you get dropped off eg The Vatican, Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, Piazza Navona etc.

[Alba20]

Hi daffodil92

My family are also on this same cruise.

I searched the DCL and other tour websites for tours of Rome and what I noticed was that all the tours seemed to include the Vatican, which I don't want to do with our kids (age 9 & 12), unless I arranged a private tour.

I spoke to friends who have done the same itinerary on another cruise line and he said that they did an organised tour and felt a lot of time was wasted. They suggested that I use the transport only option and work out what I wanted to do and work out my own plan.
The only thing that concerned me is that traffic around Rome can be a nightmare and the port of Civitavecchia is around 1hr 30mins away. With this in mind I booked the DCL 'Rome On Your Own' as the cruise will wait for their own tour buses if they are running late, but won't wait for others. We know we want to visit Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon & Coliseum and I have found a great website that shows walking tours of Rome and the best route to use. I feel that doing it this way we can spend as little or as much time within the 6hrs doing what we want to do.

Alba

[daffodil92]

Originally Posted by Alba20

Hi daffodil92

My family are also on this same cruise.

I searched the DCL and other tour websites for tours of Rome and what I noticed was that all the tours seemed to include the Vatican, which I don't want to do with our kids (age 9 & 12), unless I arranged a private tour.

I spoke to friends who have done the same itinerary on another cruise line and he said that they did an organised tour and felt a lot of time was wasted. They suggested that I use the transport only option and work out what I wanted to do and work out my own plan.
The only thing that concerned me is that traffic around Rome can be a nightmare and the port of Civitavecchia is around 1hr 30mins away. With this in mind I booked the DCL 'Rome On Your Own' as the cruise will wait for their own tour buses if they are running late, but won't wait for others. We know we want to visit Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon & Coliseum and I have found a great website that shows walking tours of Rome and the best route to use. I feel that doing it this way we can spend as little or as much time within the 6hrs doing what we want to do.

Alba

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Hi Alba, great to hear you’re on the same cruise! It’ll be here before we know it!
Would you mind sending me a link for the walking tours? That sounds really interesting. The ship tour I keep looking at goes to the Catacombs, inside the coliseum and the Vatican. I’d definitely like to see the coliseum but no idea of where it is in relation to everything else.
What are your thoughts for the other ports? I’m thinking of Vesuvius hike/Pompeii for Naples. 😊

[Alba20]

Hi daffodil92,

Great to hear of another family on the same cruise and happy to share information, we don't normally book excursions at all we just kind of do our own thing but then we normally visit the Caribbean not the Med and thought we should make the most of it. With that said, my husband and I didn't fancy being off the ship for hours and hours, we want to enjoy the cruise ship and what it has to offer and I don't think the kids will be impressed either.

I did my cruise check in on Friday and here is what I booked:

NAPLES
We decided to visit Pompeii on the half day tour 8am-12.45pm. I quite fancied Amalfi Coast and Sorrento etc but we have decided as we live in the UK we may go back there on holiday to do that justice. My friend did the Pompeii & Sorrento and he said he felt they didn't get enough time in Pompeii.

CIVITAVECCHIA (This is our pirate night)
As I said before we decided to book Rome On Your Own 8am-5.30pm. The coach drops you off at St Peters Square I've been researching how far away everything is and found a page that was quite useful. Here is the general Rome page rometoolkit/mnu/rome_whattodo.htm and item 4 in the top section is self guided walking tours of Rome. There are lots of great links there to the major attractions.

LIVORNO
I really wanted to see Florence but again I think I would need 2-3 days to do it justice so we decided on Pisa, which is what the kids wanted to do. I booked the Easy Pisa trip. Again it's 4.5hrs there is a departure at 8am that returns at 12.30pm, we booked the 8.30am returning at 1pm.

VILLEFRANCHE
Again it's Nice or Monaco and the hubby and son decided Monaco. We have booked Monaco, Marina & The Little Train which is a 7.30am departure and returns at noon. I have researched doing this on our own and it seems the bus or train is an easy thing to do from Villefranche so we may cancel this.

A few people have recommended some other tour companies to me:
cruisingexcursions - they seem really good, get good reviews and I have used on line chat with them and they have been very knowledgable and answered all my questions.
romeinlimo who I haven't looked into that much

Sorry for the long response, I hope that helps... any questions feel free to drop me a message.

[TinkTatoo]

For Rome we booked a private tour with this company romeinlimo/rome-civitavecchia/ we did the highlights of Rome tour and tweaked it a bit. I also asked on our cruise FB group and found another family to share the tour with. That made it much better value than a Disney tour plus, being private, we weren't waiting around for loads of people to get on and off a coach.

In Villerfranche we used rivierapremiumtour/ this was another great tour and we got to see Nice, Monaco / Monti Carlo and Eze

In Naples we did the Pompeii the half day tour which we really enjoyed

For the rest of the ports we just got off the ship and had a walk around on our own.