Venture Ashore Avis 234

Venture Ashore worked well for us again. Price was sufficiently less than ship's and tours were all good.

This was an exhausting tour - primarily as we went to Sorrento first and then to Pompeii arriving at 12.30 - not the time to be wandering around in the heat. The main tour guide was really good but unfortunately the Pompeii guide had a strong accent and was diffficult to understand. The site is so large, we coud only cover a small part in two hours. Try a shorter trip in the morning or later afternoon would be my recommendation.

We booked the golden circle tour in Iceland through venture ashore a great excursion and alternative to cruise ship tours at a realistic price.

On our Golden Circle tour from Reykjavík, our guide Matt was excellent - he was enthusiastic and informative throughout the tour and made for a most enjoyable and memorable day seeing the highlights of Iceland. Our driver on that tour was also very good.
Our tour from Akureryi was also enjoyable - guide and driver were very good - but we were disappointed not to have had more time to enjoy the thermal pools in Lake Mývatn - especially after paying a high entry price to the pools.

2 trips in iceland. trip 1 included geysirs and swim at lake myvatn. only 10 minutes allowed at geysirs. really disappointed as was a big reason for going on this trip. swim was horrendously expensive for only 40 minutes in the water. were rushed back to the ship well within the allotted time of the trip. very rushed for little reason. trip 2 in orkney. no paddle to locate guide. i asked someone and they directed me towards one end of the pier where other private trips were locating. walked back to gangway and was advised to try other end of the pier. all very busy with people at the gangway. barriers were preventing access and finally someone removed them and lo and behold, the guide was found at this end of the pier without a paddle or sign. the trip was fine thereafter but disappointed at the initial organisation.

First class in every respect. Great communications, lots of interesting information.

Very knowledgeable and friendly guide

Great service. I had to cancel one excursion and book another and got my refund straight away with no problems. Booked another one and could not have hoped for better. Our guide and tour was fantastic. Good instructions given and had a fund day in Iceland.

Using Venture Ashore worked out great for us. They really do work with the itineraries of the cruise ship and got us back to port in plenty of time to shop and walk around town before we had to board. The tour guides were all great! I would suggest that the excursions that are several hours long, that at least a snack and bottled water be provided.

Very well organised. Taxi was waiting for us at the requested time and the pick up back to the ship was very punctual too. Very friendly driver with an amazing sense of humour. Would definately recommend.

Easy to use website and easy to book. Confirmation received with full and easy directions to the meeting point. Met the rep at designated spot, she spoke very good English, confirmed our booking and directed us to the coach. Excellent tour with lots of information form our fluent guide.

A group of us (12 people) took a variety of excursions with Venture Ashore while cruising the British Isles. Every tour, whether it was two people from our group or all 12 of us, was exceptional. We will use VA again and recommend them to anyone we know traveling abroad.

Just been on a msc cruise for a week to skagen ,oslo, copenhagen and bruges.
booked hop on hop off buses for oslo and copenhagen and a shuttle bus to get from zebrugge to bruges all returns.
ship docks at skegan you can walk - at oslo the buses were easy to find bascially 100yard walk to buses we had city sightseeing buses which were easy to find and msc staff and other buses staff helpfull, hard to get on the top of the buses as we had alot of chinese holiday people on our cruise who just push into queues in numbers but it was not worth an argument being on holiday this happened alot ?I Guess they are used to being like this.
hop on hop off buses great but you have to pick say 2-3 stops as you cannot get round everything in oslo or copenhagen ,cities are massive and seem larger then London.
we had no complaints until we got to zeebrugge our voucher stated there would be a venture rep who would show you where to catch your coach shuttle.? There was nobody and as others had booker excusions with msc when there are thousand of people at a port we kept asking port officials re venture bus and nobody seemed to know.and when your voucher states 10am or you might miss the bus if late having no rep was not helpful eventaully everybody who had booked this shuttle seemed to be standing outside about 37 people on out excursion wondering what to do, i think a couple even went back to the ship being fed up with waiting, after a couple of us walking to other buses asking if they knew where a venture bus wouls be we eventaully found a white coach which did have a venture sign approx 18 inches x 12 inchs the driver was sitting in his seat we asked him and he said yes this is your bus so went back to every body and eventaully got on, the bus had turned up dead on 10am. Not blameing the driver and we allthought the excursion had not been sorted out that well ,ie no rep ,panick to be there 15-30 min's before etc and then find nobody! suggest venture put a bit more into this shuttle and not save on wages having not rep ,it left everybody on the shuttle a little stressed having to sort out themselves having already paid. the driver was great and joval and a nice man giving plenty of insight into bruges, but would have exspected a venture rep to be there so suggest this is sorted /taken into consideration.
one other small thing when you get your vouchers if you take a paper copy like us and do not us phones etc make sure the voucher has a qr code ans we did not have one on one of our vouchers to show and had to wait to get on one of the hop on buses last as we could not show it - it does not state this is needed in the venture info -ie states only take or show your excusion vouchers.
on our wholes exsperiece cruise and excursion the brugges shuttle was our only let down and being on holiday at 64 could do without the hassle and stress.

Very informative guide, Jenny, and great driver, Tracey. Visited Skara Brae, Skaill House and the Ring of Brodgar. Good value for money. Small group, which allowed us to have more time at the sites, was more personal, and allowed us to listen to the guide easily. Would definitely recommend using this company rather than the cruise ship excursions. They were very aware of when we needed to get back to the ship, so there was no concern about that.

We met the tour guide at the time agreed, the tour was great on town and wine tasting venue. Thanks.

Our tour was lovely to the Giant Causeway and our driver was brilliant.

We booked four shore excursions with Venture Ashore as we used Planet Cruise.
Unfortunately 3 out of the 4 were cancelled due to insufficient numbers. The one tour we did complete was a tour of Bodrum and we were the only people to do the tour. The tour guide Nazmi was excellent and we would thoroughly recommend him. He was very knowledgeable and welcoming.

From the moment we left the ship and our guide and driver were waiting for us to when they dropped us off at the planned time it was a great excursion. Our guide was extremely knowledgeable of architecture, history, politics and spoke fluent english. We enjoyed every minute of the excursion.