Is the $200 Cabot Trail cruise excursion worth it? — featuring La Lido Loca

0:05 man I I I hated this $200 ship Excursion so so so [Music] much hey hey what's up everybody Welcome to Lao Loca I am your host Tony here with the tale of wo a tale of poor

0:31 decisions and a tale of regret a tale of a cruise Excursion that I willfully went on I willfully agreed to go on that I hated so so much and uh I'm telling you the story so maybe you can avoid the same mistake that I made so for a little context this Cruise Excursion happened on my recent cruise on the Caribbean

0:55 Princess a wonderful 10day itinerary up through New England and into the Canadian maritimes and one of our Port stops was in Sydney Nova Scotia home of the world's largest fiddle it's a playable fiddle apparently you just need really big hands and it was at this cruise port that I decided to board a

1:16 coach and take a tour of the cabit trail now this excursion came highly recommended and when I woke up that morning in Sydney Nova Scotia I was in good spirits anticipating a wonderful day of exploration but shortly after boarding the bus to the cabin Trail I realized that this was not going to be a

1:36 glorious day of exploration this was going to be a long day of riding on a bus and here's the kicker and look I'm certainly kicking myself on this one that's exactly what was advertised in the description of this excursion the Excursion explicitly says that you would be traveling by coach across the cabat

1:55 trail a portion of the cabat trail with some stops not very long stops but some stops and well that's exactly what I got I was on this tour bus for 7 hours with a few 30 40 15 minute 5 minute stops at various sites and so you may be saying out loud Tony if the tour gave you exactly what was described then what

2:16 happened where was the mistake why did you hate it hate it hate it so much and well the mistake was with me the way I like the cruise has changed over the last year and I've been more exploratory of the ports than I have ever been in my entire life and I really have changed my strategy when it comes to exploring

2:37 Cruise ports in the past I would do very little research I would go down to the Excursion desk I would just ask somebody there what do you recommend and then I would take their recommendations and some excursions I would enjoy some excursions I wouldn't enjoy but this year I've been very specifically trying

2:53 to research the ports that I was going to before making any plans and look other than this day this Cruise was filled with so many interesting experiences that I had researched in advance and was able to participate in so if my bad time on this excursion is completely on me why would I even share

3:12 this conversation with you well of course the reason I want to share it with you is so that you can learn from my mistake and look I'll be the first one to raise my hand and say I'm somewhat lazy when it comes to research pre- cruise I have so many things going on that sometimes I don't think about

3:27 what's going to happen on the cruise until I get on the cruise and well fortunately most cruise lines have a system in place that can help people that didn't do a ton of Port research prior to getting on the cruise ship but still want a decent amount of knowledge about the ports before they make a

3:43 decision on what to do Princess Cruise Line certainly one of those they had a travel destination expert on board her name is Vicky bone and when I say Port destination expert what does that mean exactly well this is a person that has done the research for the ports that we are going to and they package all that

4:00 research and information into a presentation they'll do it live in a theater or in a lounge and the magical thing about princes is if you can't catch it live it's on the TV so my main source of research for this cruise for all of my cruise ports on this destination except for Sydney was to

4:18 watch Vicky's presentation a couple days before we arrived at the port and then come up with a plan for what to do to explore it was magical it's a great system and I got so much enjoyment I hit so many places and found out so much information about these ports that I don't think I would have figured out on

4:35 my own because it was so nicely packaged the way it was by Vicki Vicki not only a resource when you're on a Princess cruise ship she has her own Facebook page called cruising princess with Vicki currently she's doing the New England Canadian itineraries but later in the year she'll be down in the Caribbean and

4:52 so if you're cruising with Princess or if you want any great just cruise port insights I would highly recommend checking out the Facebook page cruising princess with Vicki now I've caught myself just a little bit I said that this information that I got from Vicki on the Princess cruise ship was the big

5:07 research that I did for this Cruise not exactly true there were a couple Cruise ports Boston Massachusetts Portland Maine those were planned primarily by my friend Leah who lives in Portland Maine Leah is someone who I met on a cruise and so local resources are also a good way to figure out what to do in a

5:27 location so if you have a friend in a location or if you meet somebody online in a location and I'm in a fortunate situation because of what I do here on YouTube I do get a lot of local contacts reaching out saying hey we'll drive you around for the day we'll show you the town I'm still a little bit of an

5:43 introverted stranger danger kind of guy so a lot of times I don't I don't connect with those people that I don't know but if I've met you on a cruise ship before if I have some sort of friendship then I'm certainly open to that so uh lee I've known for a while I've met her face to face I was virtual

5:59 friends for a long long time with Ian in Sydney Australia so my comfort level with Leah and Ian for example are very high but I still do have that stranger dangerous So for anybody who's ever offered to show me around a place if I don't know you at all that's probably the big reason why i' said no thank you

6:14 to the to the offer but uh yeah another great resource is people that live in the area and certainly on this trip for Boston and for Portland uh Leah made those days what they were so a big shout out to Leah also now every Cruise may not have a dedicated destination expert sometimes the cruise director will take

6:34 on that role Holland America cruise directors particularly will actually be the ones that do the port talk but for the most part every cruise that you go on before you go to a Port of Call there will be a port talk and this is a huge great resource if you don't have a plan for the port that you're visiting and I

6:51 also feel like I need to say this I'm not casting any shade on the cabat trail such a fascinating Place uh the big nugget that I did take away from from the tour that I did not know that is now resonating in my mind and connecting a lot of dots for me is that the Appalachian Mountains they start over in

7:08 Europe and they go under the ocean or the ocean covers them and then they reemerge up in Canada and then they work their way down the east coast of the United States and you may not know this about my story but my people uh at least from my father's side are from the Appalachian Mountains they coal miners

7:25 in West Virginia and so part of the cabat trail felt very homey to me I lived in Middle Tennessee and we would go to East Tennessee to the Smoky Mountains part of the Appalachian mountain range and so a lot of this felt very familiar to me and there was a lot of cool stuff to do there if you were

7:42 able to do stuff there was a glass blowing Studio there were trails to hike there was a lot of stuff to do there except that's not what our Excursion was about our Excursion was driving around the cabin Trail and looking out the window and uh again that's what it was sold as my fault for not doing any more

7:59 research than that that uh but yeah no shade on the cabat trail I just want to say that really no shade on the recommendation of this tour but big shade on me for making a simple Cruise mistake and not really researching what to do in Sydney not really researching what this excursion meant not

8:14 internalizing that and and saying D this probably isn't for me this Caribbean Princess Cruise was my 49th Cruise since I started cruising in 2017 and it's amazing to me all the stuff that you continue to learn the nuances of cruising cruising is simple but it's complex in a the most marvelous way and

8:32 yeah even after a bunch of cruises I'm I'm still learning myself and still making mistakes and hopefully uh well hopefully my mistakes will help you make better decisions in the future have you ever been on a cruise Excursion that was a dud do you love the cabat trail are your hands big enough to play the

8:47 world's largest fiddle leave a comment below thank you so much for checking out the show today show your support by hitting the like button this is Tony for L Leo Lo and until the next time we'll see you on the Leo bye