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On our recent family cruise in the Med, we caught our two girls sneaking away from their “boring” shore excursion in Croatia halfway through the trip. The excursion tickets had cost us $80 apiece, so it was a painful reminder that excursions don’t always live up to their advance billing.

The problem with selecting shore excursions is that expensive decisions have to be made in advance of visiting a port of call, and usually based on just a few lines of description in an online brochure. In addition, there are usually lots of options to choose from that range from city bus tours, train trips, boat rides and helicopter sightseeing, to scuba diving, hiking, cycling, kayaking, and hot-air balloon adventures.

Of course, you can always tour a port on your own. It’s a great way to save money, especially if you hook up with another couple to split taxi fares. But not every port of call lends itself to a self-directed tour. And in an unfamiliar city, it’s too easy to miss some of the best sites and the interesting descriptions of them that tour guides provide.

So what’s a family to do? How can we all improve our odds of getting good value for our shore excursion dollar? Here are some guidelines that I intend to follow in future:

• Don’t sign up for organized shore excursions in every port. It’s nice to have a break every few days to just walk around on your own at your own pace.
• Write down the time you have to be back on board and bring it with you. It’s amazing how quickly one day gets confused with the next when you’re vacationing.
• Pick shore excursions that are difficult or expensive to do on your own. For example, trips outside of the city you’re docked in, or tours that let you jump the normal line-ups at popular sites like the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.
• If you tour on your own, invest in a guide book so that you can find the best attractions and learn a little about them.
• Try to avoid doing two shore excursions in the same day – it’s too rushed and leaves little time for lunch or shopping.
• Stay clear of day-long excursions unless they take you to somewhere really fantastic like Florence, Moscow or Marrakesh that are worth the expense and fatigue.

And no matter how you get there, what are the best things to see or do on land? I once asked that question of Gary Hart, who at the time was the shore excursion manager aboard the Crystal Symphony. After 17 years a sea, hundreds of ports and thousands of shore excursions, Gary said his four favourite shore excursions were glacier flightseeing by helicopter in Alaska, flying over the Iguazu Falls in Brazil, touring the Shrine of Borobudur in Indonesia, and visiting the Terra-Cotta Warriors in Xi’an, China (a pre or post-cruise excursion option). For sailors, I would add the America’s Cup 12-metre yacht race experience in St. Maarten, West Indies.

And what’s the most important question a passenger should ask before departing on a shore excursion?

“What time does the ship leave,” Hart told me with a smile!