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Tauck vs Ponat Itineraries?
We're booked on the July 18 eastbound cruise. Has anyone noticed the significant differences between the itinerary on the Tauck website and the one posted by Ponat for the same cruise? The order of the three stops is different, and there are some differences in the descriptions of the next two stops as well. Anyone know which is correct?
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Are you sure it is the same dates?
Tauck does different land excursion’s to Ponant in some places, usually better ones and they usually leave the ship before the French do if it is not an all Tauck boat. Also please check you are looking at the correct year. As an example, the tour we just took withTauck/ Ponant is different next year, not even the same number of nights on the ship. If this doesn’t help, I think a call to Tauck will clarify.
Thanks for the response. Yes, same dates, same year.
Tauck (both website and current downloaded itinerary) shows Olden July 18, Hellesylt July 19, and Ålesund July 20. Ponat shows Ålesund July 18, Hellesylt July 19, and Olden July 20. I'm guessing that Ponat has changed the itinerary since Tauck posted it to the website, and Tauck hasn't changed the website. The difference would be important if one were his own booking land excursions; not so much when taking Tauck excursions, assuming they have taken care of the changes.
Yes, I see that Ponat has different, or in several ports no, land excursions. It's also interesting that Ponat's base price is a bit higher than Tauck's, and much higher when you add in the land excursions, and transfers and hotels at each end, that are optional or unavailable on Ponat. Changes in exchange rates since the tours were set up or ???
I have done four Ponant trips with Tauck, and I have compared what you get for what you pay on both. On the ones I checked, Tauck gives more bang for the buck. In Antarctica they were holding briefings about the Ponant tours for the French. They simply said that the Tauck guests should book through Tauck.
It's clear on this cruise that you get more for less money with Tauck. My question was only why Ponat was posting a different sequence of port stops than Tauck on the same sailing. I called Tauck yesterday and the person I talked to, and her support, didn't know about the difference. They said they would check and get back.
Tauck never got back to me on this but I have now checked the schedules for each port and find, not surprisingly, that the ship is scheduled in the ports in the order shown on the Ponat website. There seems to have been a change at some point though, as the "previous port" and next port" listed on the Ålesund schedule agree with Tauck's itinerary, and not with Ponat's or the actual schedules at those two ports. It's more a curiosity than an issue to us, as I expect Tauck will have the excursions ready whenever we arrive.
Maybe a different boat in the Ponat line?
A small issue …. but Ponant is P O N A N T. It is actually an archaic French term for West.
That could be why the itineraries don’t match 😀
What??? Same ship, same dates. I'm talking about Le Dumont d'Urville, the only ship that Tauck, and Ponat, show as making the July 2023 Norwegian Fjords cruises.
The name of the ship is on the port schedules. It's the only Ponat ship on those port schedules around those dates. Why are your trying to explain it away?
I don’t know about anyone else but I was joking. I do find the Ponant website confusing. We could not find the itinerary for our trip on their website and it was Tauck and Ponant passengers.
I’ve done a couple Ponant trips where the itineraries did not match up with the same Tauck trip. We all went to the same places, but the Ponant people did have different shore options.
I understand there are different shore options, but in this case the ports are listed for different days on the two itineraries. Unless they split the ship in half and sail to different ports....?
There is a good ‘blonde joke’ about that. A blonde takes a seat in first class on a trip to Chicago, but she has a coach ticket, and she refuses to move. A blonde flight attendant says, “I know how to handle this.”. So she goes up and whispers in the blonde passengers ear, and she promptly gets up and moves to coach. So they asked, “What did you tell her?”. “I told her first class was not going to Chicago.”