Our experience with the RSSC tours were all very good. Depending on the port, we often do a mixture of on our own, sharing a cab or rental car with other cruisers, pre-arranging a tour privately,or taking an RSSC tour.

On our Baltics tour, we did Talin and Stockholm on our own, used Red October in St. Petersberg and used RSSC for the rest.

On our Athens-Istanbul tour, because of bad weather, a couple of our tours and plans dissolved the day of the tour. On one, I think Mykonos, we wandered the island with Denise and Alan and had a great time (Delos was cancelled because of bad weather). In Rhodes, we hopped on an RSSC tour at the last minute when the weather was nasty..we were going to go to the beach. Denise arranged private guides for us in Athens and our two Turkey stops. Athens didn't work out well overall (no fault of Denise's, but the snotty son of a highly recommended tour guide), but Denise's selection of tour guides for Turkey, made the trip.

It is too bad if the prices become prohibitive or too expensive with RSSC. We will just have to plan ahead with one another and use private guides.

I agree with Ngaire that the RSSC excursion desk is normally excellent. They are flexible, do not try to upsell their tours and give you good information to help you select from the ship tours or doing it on your own.