Tendering Process Question

I found a copy of the Fun Times for the Carnival Valor. We DO NOT have ship excursions and the Fun Times says " Guests going ashore without excursions or on a private tour go to Eagles Lounge, Deck 5 Aft to collect your tender ticket starting at 7:45 AM"

My question(s) are:

A. They say 0745, what time do people actually start lining up?

B. Can I line up by myself and get this ticket or does everyone need to line up?

C. Whats this ticket thing? I've only tendered 1 other time and that was to Grand Cayman and there were no tickets. We lined up as a group and first come first served in getting on the tender.

All/any other tips would be great!

Seems you're on a Carnival cruise. Do you have the FTTF thing?

LuLu

I found a copy of the Fun Times for the Carnival Valor. We DO NOT have ship excursions and the Fun Times says " Guests going ashore without excursions or on a private tour go to Eagles Lounge, Deck 5 Aft to collect your tender ticket starting at 7:45 AM"

 

My question(s) are:

A. They say 0745, what time do people actually start lining up?

B. Can I line up by myself and get this ticket or does everyone need to line up?

C. Whats this ticket thing? I've only tendered 1 other time and that was to Grand Cayman and there were no tickets. We lined up as a group and first come first served in getting on the tender.

 

All/any other tips would be great!

People are in line at 0700. Gettting there early helps get a lower number/ticket. But that's not to say you will be sitting on the ship until 10 AM if you get there at 0800.

Everyone in your party needs to be with you.

Tickets are just cards with number to hand over to a crew member when you head out the exit. Sometimes they don't hand them out and sometimes they don't take them.

How tendering work for none platinum/diamond or FTTF or Carnival Excursion folks, is that they load a tender with those folks first and then right behind it there's another tender that starts boarding the other people. Usually these first few tenders are fairly large holding a couple of hundred people each. But depending on the number of ship in, they do bring in smaller tenders. However, typically they are lined up and once filled and off the next one comes in. Some time ships run 2 stations for tenders for and aft. So really, not getting on the first or second tender isn't a big deal. Catching one of the first 4 or 5 tenders will get you to the tender pier reasonably early enough.

What excursion do you have planned?

cavetubing with the cavetubing.bz folks

cavetubing with the cavetubing.bz folks

You will be fine. I've done that tour and I have used the tenders many times without a Carnival excursion or FTTF. Follow crewsweeper's advice and get to the meeting lounge early to get a tender ticket. Not everyone needs to line up, but they need to be there.

They'll wait a bit, but not too long. They get people form all ships and if there's room will take walk-ups. Just get to the lounge as early as you can.

What we've done in the past is to get there (two couples) sign up and then one holds some seats and the other hits the Lido or coffee bar for some coffee and treats while we're waiting. Bathrooms too.