Tour Booked through Celebrity Website but it so late worried I will miss ship

Hello All -

This is my first question on cruise critic.

We are booked on our very first cruise, to Alaska, on August 9th from Vancouver on Celebrity Infinity. We booked our tours online, on the Celebrity website.

I was just looking everything over and noticed that for one of the tours, we arrive at 2pm and depart at 10pm. Our tour is 2.5 hours and departs at 7pm and returns at 9:30pm. That was the only time offered for this cruise. Does this seem kind of tight a timeline?

I know there is a guarantee but I wouldn't knowingly get on a cruise that would make me miss getting back on the ship.

Any advice? Once on the ship, could they possibly change the time to earlier in the day or are times pretty much set in stone?

Thank you very much for your time.

if it is a ship sponsored excursion I doubt you will miss the ship they will have a bus load or two to keep you company if you do

Don't worry it will be fine.

On our last cruise, we booked a snorkeling excursion for 9am online. Once onboard, received notification that our morning trip was canceled and we were booked for 1pm arriving after the ship sailed.

As experienced cruisers, I know the policy is to hold the ship for any sponsored excursions but as a precaution, I did visit Guest Services for reassurance.

So yes, they can change the time and yes they will hold the ship for you.

Happy sails!

Have no fears. It would cost Celebrity quite a bit to move a bus load of people to the next port to catch the ship.

Time in port is one of the advantages of the ship sponsored tour over the private excursion. It's their responsibility to get the group back to the ship in time. Unless you leave the group to go off and do something on your own you will be just fine.

After the replies you've had, I don't think you need any more reassurances.:)

But one advantage of a ship-sponsored tour is that it's the ship's responsibility to get you back in time.

If your ship-sponsored tour is late back, the ship will wait - I've been on a ship that's left port late plenty of times because it was waiting for a ship-sponsored tour group. And altho I rarely use ship's excursions it even happened to me once - a very long coach journey & I knew we'd be back in port after sailing time but I was not worried because it was the ship's coachload.

There have been very very very very very very very rare occasions when a ship's tour group have been left behind (tide, weather, berth required for another ship, whatever) and the cruise line has put them up in a hotel, fed them, arranged flights for them to catch up at the next port and compensated them for the trouble.

"Not missing the sailing" is over-hyped by cruise lines for taking a ship's tour rather than an independent tour. The ones who do miss a sailing tend to be only those who go exploring on their own & don't allow enough time for delays or get confused about time. Or get drunk :D.

No worries :cool:

JB :)

That's one of the benefits to the ship sponsored excursions that they sell. If you're late getting back and you booked the excursion with someone else other than Celebrity, you may be in trouble. But since you booked with Celebrity, there is probably going to be a whole bus of people who are also on your ship. The ship will wait for you. I've been on cruises where it's happened.

I'm sure the tour probably only lasts about two hours and they tack that extra 30 minutes on their in case there's traffic getting back to the ship. You won't have any problem, they do this every week, they have it down to a science.

Jonathan

They wouldn't be offering the excursion if there was a good chance they wouldn't be back in time. Worry about something else, like whether the osso bucco will be authentic with veal shank, or a cheaper version made with pork shank. :D

Roz

Thank you all for easing my mind..i am so excited to go on the cruise 😀