How bad will tendering be with 3 ships?

I checked the port schedule and there will be 3 ships on July 15. My ship is there from 8-4pm. Is Cayman a tender-only port? How bad (time) will it be tendering from the ships? Expected total amount of people from the 3 ships is over 11k. :eek:

They have many independent tenders that use two piers. Should be just a 10 minute ride to the ship. Lines will be longer when returning. :)

I checked the port schedule and there will be 3 ships on July 15. My ship is there from 8-4pm. Is Cayman a tender-only port? How bad (time) will it be tendering from the ships? Expected total amount of people from the 3 ships is over 11k. :eek:

That is a light day. We had 6 ships and 17357 people when we were in Grand Cayman a few months back. Tendering was fine and only takes a few minutes as they are constantly running tenders.

Not bad at all! Folks seem to think tendering is a long, laborious thing...but it's not, really! The actual ride is about 4-5 mins.....it can take about 15 mins. to fill the tender on the 1st ones headed to the island in the morning. After that, they come and go at about 15-20 min. intervals, whether they are full or not.

Not bad at all! Folks seem to think tendering is a long, laborious thing...but it's not, really! The actual ride is about 4-5 mins.....it can take about 15 mins. to fill the tender on the 1st ones headed to the island in the morning. After that, they come and go at about 15-20 min. intervals, whether they are full or not.

I like the anticipation I feel as I am sitting on the tender waiting for it to fill up. The motor is idling and you are rocking a little bit. The whole process just reminds me that I am on vacation and getting ready to have some more fun! :)

Only having three ships in port in Grand Cayman is a very light day.

LuLu

thanks everyone. We plan to do our own thing so I was kinda worried about docking there and waiting 1hr or so to get tendered off.

The tender time will have more to do with your particular cruise line (how many tenders they have contracted to go back and forth), and how they release people onto the tenders (some will do tickets, some first come first served, some only let excursions off on first tenders).

The number of ships may make a difference in the crowds on the island, but really have nothing to do with tender time. You are lucky.....you will be there on a very light day. 3 ships is nothing.

There are 3 different tender docks, though, all close to each other. Remember which one your cruise line is using so you get back on the correct tender!!!

Enjoy!

I'm on the Carnival, is it worth getting the FTTF just for the tendering. I'm part of a wedding group so we get to go in early during embarkation. I'm not in a rush to get off during debarkation. hehehehe

I was in Cayman last week on the carnival freedom. I had FTTF, went down about 815am, & they told us that it was now open for general boarding. The estimated time for FTTF was up until 845am according to the letter we got the night before. There was no wait to tender, so I guess that's why it opened up to general. There were 3 ships total in port, 2 carnival & 1 RC.

There was no wait to tender, so I guess that's why it opened up to general. There were 3 ships total in port, 2 carnival & 1 RC.

Sweet !!! thanks for the heads up. I didn't think the FTTF option was the right one for us this time.

Ships arrival and departure times are usually staggered so they don't all arrive and leave at the same time.

Some people panic about missing the last tender but in reality as long as you are in line on time you will get on the ship. They aren't going to leave a pile of people on an island because the official last tender time has past.

We were in GC 3 weeks ago with 3 ships in port.

Getting TO GC wasn't the issue. We even have FTTF and didn't even need to use it!

The real issue was getting back to the ship. That line was sooooo long!! Wrapped around the entire building and then into a parking lot. It took 45 minutes just to get on the tender.

The other ships had a different line, so I don't think that was our problem.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

In my experience it was bad but I made the best of it. I was with royal and the the last tender time was 3 or 4 pm don't remember now and I was there 15 mins before. For my surprise the line was huge it even had like 2 turn because it was super long. I wasn't going to make that line under the sun so I seat in a bench waiting for the line to be short. At one points the line was not even moving so I guess there was not many tenders available.

Ships arrival and departure times are usually staggered so they don't all arrive and leave at the same time.

 

Some people panic about missing the last tender but in reality as long as you are in line on time you will get on the ship. They aren't going to leave a pile of people on an island because the official last tender time has past.

Right. As long as you are there, they will get you back on the ship. We usually find a nice little watering hole to have a couple of cocktails at while we watch the line. Then when the line is down, we walk over and get on. We've been on the last tender many times, but we are always right there, and have never missed one yet. We like to spend as much time on the island as possible and so we do....even if it's right next to the tender pier at the end.