Have you ever been a pier runner...if so...why?

[CruisingSteelerGirl]

Just curious....I LOVE YOU GUYS!

[yvrcruiser62]

In Kona, had rental car problems. Drop 4 of our party back at the boat. When we got to the car rental place the bus had just left to go to the port. We did just get back in time, but were last aboard.

 

We were not worried, we had a plan B. Pick up a case of beer, take bus to Hilo and wait on the beach for the boat to arrive.

[MzMelissa26]

Yep but running after a ship that was already in the distance lol. Spent a day and a half stranded in Mexico. That's what being 21 and too much tequila will get ya!

[kona_wahine]

Alcohol. :rolleyes: in a jewelry store just have a great time when the guy asked me what ship we are one. Dream! He said your ship is leaving! Yikes! Well, it was still 20 minutes before we left, and after RUNNING to the ship, there was a nice line still boarding. Not sure what would have happened if the guy at the store hadn't said something. Lesson learned!!!

[SoCalKJ]

Did an excursion independent from Carnival and the shuttle dropped people off at their local hotels before running us back to the pier....we had about 15 minutes before "last call."

 

Man! We were sweating...traffic sucked...it was scary! :eek:

[Krazy Kruizers]

Neither of us have ever been a pier runner.

We watch our time when we go ashore to tour on our own.

[GTO-Girl]

Never been a pier runner......but do enjoy watching them.......:D

[clackey]

The closest we have come to pier running was catching the last water taxi before last tender. We had gone to Caye Caulker in Belize and stood in line for the WRONG water taxi. We had to run to another pier and after elbowing our way through the line we barely got onto the taxi. (Some passengers didn't make it on). When we pulled into Belize City we went from the taxi port straight onto the tender. It was a close call.

[John Bull]

Hardly pier-running, but in Naples we took an apparent short-cut into the port, ending up within 100 yards of the ship but the wrong side of a 12ft fence. Had a long long walk back to the port gate, then re-traced our route but outside the port & in through the correct gate. Cost us over half-an-hour.

 

But any cruiser with their head screwed-on (& a belly that's not full of tequila ;)) allows a margin for delays.

 

JB :)

[CruiserBruce]

Do a youtube search. Several videos there of pier running.

[cruzngrl]

The one and only time I booked a ship excursion. Last year in Dominica...Did the river tubing..On the way back to the ship, on the top of a mountain, on a narrow, two lane steep winding road, a car coming up the mountain first started on fire then blew up!!! (Everyone made it out of the car ok) We had to wait and wait for the fire department then had to wait for the car to be moved. Arrived at port about 15 minutes after the ship was due to depart. Luckily the ship had been notified and they did wait. As we (the whole bus) are running up to the ship everyone on board is watching yelling, screaming, and clapping!! (all in good fun) Made for a very eventful day. As we are standing outside next to the bus on this steep mountain and I happen to :Dlook at the tires.....they looked like slicks off of a nascar!!

[cb at sea]

Well, we didn't have to run, but they were getting ready to pull the gangway up!

 

We were in Nassau until 2am....it was formal night. After getting all "dolled up", and eating dinner, we decided to go to Atlantis and gamble! We had a great time, kept an eye on the time and when it was about 1am, we decided to leave. Well, hubby was playing BJ, hit several great hands, so we had to cash out. The casino tellers in Atlantis must have had to count on their toes...they were SOOOOO SLOOOOOW...By the time we got his winnings, it was getting close! We headed to the cab stand, and there were 2 other couples from the ship waiting on cabs. Luckily, a limo pulled up...we all split the cost, told him to drive like crazy and got to the ship just in the nick of time!!!

 

That was the closest call we ever had!! But, we were all in our formal finery and looked great!!!

Edited May 5, 2014 by cb at sea

[AKman2495]

Never had to run, but on one Princess excursion from Cozumel to the mainland, we got back about an hour late. People got off the ferry and were moving quickly to the ship. They were waiting, but it was like, "welcome back...now get moving!

 

In Curacao The ship left port late (about 10 pm). We were on the promenade to watch her sail away when about 5 people came running along the pier and onto the ship. They were not "late" as they closed the gangway about 5 minutes later, but they were moving....

[OCruisers]

Never actually a "Pier Runner".

We have arrived back late from ship sponsored excursions several times over the years and have had an officer and security leading us back to the ship quickly. Also, making sure no one stopped at a gift shop. Amazing, some people want to go shopping when we are already late. :rolleyes:

Once, we were two hours late returning from a catamaran sail (ship's excursion) in St. Vincent and a tram was waiting to get us back to the ship quickly. Some fool couple wanted to go shopping. They were told as soon as the tram arrived the gangplank was going up and the ship would be sailing without them.

LuLu

[navybankerteacher]

We were alongside in Morehead City, NC, having loaded Marines from Camp Lejeune for landing exercises on Onslow Beach - ready to pull out when our navigator discovered lack of local charts - I was sent to request some from a Coast Guard cutter at the next berth - being assured that the pilot boat would wait for me if it took too long - it took some convincing to get the Coast Guard command duty officer to give me the charts, and I ran back to my ship after all lines had been cast off, but a First Division petty officer had his men drop a jacob's ladder as the ship was easing past the corner of the pier - I got aboard that way, with the charts folded and stuck in my belt - the navigator started giving ma a ration for the creases, until the XO pointed out just whose screw up led to them.

 

Never came close to running late since.

[CowPrincess]

First time to Sitka -- got overly involved in sightseeing. No alcohol. A small group of us RUNNING for the final tender. Thank goodness it was downhill all the way :D

 

Second time to Sitka, after telling my travel companion "My clearest memory of Sitka was having to RUN to get the last tender. We are NOT doing that this time." Took one of the HoHo bus trips. We apparently didn't stand in EXACTLY the correct spot (maybe 15 feet away) when we were ready to be picked up. Bus didn't even slow down :( Took us a while to realize that OUR bus wasn't coming back. Had to flag down another bus, the driver was VERY gracious and took us as close to the tender dock as he could.

 

Yup, 2nd clear memory of Sitka -- running for the last seats on the last tender again :D

[Athankfulheart]

It didnt involve a pier but rather a tender. Years ago on CocoCay we walked about as far as one can go, away from the dock for some alone time. We had not brought a watch, so tried to gauge the day in other ways. We decided to start back and after quite a while we began to approach the sections of beach that had chairs, kayak shack and noticed that there werent any actual PEOPLE left. We rounded bend and were thinking "Hmmmmm. Wasn't there , music playing here earlier?!? Then we heard it! The ships horn. We ran like track stars for the tender and wound up riding back with staff and a few odd passengers. It was a pretty awesome day for us :p I have wondered if they would have come looking for us if we hadn't shown up. The cruise was a charter with my hubby's (then) company. Someday we wil tell our grown children about our adventures.... but for now they think we are so boring. :o

[Laurie S.]

Closest I ever came was in St. Lucia. We were on a private dive excursion and the owner decided to give us a tour through the marina and point out the millionaire's homes on the cliffs. It started raining hard and we all said we needed to get back to the ship "now." Well, you can't speed in a marina and we had no choice but to go at a no wake speed. It was a short jaunt from the dock to the ship (no real pier) and I saw them untying the gangplank. I started jogging as best I could with all my dive gear, but most of the group just strolled over slowly. I guess they figured that by me being on the gangplank they were safe.

[GalvestonBear]

Never been a pier runner. We almost always do beach club excursions and I'm anal about missing a ship or plane, etc. (I'm the guy that's at the airport 3 hours early always.)

 

However, wife and I *DID* miss our ferry from Jost Van Dyke to Tortola 3 years ago. We stayed on JVD for 9 nights and our plane was leaving from Tortola back to the states. We were souvenier shopping at Foxy's and lost track of time. Thank goodness the ferry was running every hour as we caught the next one and still made it to the airport with about 30 minutes to spare...which isn't much but in Tortola that was doable as there is only one commercial flight at any given time (typically).

 

We did almost miss our ferry once when vacationing in Playa del Carmen. We caught the ferry over to Cozumel for the day and erroneously thought the last ferry to Playa was at 10:00pm. The last one is actually at 9:00pm. Thankfully, we checked the ferry schedule at the last second and made it to the ferry with about 2 minutes to spare. Had we not, we would've been stuck in Cozumel until 6am. On top of that, for reasons I wonder even now, I neglected to bring a credit card with me and we only had about $50 in cash. We laugh about it all the time now.

[Velvetwater]

I remember on our last port day in Amsterdam us and our new friends were sure we were late getting back to the ship. We had quite a few Belgian strength beers (9%) so were legging it back to the ship like crazed chimps.

 

We were early (could have had another beer) :D

 

So I once thought I was a pier runner...but wasnt one.

Edited May 5, 2014 by Velvetwater

[canadarocks]

On Bernard's tour in St Maarten, made it with just under 10 minutes to spare. He had to order a separate taxi to get us back from Mero Beach, and traffic was awful. We watched the ship sail away with a family running after it. Not a fun experience. :(

[buchhalm]

This must be a mostly Caribbean Islands problem.

If you miss the boat it must be costly to get yourself to another island.

Not so much a problem with Mediterranean cruises. You could probably get to the next port on a bicycle for many of these short hops like Dubrovnik to Kotor and have ours to spare waiting for the ship to come in.

:-)

[papcx]

Well, we didn't have to run, but they were getting ready to pull the gangway up!

 

We were in Nassau until 2am....it was formal night. After getting all "dolled up", and eating dinner, we decided to go to Atlantis and gamble! We had a great time, kept an eye on the time and when it was about 1am, we decided to leave. Well, hubby was playing BJ, hit several great hands, so we had to cash out. The casino tellers in Atlantis must have had to count on their toes...they were SOOOOO SLOOOOOW...By the time we got his winnings, it was getting close! We headed to the cab stand, and there were 2 other couples from the ship waiting on cabs. Luckily, a limo pulled up...we all split the cost, told him to drive like crazy and got to the ship just in the nick of time!!!

 

That was the closest call we ever had!! But, we were all in our formal finery and looked great!!!

 

 

If your going to be late, you might as well do it in style!

[Extra Kim]

On my first cruise I was traveling solo on Ncl Epic in the western med. Our first stop was Livorno near Pisa and Florens. I meet a family from Hawaii and asked if I could join them, said and done, we did both cities. On the way back the train stoped between two stations and it was standing still for a long time. Slowly it got to the next station and we changed train before we could start the ride back to Pisa. When we got to the trainstation no buses where still there. Needless to say we weren't the only cruise ship passangers that had been on the train and the hunt for taxis begun. I pulled over a mini van and jumped in, so did all in the family from Hawaii, exept the father that didn't find a seat. It ended with the whole family going out of the cab. I made it to the ship, but I never saw the family again, dpn't know if they made it back or not.

[lady_cruiser]

Not us but we love watching the pier runners. The ones we late are those you purposely dragged their feet, doing the shuffle when they know they are over 10 minutes late even though they clearly see that there is only one gangplank down.