Reflection tender in Santorini 25th August

[brammers]

Hi, we have booked a private tour, and need to meet our tour guide at the top of the cable car. Does anybody have any experience of how long it takes to get on the cable car and to the top, is there normally massive queues? We are due to meet at 9.15am, and are not sure what time to start disembarking from the ship, what is the system aboard reflection for tenders? Is it just queue, or is it get a ticket and wait to be called? Any info will be gratefully received.. TIA.:)

[rose6]

Suggest you search if any other ships will be in port on the same day. I seem to recall that ship run tours were given priority in tender assignment. You might be wise to arrange a later meeting time for your private guided tour. Allow yourself at least half an hour for the cable cars because you may have to wait for one to come down and there may be many people ahead of you in line. The number of ships in port may impact your wait time. Also, keep in mind that at the end of your port day there may be long queues

to take the cable car down to the area where you pick up the tenders to return to the ship.

[cynbar]

We were in port on a day when there were 9000 cruise passengers from several ships. The lines for the cable car were really long and moved slowly, plus people had to stand in line in the hot sun. Allow plenty of time. We had prebooked on a ferry to bypass the cable car/donkey problem and take us down to Oia, so luckily we were spared or we may have turned around and gone back to the ship (we saw people doing this which is a shame, Santorini is as lovely as all the pictures you see.)

[CYNSport]

According to this, there will be five ships in port, two docking at 7 a.m. (Including the Reflection), one at 9:00 a.m. and two at 3:00 p.m.

 

https://www.santorini.net/information/cruise-ship-calendar/

 

Totally agree with the other posters about the queue for the cable car. We DIY'ed in Santorini. We got off in the morning (around 9) and got a tender rather quickly (because we were later than the tour groups), but had to wait about 30 minutes for the cable car going up (yes, in the hot sun). The only choices were cable car, very steep, hard walk, or donkeys. (There were only two ships in early that day). We made sure to return before the masses, so we only had a short wait for the cable car and then the tender back to the ship. But, per fellow passengers, there were much longer waits later.

Edited August 14, 2016 by CYNSport

[arsesta]

How accurate would you say that website is? I did a search for my Celebrity Reflection cruise in the same port in October. Celebrity website says it's docked from morning until 6pm, but this website says 2pm-9pm. Which should I trust?? :confused:

[CYNSport]

How accurate would you say that website is? I did a search for my Celebrity Reflection cruise in the same port in October. Celebrity website says it's docked from morning until 6pm, but this website says 2pm-9pm. Which should I trust?? :confused:

 

I wouldn't rely on this for docking times (not just this one, but all of them), but usually they reflect pretty accurately the number of ships in port. When we were on the Constellation in the Adriatic this past May, one of the port schedules showed us as a tender (but we were docked). I would rely on port times as given from my cruise line :)

[Beanb41]

Hi, we have booked a private tour, and need to meet our tour guide at the top of the cable car. Does anybody have any experience of how long it takes to get on the cable car and to the top, is there normally massive queues? We are due to meet at 9.15am, and are not sure what time to start disembarking from the ship, what is the system aboard reflection for tenders? Is it just queue, or is it get a ticket and wait to be called? Any info will be gratefully received.. TIA.:)

 

If you are going to have a number of ships in port at the same time it is going to put huge pressure on tenders. We were there in April and the only ship in port as such tenders were open and quick. This is going to be a popular port and thus tender operations may well be in process. This means that ships excursions go first followed by Elite and above then tender tickets. If you are not elite or above then you will have to queue up for tender tickets and be prepared to queue up a lot earlier than when tickets are available

[Milhouse]

Not completely like for like and a few years old so take this info w/ a grain of salt.

 

We visited Santorini on Reflection in 2013 but arrived in the afternoon. They handed tickets in the morning at 9am and there was already a huge (100 person?) queue at 8:30am. The people at the front were getting tix with tender 10 on them. I ended up getting tix with tender 16. The assumption (as listed above) is that passengers with status will get tix with tenders 1-10.

 

Tendering was supposed to start at 2pm for us but it looked like tendering for people with excursions started at 1:30pm and ferried them to the base of Megalochori where it looked like coach buses picked them up and drove them up the hill.

 

Tender tix 1 and 2 were called at 1:45pm.

We got off the ship earlier (long story) and the line to the cable car was queued to just outside the building. It took my friends 10-15min to work their way through the queue. Note: All the other ships in port had arrived in the morning so we didn't have to compete for the cable car with another ship's passengers.

 

I hiked it up the donkey trail. At a brisk pace, it took me 17 minutes to hike to the top of the trail and another 4 to walk another set of various stairs to get to the cable car area. The donkey trail didn't feel steep because of how the steps were configured (long steps). It was a bit stinky tho. The final stairs at the top of the trail though were a lot more steep. I suspect people can casually walk up in about 30-35mins so I do think it's a viable option if the cable car line is insane and if you are in reasonable shape.

 

From a time comparison perspective, my friends beat me to the top of the cable car by about 5 mins.

[Peteymil]

We were in port on a day when there were 9000 cruise passengers from several ships. The lines for the cable car were really long and moved slowly, plus people had to stand in line in the hot sun. Allow plenty of time. We had prebooked on a ferry to bypass the cable car/donkey problem and take us down to Oia, so luckily we were spared or we may have turned around and gone back to the ship (we saw people doing this which is a shame, Santorini is as lovely as all the pictures you see.)

 

Can you explain the ferry option. I never knew about this. How does it work?

[cynbar]

Can you explain the ferry option. I never knew about this. How does it work?

 

http://www.santoriniport.com/santorini-water-taxi/

 

Bad news --- I googled it and came up with this, apparently it has been discontinued. It's a shame, worked well for us and allowed us to by pass the cable car line. I would probably recommend a ship's tour, which I believe bypasses the cable line and tenders passengers to a spot near Oia.

[Beanb41]

Can you explain the ferry option. I never knew about this. How does it work?

 

The ferry to Oia was operating in April when we were there on the Connie. It is operated by the boatmen of Santorini and costs 15 euros. The ferries leave from where the Tenders tie up. If you cant see them you will hear them touting for business. The trip to Oia includes the bus to take you from the jetty up to the town and another bus which will take you from Oia to Fira where you walk down the hill to the gondola or further down the same lane to the donkey path. If there are many cruise ships in you can guarantee the ferries will be running. When we were there we were the only ship so the ferries also acted as our tenders.

I doubt if that will be the case with so many ships in, as they will concentrate on the ferry run.