Royal Caribbean Santorini

[pindawal]

HI, I have been researching various websites wondering about Santorini. It seems that some cruise lines tender at one area letting off passengers who are taking shore excursions and then move onto another location tender and let everyone else off.  I have called RC but they didn't seem to know. I am sure someone here would know! tia!

[John Bull]

Santorini is a tender port for all ships.

Those on ships' excursions are tendered to the little ferry port of Athinios, where the road goes down to the harbour - passengers then transfer to a bus.

 

The rest are tendered to the landing pier at the foot of the cliffs below Fira, where there's

- a cablecar (usually inadequate for the numbers),

- a zig-zag path up to Fira (walk, or on mules),

- or a little ferry to Oia  (a road comes own to the pier at Oia & bus up to Oia included).

 

Some ships disembark those on ship's tours & then move to a different mooring closer to the Fira pier.

But our Princess ship didn't move to a different mooring - those on ship's tours were tendered by local boats to Athinios, immediately followed by everyone else on ship's tenders  being tendered to the pier under Fira.

 

It'll be interesting to see how many CC members respond that their ship changed their mooring between those tender operations & those ship remained at just the one mooring.  

 

For the return to the ship there''s no ferry from Oia, and ships' excursionists are dropped in Fira. So everyone has to return to the tender pier from Fira by cablecar or the zig-zag path (a 25 minute walk down) - consequently lines for the cablecar are usually long and slow.

Celebrity have been experimenting with returning their excursionists the same way that they went ashore, via the ferry harbour at Athinios. I don't know how successful the experiment, or whether other cruise lines will follow suit, but hopefully that will catch on - making life much easier for everyone.  

 

JB 

[wheezedr]

JB has basically covered the situation completely.  The only thing I might add is that you might want to see how many other ships are in port the day you are there.  That can help give you an idea of how busy things may be.

[taylortime05]

We will be on Celebrity Reflection on Oct 7 along with MSC Lirica.  We originally were with a group from our roll call on a private excursion with total 10 people.  It sounded wonderful.  But I thought I'd make my life easier and just book a ship excursion so we'd avoid the cable cars and get off the ship first.    We booked "Island of Santorini and Village of Oia" and I called Celebrity and per their info we do not need to use cable cars coming back to the ship.    Now, I'm second guessing my decision.  I'm sure the private tour would of been nicer because it's smaller, but I thought I'd waste less time with the ships excursions.  I'd appreciate your perspective? 

 

Thanks