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Ship Time Versus Local Time - Roatan


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Hi - We are sailing in a few weeks on Harmony of the Seas. We are coordinating transportation to a resort. It says we arrive at 8:00. Will that that be ship time (EST) or local time? I believe Roatan is 2 hours behind. So does that mean we will be arriving 6:00 local time if ship stays on EST? How soon after arrival do they typically open up the gangway. The Roatan board does not seem active so I figured I would post here in hopes of getting a quick response.

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We were on the Navigator last week visiting Roatan. The two days before our arrival we had to set our watches two different nights so as when we arrived at 8:00 ship time it was 8:00 Roatan time. I don’t know if that will be the case on the Harmony. We were off the ship by 8:30. 

Edited by island284
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When we were there for spring break, Roatan was 2 hours behind Ship time. I believe the ship was to arrive at 8 according to RC’s itinerary, which was 6AM local time. The gangway was down about 30 minutes after arrival at this stop (and all stops). We were finishing breakfast when the ship was cleared. We were off the ship by 7AM Roatan time, so it was 9AM Ship time.

 

So to specifically answer your question, in our experience last month the time on the itinerary was ship’s time, not local time. I suspect if you tell the transport you’ll meet them 30 minutes after the gangway is down, they’d know when to get you. Everyone in town showed up when our ship arrived-they knew what time we would be there!

 

Enjoy your trip!

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Strange.

 

In most cases the itinerary on the booking form is in local time.   Which may or may not be the same as ship's time.

 

I don't think I have ever heard of the published itinerary being in ships time.   As ships time can vary from cruise to cruise and ship to ship and captain to captain.

 

 

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1 hour ago, SRF said:

Strange.

 

In most cases the itinerary on the booking form is in local time.   Which may or may not be the same as ship's time.

 

I don't think I have ever heard of the published itinerary being in ships time.   As ships time can vary from cruise to cruise and ship to ship and captain to captain.

 

 

Your post got me thinking so I went back and checked our cruise compass from March.

 

Roatan

 

arrival time on itinerary on guest booking invoice 8:00am

arrival time listed on cruise compass (ships time) 9:00am; gangway open 9:30

actual time in Roatan was 7am when we arrived and 7:30 an for the gangway

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14 minutes ago, Ourusualbeach said:

Your post got me thinking so I went back and checked our cruise compass from March.

 

Roatan

 

arrival time on itinerary on guest booking invoice 8:00am

arrival time listed on cruise compass (ships time) 9:00am; gangway open 9:30

actual time in Roatan was 7am when we arrived and 7:30 an for the gangway

 

So it looks like the gest booking invoice was using local time and they got there early.

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2 hours ago, SRF said:

Strange.

 

In most cases the itinerary on the booking form is in local time.   Which may or may not be the same as ship's time.

 

I don't think I have ever heard of the published itinerary being in ships time.   As ships time can vary from cruise to cruise and ship to ship and captain to captain.

 

 

For some reason this doesn't seem to be the case for Oasis class ships. I have defiantly been on many sailings where the itinerary time was local FL (ships departure port) time and Island time differed. 

24 minutes ago, Host Clarea said:

 

So it looks like the gest booking invoice was using local time and they got there early.

Not necessarily....March is when we changed the clocks (daylight savings)...so some sailings in March in the islands may have had a 1 hour time difference where others had a 2 hour time difference for the same port in the same month.

Edited by bajathree
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Our experience is that you are notified the night before to set your clocks ahead or back an hour to the ships time which will correspond to the time at the port you will be at. Your excursion will be the local time which will be the ships time in that port. I have never seen it any different. Only our experience. Whatever port you are in be it Fort Lauderdale or any other. That is the ships time and you should be setting your watch to that time. If you are told to change the time. Everything on the ship will change. Dining, shows etc.

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1 hour ago, twodaywonder said:

Our experience is that you are notified the night before to set your clocks ahead or back an hour to the ships time which will correspond to the time at the port you will be at. Your excursion will be the local time which will be the ships time in that port. I have never seen it any different. Only our experience. Whatever port you are in be it Fort Lauderdale or any other. That is the ships time and you should be setting your watch to that time. If you are told to change the time. Everything on the ship will change. Dining, shows etc.

Haven’t had to change our clocks on our last 2 cruises.  Symphony this past March and Allure at Christmas.

 

As others stated it varies by ship.

 

We did a B2B on Liberty several years ago (4 day and 5 day).  They both went to Cozumel.  One cruise we changed our clocks the other cruise we didn’t. 

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On 5/8/2019 at 6:28 AM, Host Clarea said:

 

So it looks like the gest booking invoice was using local time and they got there early.

 

Yeap, there is no way from RCI to know the ships time for the arrival, as they do not know what the Captain will be about ship's time.

 

Heck, the Captain could change the ship to GMT or Singapore time if they wanted to do so.

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The Oasis class ships usually stay on local time of the departure city.  Other ships may or may not change to match to the time zone in port.  Roatan does not observe Daylight Saving Time, so November-March it is only 1 hour behind Florida, but the rest of the year it is 2 hours behind.

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