Ireland...too many tender ports?

[craig01020]

Good morning all. I'm looking at a 10-day Ireland cruise on Star.  Of the seven planned port stops, four are listed as tender ports.  Has anyone here gone on this itinerary and were so many water shuttles much of an issue? Thanks.

 

[insidecabin]

These cruises round Ireland are very rare.

 

Probably lack of infrastructure on the Atlantic coast

 

Dublin used to be berth in the city but a lot of ships have moved to Dun Laoghaire which is tender and quite a way from the city.

[DCGuy64]

I've been to some of those places and they are small, there wouldn't be space for a large cruise ship so that's why they're tendering.

[eileeshb]

The only reason Killybegs can have a cruise ship doc is that it’s the home port for some very large fishing factory ships.

Belfast and Cobh have their Titanic legacies. Cobh could get changed to the commercial/industrial dock across the bay, they’re still working on the second cruise dock at Cobh to allow a second ship to dock. 

 

Dun Laoighaire is a bit controversial, there were plans to build a cruise dock but the locals objected strenuously, it’s one of the richer areas of Dublin so they won the argument (so far). But there is a direct rail link into the city on the DART so getting into Dublin City is easy enough. 
 

Galway, the harbour is smack in the city so has limited space to expand their space. Btw the traffic in Galway is horrific so I’d be careful about any excursions, stick with NCL for anything going outside the city. 

 I am surprised about Waterford though as that is on a river estuary and has a lifting bridge so should be capable of docking a ship the size of Star. 
 

Dingle is a dinky fishing village that has no reason to have a pier of the size required for a cruise ship.

I wouldn’t be too worried about tendering from a ship the size of Star as the number of guests is significantly lower than would be the case on Breakaway/+ class ships. I experienced tendering on one of the big ships and I will endeavour to avoid it in the future. 
 

I actually spotted a National Geographic cruise ship tendering to the pier in my home village a couple of years ago. Highly unusual as the harbour is very tidal and even goes dry on some low tides. But it’s also the closest village to the Cliffs of Moher as well as the birthplace of the inventor of the modern submarine. 

[insidecabin]

There are loads of other cruise options to do these ports on smaller ships check them out and see if it reduces the number of tender stops.

Will need deeper pockets

  

[MagnoliaBlossom]

I would gladly do tendering in order to do that itinerary, which BTW, is on our bucket list.

[Tak8]

If your concerned about missing ports due to weather conditions, consider doing a land tour.  I've looked at both options, but not sure I want to unpack several times in a week to 10 day trip. 

[Joanne G.]

I booked a similar itinerary with NCL for 2025.   I vacationed in Dublin and Galway last year and left wanting to see more of Ireland.   But driving a rental car on the left side of the road is absolutely out of the question for me.  Bus tours are unappealing as I'd rather have the convenience of unpacking only once on a cruise.  Tender ports limit your time in a city, but on the other hand, most of the transportation between cities on a cruise is while you sleep, as opposed to daytime hours being used for road trips between cities.   With NCL's low and refundable deposits, I jumped on this cruise, and my only complaint was that it is pretty pricy.   Supply and demand, I imagine, as this is an uncommon itinerary.

[eileeshb]

1 hour ago, Joanne G. said:

I booked a similar itinerary with NCL for 2025.   I vacationed in Dublin and Galway last year and left wanting to see more of Ireland.   But driving a rental car on the left side of the road is absolutely out of the question for me.  Bus tours are unappealing as I'd rather have the convenience of unpacking only once on a cruise.  Tender ports limit your time in a city, but on the other hand, most of the transportation between cities on a cruise is while you sleep, as opposed to daytime hours being used for road trips between cities.   With NCL's low and refundable deposits, I jumped on this cruise, and my only complaint was that it is pretty pricy.   Supply and demand, I imagine, as this is an uncommon itinerary.

Accommodation in Ireland has gotten ever more expensive and reduced capacity due to a massive shortage of housing for residents and refugees here as well as the ongoing staff shortages in the hospitality industry. That itinerary definitely gives you a great taste of all aspects of Ireland. 
Killybegs is well out in the wilds of county Donegal so the excursions there include more natural landscapes explorations. My mother is from Donegal and we always visited Glenveagh park and castle, keep an eye out for the wild deer if you go there. 
Belfast - Titanic or Giants Causeway are the top 2 attractions in Northern Ireland, you may be able to find some Game of Thrones tours independently if NCL don’t offer them. I see Derry city is listed as an excursion option, if you’ve seen the Derry Girls on Netflix you’ll see some familiar sights but it is a few hours bus drive from Belfast. If you like Irish whiskey then check into visiting the Bushmills distillery. 
Dingle - stay around the village, or go see Killarney and the ring of Kerry scenic drive, also close to the Skelligs which were used as a filming location in the latest Star Wars trilogy (Luke’s island). Dingle is an Irish-speaking area so you may hear the locals speaking Gaelic and it won’t be the same Gaelic as you might encounter in Donegal or over in Northern Ireland. There are 4 dialects of Gaelic, 3 look the same when written - Munster, Connemara and Leinster, and then Ulster/Donegal uses a much older version of Gaelic with appropriately different spellings. 
Galway - if you venture west of the city you’re heading into Connemara, another Irish speaking area. The city itself is very much into the arts with a few venues and galleries with lots of tourists and students populating the place. You may be offered a cliffs of moher, Burren or ailwee caves excursion, this my home turf. The visitor Center at the cliffs is on land donated by a distant relative many years ago. The Burren is a unique landscape that at first glance looks like bare rock but is so much more, there are structures in the Burren that pre-date the pyramids in Egypt. Ailwee cave has evolved it’s offering in recent years, they now have a birds of prey centre and a local food emporium. I’ve a few wedges of their cheese in my fridge right now. 
Waterford is located in the south eastern corner of Ireland and one of the oldest cities in the country. It’s a nice city to walk around but it’s pretty small, Waterford crystal is the main tourist attraction while there’s plenty of other areas around the the region to visit. Tramore has a lovely long beach and has the main population of surfers on the south coast. 
 

Cobh has it’s own small titanic museum, and is a picturesque hilly seaside town. The main attractions around there will be Blarney Castle and gardens, the Jameson Distillery or go into Cork city and check out the English Market. 

 

[MagnoliaBlossom]

Eileeshb thank you for such a wonderful summary of the area.  Maybe we should hire you to be out guide, 😉. We usually use Derek Smith for our tours and he is a wonderful young man.  He even gave me great details about the area my ancestors were from and what they were enduring about the time of the immigration to the US.  He took us to the Hgh Crosses in the .Boyne  Valley and I thought he would weep as he describes the country’s lack of concern for the failure to preserve them in some way.  We visited the ancient burial mound at Newgrange.  What a treat!  Can’t wait for our family tour in 2024, whole ch is a bit more of a British Isles sampler as our children and grands have not done this part of the world before.   Thank you again.

[eileeshb]

23 hours ago, MagnoliaBlossom said:

Eileeshb thank you for such a wonderful summary of the area.  Maybe we should hire you to be out guide, 😉. We usually use Derek Smith for our tours and he is a wonderful young man.  He even gave me great details about the area my ancestors were from and what they were enduring about the time of the immigration to the US.  He took us to the Hgh Crosses in the .Boyne  Valley and I thought he would weep as he describes the country’s lack of concern for the failure to preserve them in some way.  We visited the ancient burial mound at Newgrange.  What a treat!  Can’t wait for our family tour in 2024, whole ch is a bit more of a British Isles sampler as our children and grands have not done this part of the world before.   Thank you again.

We had a B&B when I was a kid and we now have a surf shop so I’ve been around a lot of the coast working at various surf contests and I’ve cousins all over the country. We get a lot of North American tourists in the shop as we’re close to the Cliffs of Moher which is the most popular tourist attraction outside of the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin.

One of my cousins was an archaeologist and now deals with historic buildings while her brother in law works at Epic Museum in Dublin which concentrates on the stories of the Irish diaspora and has won a few European tourism awards. 
As a nation we are a bit blasé about some of our historical structures, there are High Crosses in hundreds of churchyards and graveyards around the country as well as an abundance of Norman era castles, there was one in the field behind my primary school (grade school) which we climbed inside regularly but has since lost a lot of it’s structure so the current kids can’t go near it. 
meanwhile the house JP Holland (inventor of the modern submarine) grew up in was demolished about a hundred years ago, it’s former location is the football field for that same school.  His father was a member of the royal coastguard back when Ireland was under British rule.

 

the advent of drone technology has led to more historical sites being discovered when we get extended dry weather, they found a whole new complex in the Boyne valley leading to newgrange,  a local drone operator found signs of a ring fort on the cliff edge in Lahinch that no one had ever suspected existed. There’s already a fairly obvious one on the inland side of the village, there’s a lot of superstition associated with those old structures so they tend to be overgrown with briars and other wild plants. 

[jb1957]

I'm curious if you ever did this cruise, as we are booked to leave 5/8/24 on the Star, and I'm worrying about all the tender ports.  They recently sent us an email that we are no longer going to Waterford, and will just have an extra day at sea, which does not make me happy.  

[Asawi]

7 hours ago, jb1957 said:

I'm curious if you ever did this cruise, as we are booked to leave 5/8/24 on the Star, and I'm worrying about all the tender ports.  They recently sent us an email that we are no longer going to Waterford, and will just have an extra day at sea, which does not make me happy.  

I did not do this cruise. But I do remember reading about a similar cruise back in September/Octobe sometime that had a lot of ports cancelled. Among them Dublin. I took another UK/Ireland cruise back in October and we had Dublin and Isle of Man cancelled. People were very upset over Dublin and said it had been the reason for booking that cruise. My view is that if a certain place is that important to you, don't book a cruise to go there. Take a land/air trip there and stay a day or two (or more). (Especially, don't take an autumn cruise! Spring/summer should be a little less risky. SO may you'll be just fine!)

When Dublin got cancelled on my cruise we got an overnight in Cobh instead. I LOVED that! Such a nice little town and so convenient to get on/off the ship there! (I went to Cork the second day, the day we were originally scheduled for Cobh. Very nice city.)