Celebrity Constellation delayed over 30 minutes departing Panama

[LB_NJ]

Late returning shore excursions caused the delay.

 

Looks like 3 buses worth.

 

Guess there are times it makes sense to book an excursion through the cruise line.

[prmssk]

In certain circumstances, it really can make a difference.  We've been on late cruise line excursions three times now where the ship waited for us.  The first was almost 10 years ago on the Celebrity Summit in Quebec City.  In more recent years, it was with other cruise lines (Princess and Carnival) an excursion to Tulum from Cozumel (with the uncertainty of the ferry schedule, we always do a cruise line one if we want to go mainland from Cozumel), and an excursion to Chichen Itza from Progreso.  

 

In each of these cases, these were visits to sites a distance from the port that required a full day and essentially the entire time in port.

[Mark_K]

17 hours ago, LB_NJ said:

Late returning shore excursions caused the delay.

 

Looks like 3 buses worth.

 

Guess there are times it makes sense to book an excursion through the cruise line.

If they knew three buses worth of people were going to be a little late, I imagine they would wait whether or not it was Celebrity sponsored.

[Ex-Airbalancer]

This is not usually at all 

in Le Havre we were delay hours , as the traffic back for Paris was crazy , it look like about 20 buses were late coming back 

 

[mom says]

I don't think I can remember a cruise where we weren't delayed at least once waiting for a late excursion. 

[CHEZMARYLOU]

We were delayed over 2 hours waiting for excursion busses to return from the PC.

[LB_NJ]

6 hours ago, Mark_K said:

If they knew three buses worth of people were going to be a little late, I imagine they would wait whether or not it was Celebrity sponsored.

If it wasn’t a Celebrity excursion how would they know why there was a delay.

[Mark_K]

1 minute ago, LB_NJ said:

If it wasn’t a Celebrity excursion how would they know why there was a delay.

I would assume that the tour operator would contact them, in any case I would hope 100-150 missing passengers would give them pause.

[Coolcruise02]

4 minutes ago, LB_NJ said:

If it wasn’t a Celebrity excursion how would they know why there was a delay.

Private tour operators will notify the ship or pier. Their livelihood depends on getting their customers back in time. I was on a private tour one time, when a car wreck blocked the major roads. Not only did our driver notify the ship but he also knew a lot of the bus drivers for ship excursions and knew they were stopped behind us.

[miched]

From what I read If it is a partial transit of the canal all tours are thru the ship.   When in the lake you leave directly  from the ship to go on the tours.   If you don’t have a tour you can’t `get off.  The ship then stops at a city for a short time after leaving  the canal to pick up the passengers.  There are delays because of tours that go thru the rest of the locks to the pacific.   Those can be delayed because of traffic coming back and also having to wait for access to get into the locks.

 

Happy cruising 🌊🚢🇺🇸🌅  

[jelayne]

People take the port agent contact info for just this reason.

[DaKahuna]

On 1/29/2024 at 6:09 PM, LB_NJ said:

Late returning shore excursions caused the delay.

 

Looks like 3 buses worth.

 

Guess there are times it makes sense to book an excursion through the cruise line.

 

Darn, I was looking forward to a new pier runner video.  Disappointed now.  

 

[mahdnc]

20 hours ago, Ex-Airbalancer said:

This is not usually at all 

in Le Havre we were delay hours , as the traffic back for Paris was crazy , it look like about 20 buses were late coming back 

 

 

During our visit to Phu My (Ho Chi Minh City) on Solstice last month, there were 20 Celebrity shorex buses that arrived back to port late which I thought was crazy.  

[1Virgo]

The traffic in Panama can be horrid and the cruise port is not close to the city.   They were lucky they booked through Celebrity.   

[Ex-Airbalancer]

11 minutes ago, DaKahuna said:

 

Darn, I was looking forward to a new pier runner video.  Disappointed now.  

 

I usually see them slowing down the pier thing they own the place