Getting off the ship at ports

[LSUkat]

Hi, I made arrangements for excursions outside of the cruise ship and am curious how long it will take us to get off of the ship? Do we have to wait for others who have organized cruise excursions to exit or can we walk right off? I don't believe there will be any tenders involved. If we arrive in port at 8AM how much time should we need to get off of a ship that holds 1250 passegers. Thank you.

[CruiserBruce]

If its a docking port, you should have no problem being off the ship within 30 minutes of the scheduled docking time, unless something unexpected occurs.

 

If its a tendering port, the story is much more complicated. It can be an hour or more. 

 

In either case, if you are doing a private tour (not a shared tour), you own that vehicle and personnel for the duration. They will wait for you.

[leaveitallbehind]

The only time we have been asked to wait behind ship sponsored tours to disembark was when the ship was tendering, in particular at Grand Cayman, which made an undesirable process even more so.

[LindaD22]

On our current NZ cruise with Royal Caribbean, we are doing a combination of ship & independent excursions. For the ship tours, we have been escorted off before other passengers, who were waiting behind a rope to leave. I don’t think this delayed them very long, though, since the process was quick. 

[Honolulu Blue]

15 hours ago, LSUkat said:

Do we have to wait for others who have organized cruise excursions to exit or can we walk right off? 

Probably of limited relevance to you, but I've been on cruise ship excursions where we were told to wait in X location on the ship and when ready, we were told to disembark - usually with guidance of some kind to lead us to the tender or the bus.  We may or may not have been ahead of other passengers.

[CruiserBruce]

There is a common misconception that all the ship's excursions depart the ship immediately upon docking. This isn't true for a number of reasons. Generally, the ship's excursion departures are spaced out across the day, depending on length of excursions (obviously, longer excursions start earlier) and timing relative to the nature of the excursion. Facilities at the port to handle the buses is another variable. Some short excursions may actually be repeated at different times of the day...for example a 3 hour excursion might be offered at 9 and 1pm.

 

In the vast majority of ports, passengers not on ship's excursions are getting off at the same time excursion passengers are.