Tendering In Belize

[indiana-girl]

My husband and I are sailing on the Norwegian Spirit. We get into port in Belize @ 0800. We are taking a tour with a private company that starts at 0930. Will we be to land by then? Has anyone else had a problem with this?

[hogtyde88]

My husband and I are sailing on the Norwegian Spirit. We get into port in Belize @ 0800. We are taking a tour with a private company that starts at 0930. Will we be to land by then? Has anyone else had a problem with this?

 

We booked with a private company as well.

 

I don't know how it works with NCL but on Carnival my wife and I just went down to where the people were waiting for the early tenders to take the Carnival tour groups ashore and we went right in...no problems.

[DonMar]

I had the same question when I was going to Belize. I think you will find the following thread helpful. There are a number of threads on here about Tendering in Belize. You can run a search to find more threads.

 

I believe that each cruise line has their own tendering policy. You may want to inquire with the cruise line. We needed to be off on the first or second tender, but had an independent excursion and our cruise line wanted to get their excursions off first. That being said, I spoke with the Pursers Desk a few days before hand and was provided instructions on how to get an early tender.

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=547257&highlight=tendering+Belize

[hogtyde88]

I had the same question when I was going to Belize. I think you will find the following thread helpful. There are a number of threads on here about Tendering in Belize. You can run a search to find more threads.

 

I believe that each cruise line has their own tendering policy. You may want to inquire with the cruise line. We needed to be off on the first or second tender, but had an independent excursion and our cruise line wanted to get their excursions off first. That being said, I spoke with the Pursers Desk a few days before hand and was provided instructions on how to get an early tender.

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=547257&highlight=tendering+Belize

 

We had read that as well and did talk to the purser but were told they couldn't do anything. They told us to talk to the excursion director in the morning at the assigned lounge which is how we ended up getting in with the ship tour groups...but we never did see the excursion director we just walked in like we were supposed to be there.

 

I imagine it is a little different on each ship.

[Toyz711]

here's how it worked, on the NCL spirit, on dec 6th, 2007. we had a ship's excrusion. our ticket said to meet in the ship's theater at 7:45. we were off the ship by 8:15. the stairs were lined with people, going up from deck 4 (tender area) to deck 7. security officers were at every level to keep order. there were no line-jumpers. tickets were checked as we got on the tender, no excursions ticket..you did not get on, at that time. the ship's excursions took up the 1st 2 tenders, before 8: 15 they were loading the last of the ship's excrusions and calling the tender tickets.

for the tender tickets, they were available starting at 7am, in the main lobby, that morning. i would say that on our trip, over 1/2 the passengers had private or local excrusions booked and would have loved to know how to get on the 1st tender. on NCL is you are booked in a suite, you can escorted to the tender area early.

[chefette]

I still don't quite get how it works. If we are going to Bannister island through the cruiseship do we ever go to Belize city or straight onto a small boat to Bannister? My girls want to shop and I don't know how to do both, beach and city. Thanks

[Toyz711]

if you are going with the ship's excursion, they will tell you where to meet and when..just follow the direction on your tickets. if you heve booked your tour early, the tickets will be waiting in your cabin when you 1st get there. on the tickets it will clearly state where/when to meet. it could be either way, i saw on the website for bannister island, that they have some shopping there. the shopping at the ports was disappointing to me...all name brand knock-offs, very little local fare.

if they have several of you going from the ship, they may pick you up at the ship, if there aren't that many going, they may have you tender in and then take another tender to the island, either way, they will get you there. the best thing would be to start a thread just with your questions of bannsiter island.

if you look at my photos, they had 2 tender doors on the ship...one for the big, regular tender...the other ones was the fishing boats, snorkeling boats, scuba boats. tender boats run constant, with empty ones waiting for the full one to leave the gangway. after that they run every 30 mins until last tender.

the 1st photo is looking from our tender to the other boat (i think was the snorkeling group), the other is another ship where you can see all the tender boats and tour boats waiting for them for open the doors.

[lfdianne]

We were in Belize last week on the NCL Spirit. The ship anchors quite a ways off shore, it took a good 15 minutes to reach the dock by the port tenders. On good days, they can run tenders from both sides of the ship to speed things along. But on our day, the waves were pretty rough so they could only run the tenders from one side of the ship. NCL booked excursions get off first. We arrived at 8am, I had a private tour booked (with cave-tubing dot com) that was to leave at 9:15 and 10am. We were on the 2nd tender, and I was at the ticket desk before 7am to get the tickets. We did not get off the ship until 10am, and I was so worried that we would miss our long anticipated tour to go cave tubing and atv. The NCL staff was not very sympathetic if you did not have a ship's tour booked, or else I didn't know who the "right" person was to talk to. There were many frustrated people aboard. But when we got to the dock at 10:30, and the place where we were supposed to meet Yhony, he was right there waiting for us. He knew we would be delayed and was waiting. There were about 20 other people he was waiting for, also. So it all ended well for us, and we had an awesome day.