How long does it take to tender in the morning?

[cwnhokie]

We are sailing on the Inspiration and would like to do a private tour with a meeting time between 7:30 and 8:00 at the terminal. We arrive 7:00 Cayman time, we will have to tender after the folks booked with Carnival, so would be be able to make the meeting time? Thanks,

[Rocky365]

If I remember correctly it is about a 15 minute ride to the dock from the boat. As long as you are on the first couple of tenders in, the private operators livliehood depend on the cruiselines, they know when your ship is coming in and they most likely will not leave without you.

[cruisejunkie2]

just go down with sheet in hand that you have a tour and get on that first tendering boat or second one there are more than one. you have to get up and have breakfast early

[Scooter-n-GB]

just go down with sheet in hand that you have a tour and get on that first tendering boat or second one there are more than one. you have to get up and have breakfast early

 

If it's not a Carnival sponsored tour, you will not get priority embarkation, unless you are lucky. With that said, you should be able to make 8 A.M. even without priority tendering. :)

[cwnhokie]

Now all I need to do is get my butt out of bed. I'm used to getting up around 5:30 here. But on a boat with no kids and the curtains pulled tight..... ahhhhh, sorry, I lost my train of thought.

[gazingm42]

You should not have a problem. Let let you tour know your ship name

and arrival time. We have found the 3 times which we arrived at 7am.

Most folks wait for the tours to get off the ship. Its only the ship excursion

you will need to wait for. These tenders hold several 100's of folks. So you

should be OK.

[TeeBuccs]

On our last trip there on Carnival, we got tender tickets to be in the early groups tendered to shore. Ended up that after being anchored for 30 minutes or so they started calling all groups to go ashore. It seems that they have two loading areas for tenders - one they use for their own ship sponsored excursions and a second for those independents. It was a breeze.

 

Note the return trip - VERY LONG LINES on land waitin for tenders. Lines move but don't be shocked if you show up hour before sail and the lines are a mile long.

 

Enjoy!

[cwnhokie]

When we tendered in Cozumel, we went up on the Lido deck and they handed out numbers and we waited for our number to be called. Is that the way they still do it? This was on the Inspiration and we will be on the Inspiration again this time.

 

TeeBuccs, I assume if you are in line for the tender one hour before, they will not leave you? We expect to be back by 12:30 at the latest and the boat leaves at 2:00. Well we are going to get passports tomorrow just in case.

[Krysse]

Be very careful on that one. We just got back from the Conquest. We booked with another tour operator besides Carnival due to their age restrictions and we had children with us. We arrived late, a little before 11am, and were going to leave at 6pm, so the last tender was suppose to be at 5pm. People were instantly being tendered off. I stood on our balcony watching 8 tenders leave with people that were on carnival tours leave before they even attempted to call our numbers down, (which we waited an hour for earlier). They kept coming on the intercom saying "we are having issues with the wake, and we will start getting people on the tender shortly" (even though the wake was not bad at all, and people were boarding the tenders with almost no problems at all.) When they finally called our number to get on the tender, it was total chaos. We went downstairs only to be put in a tight crammed area of people. To add fuel to the flames, we were about to board the tender, and they stopped the line for another group that was booked with carnival. They got to jump to the front of the line after we waited almost 45 min stuffed like sardines waiting to get off. We finally got off the boat around 12:30, and had to be back for the last tender at 5pm. Carnival royally made all of us 2nd class on that one.

 

To burn us even more, we arrived like we were suppose to and made it back to the boat by 5pm. Around 6pm, another tender comes to the boat of people that were on carnival excursions. I am not sure I will ever book another cruise with them after they treated so many of us so poorly because we did not meet their restrictions for excursions.

[dinky1s]

cwnhokie - are you going on Inspiration leaving Oct 6? If so, so are we! I recognized the arrival and departure times in Cayman. Sorry this is off topic.

[cwnhokie]

We are leaving on Oct. 11th, a week after yours. Let me know how your tendering goes.