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Going to NZ on Carnival Legend in Feb and was checking out the shore excursions for Dunedin only to find there was no ship's Taieri Gorge Railway trip. According to the Carnival website the ship arrives at 1100 and departs at 2000. This would make it hard to line up with the Dunedin Railways timetable for the day (25 Feb) but there was a note on their web page saying train trip adjustments are made when a cruise ship is in port on a Sunday, so there was hope yet. I emailed Dunedin Railways and they replied that according to them the ship was getting in at 0800 and departing at 2000. I checked out the Otago Port Authority website and they had the ship arriving at 0900 and leaving at 2000!

 

Everybody seemed to be in agreement that the ship was leaving at 2000 but there were three different arrival times.

 

I thought the best thing to do would be to talk to somebody at Carnival Australia but that only muddied the waters more. After ringing the 1300 Australian number I ended up speaking to a helpful young lass in New Jersey USA. She explained to me that times on the website are always expressed in the same timezone as the port where the ship commenced the cruise and as such these times would always be Australian ESST and not local NZ time and as such the ship would actually arrive in Dunedin at 0900 local time. That brought Carnival and the Otago P A into line with arrival time but it stuffed up the departure time of everybody agreeing with the 2000 time, which is 1800 ESST time according to their rule. She was going to contact the ship directly so as to get the right time straight from the horse's mouth and she would email me as soon as there was a reply. To date I have received nothing.

 

 

I think a look in town and a couple of beers is the safe option!

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Going to NZ on Carnival Legend in Feb and was checking out the shore excursions for Dunedin only to find there was no ship's Taieri Gorge Railway trip. According to the Carnival website the ship arrives at 1100 and departs at 2000. This would make it hard to line up with the Dunedin Railways timetable for the day (25 Feb) but there was a note on their web page saying train trip adjustments are made when a cruise ship is in port on a Sunday, so there was hope yet. I emailed Dunedin Railways and they replied that according to them the ship was getting in at 0800 and departing at 2000. I checked out the Otago Port Authority website and they had the ship arriving at 0900 and leaving at 2000!

Everybody seemed to be in agreement that the ship was leaving at 2000 but there were three different arrival times.

I thought the best thing to do would be to talk to somebody at Carnival Australia but that only muddied the waters more. After ringing the 1300 Australian number I ended up speaking to a helpful young lass in New Jersey USA. She explained to me that times on the website are always expressed in the same timezone as the port where the ship commenced the cruise and as such these times would always be Australian ESST and not local NZ time and as such the ship would actually arrive in Dunedin at 0900 local time. That brought Carnival and the Otago P A into line with arrival time but it stuffed up the departure time of everybody agreeing with the 2000 time, which is 1800 ESST time according to their rule. She was going to contact the ship directly so as to get the right time straight from the horse's mouth and she would email me as soon as there was a reply. To date I have received nothing.

I think a look in town and a couple of beers is the safe option!

 

From my experience, that information is incorrect. It would cause chaos. Lucky she is checking with the ship beforehand.

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The Dunedin railways website shows there is an afternoon train on Sunday 25th February, departing Dunedin Railways station at 2:30pm and arriving back at 6:30pm, which would give you plenty of time to get back to the ship for an 8pm departure.

 

http://www.dunedinrailways.co.nz/our-journeys/taieri-gorge-railway/taieri-gorge-to-pukerangi

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I agree with the others that the time is always the local time of the port of call.

 

I seem to recall that you can book the Taieri Gorge rail trip on the basis of paying on the day when you arrive at the Dunedin railway station to pick up your tickets. Maybe it is worth checking this out.

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Well, I have it from the horse's mouth and I have it in writing. The ship will remain on Melbourne time throughout the cruise and the times shown on the cruise itinerary, arrive at 1100 and depart at 2000 will be AESST (Melbourne time) which will be 0900 and 1800 local time.

The nett result is that we arrive a bit too late to get the morning train and the afternoon train returns a bit too late to get back before sailing time.

I'll chase the train company up to see if they're going to have a train leave from the wharf, but I doubt it.

Sh!t happens.

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Well, I have it from the horse's mouth and I have it in writing. The ship will remain on Melbourne time throughout the cruise and the times shown on the cruise itinerary, arrive at 1100 and depart at 2000 will be AESST (Melbourne time) which will be 0900 and 1800 local time.

.

Isn’t 1100 and 2000 Melbourne time 1300 and 2200 NZ time?

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You are right. NZ time is two hours ahead of Aust daylight saving time. Therefore 11am is 1pm NZ time. I think it just gets more and more confusing. Staying on Melbourne time seems very strange.

 

It certainly does and I suspect that won't actually happen in reality, otherwise all port stop times would be incorrect.

 

We went over to New Caledonia on Carnival just over a year ago and the ship changed times for that cruise so I don't understand why it wouldn't happen on an NZ cruise.

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I'm going to be in Dunedin in November on Carnival Legend and the times in port are the same - arrive 11.00am and depart 8.00pm. All other ports have usual times like arriving 8.00 and depart 5 or 6.00pm so I guess it is right. Too early to book shore tours yet but website says I have to book onboard anyway. First time with Carnival so just finding my way around its website.. Train journey appears on second page of Port Chalmers tours so hopefully it will be offered. Maybe it will run at a special time for the ship. mmmmmmm :)

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Going to NZ on Carnival Legend in Feb and was checking out the shore excursions for Dunedin only to find there was no ship's Taieri Gorge Railway trip.

 

Hi,

 

There is a ship run excursion for the train. You probably had the same issues I had. Carnival AU's website is pretty bad, so you may not have known that their shore excursions page is limited to 5 excursions per page (why carnival? your narrow search list is longer than the list of excursions per page!)

The train is on the 2nd page. The link to the 2nd page is at the very top of the list, on the right hand side.

 

Or here is a direct link to the tour:

https://www.carnival.com.au/shore-excursions/taieri-gorge-by-train.aspx

 

I will be taking this tour, I am on the same cruise. I do not know if the train stops by the ship or not - i would think it does.

Sadly Carnival only allows you to purchase/book tours on board the actual ship.

One more reason I say Carnivals' Australia website is pretty bad.

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Hi Amaroo Andrew and Whzzz28

 

We were on the Crystal Symphony cruise last year and thought that the railway was a great tour to go on in Dunedin.

For your interest and perhaps help your decision making process we and others on our cruise were very disappointed.

The train runs on a single line track so whatever you see for the first 2 hours, you then see coming back. They often have holdups and we were on the train for 7 hours.

The trip starts and returns near the ship .

As our excursions were chargeable we opted to book the trip privately as it included a city tour which was half the price.

As we were delayed for two hours and the ships tour was right in front of ours, we missed the city tour as we had to return to the ship.

Others who took the shorter sea view tour had the similar experience.

Or advice to you is skip the trip and spend the time looking around the Scottish created town with interesting architecture appreciably the station and the university buildings.

The residents of Duneden are very proud of their heritage are amazingly friendly and helpful.

Hope this helps

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

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