Stingray Sailing - Enough Time?

[tammi67]

Our ship, FOS, is scheduled to arrive in Grand Cayman at 8AM. I'm wanting to book a tour with Stingray Sailing, but the afternoon tour won't have us back in time to make the shipand the morning tour meets at 8:15AM and departs at 8:30AM. Will we have enough time to get off of the ship and make it to that tour? Thanks!

[agagal313]

If you are booking your tour through the ship, they will make sure you get off first and make your tour.

 

If you are booking through a private company, e-mail them and ask. Grand Cayman is a tendered port and I don't believe from past experience that 30 mins will be enough time to make your tour.

[FreezingInMichigan]

Agreed - contact the tour operator. We used this group last year and loved them. Our emails were promptly replied to by the captain's wife. I had a concern about being able to get on/off the boat at the sand bar. I'm overweight, bad knees, etc. She took the time to go to the boat and take pictures of the steps for me. Their level of customer service is amazing.

 

~ Sheryl

[VillaHappy]

I booked their tour for our February visit to Grand Cayman. Sadly, the seas were rough and we didn't get there :( No tenders would come out to our ship. However, I got the impression that if they know you are coming, they will wait for you.

[tammi67]

Thanks!

[boricua2007]

Tammi,

 

first you need to find out if your ships stays on departure port's time or changes time according to the ports you're visiting.

 

That said, I had the same concern you have when I was making research for my cruise on 5/2/10. I was traveling on Carnival Glory and was all confused with ships time and port time and daytime saving time!!! :eek:

 

In our case, our ship, Carnival Glory, stays on Miami time and GC doesn't observes daylight savings. That means, right now there's an hour difference. Our scheduled port arrival time was 10:00am (ships time) which really was 9:00am GC time and our tour meeting time was at 10:15am (GC time). We took tender 1 and were on port at 10:30am ships time = 9:30am GC time. Meaning we were there super on time!!! (Hope you get this, better than I did....cause even when writing it, it confuses me! :eek:)

 

If that's your case (that ships stays on Florida...is this your departure state?.. time always), you'll propably have enough time and I highly recommend Stingray Sailing! Chip and his father are awesome!!!

 

If the ship is late for some reason, he'll be there for you. That said, if the ships on time and most of the people are there early and/or on time, he will not make everybody wait for those who were not there on time. And I totally agree with him. In our case, we almost departed to the tour at 10:00am (instead of 10:30am), because we were all there, except for a group. Well we couldn't and we waited for them 'till the time agreed and they barely made it. We departed at 10:35am. (If 20 out of 25 persons were there on the first tender!!!, it means it was completely duable. They just didn't woke up early enough!)

 

Whatever you decide, hope you have a wonderful trip. I just wish I could go again soon!!!!! :cool:

[fkincaid]

We booked a snorkle tour to stingray city with Absolute divers and it was great we got in late but no problem Mark was waiting at the yacht club for us. make sure your pushy when departing the ship otherwise the cruise line puts their excursion people off first and you end up waiting in line for an hour.