Ships leaving port early question

[ShelbyLK]

Hi all,

 

I have heard that on occasion a ship has to leave port early for whatever the reason...maybe an upcoming storm and they need to get out to sea before it hits. My question is, if you are already in port (on a tour, shopping, or whatever you may be doing), and the decision is made to leave early, how do you know that you need to get back on the ship, earlier than the already stated leave time?

[tak81288]

Hi all,

 

I have heard that on occasion a ship has to leave port early for whatever the reason...maybe an upcoming storm and they need to get out to sea before it hits. My question is, if you are already in port (on a tour, shopping, or whatever you may be doing), and the decision is made to leave early, how do you know that you need to get back on the ship, earlier than the already stated leave time?

 

 

I have never heard of them making that decision after people left the ship. The decision (at least in my family's experience) was that they always knew beforehand. Then they start letting people off and reiterating the new time to be back on as we were leaving.

 

If I am wrong and it doesn't always happen this way, I'm sure someone will correct me. :)

[going to see the world]

Definitely an interesting question!

[firefly333]

The only time Iv ever heard of this happening was when a storm blew up at a tender port for a beach stop that the cruiseline owned.

 

They just announced for people to get into the tenders early. You would not be so far you could not know.

 

It was too stormy for the beach excursions anyway so they called it off early.

[wrp96]

I've heard of it happening but very rarely, usually they have enough warning. In the cases where it did happen, if they had time, they sent staff out to popular spots to try and let people know. If they couldn't find everybody, then they left information with the port agent on how to take care of the people that were being left behind (including going into the people's cabins and getting things like passports/wallets/medicine from the safes and leaving them with the port agent). I know when RCCL's Granduer of the Seas had to leave behind people in Bermuda several years ago, RCCL put the people up in nice hotels, flew them back to the states, and gave them refunds.

[TheGrandparents]

Our ship was scheduled to leave the port in San Juan at 12:00PM, we were the last people up the plank and she sailed away at 11:35PM.

 

We were on a Carnival shore excursion and they did say that they were waiting for us to return.

 

I would guess that they knew everyone was on board and shipped out a little early.

 

So the answer is YES, they do sometimes leave early.