For those not going on X's xcursions in Santorini

[24butterfly]

I know that there are some shore excursions from the cruiseline that depart first. My question is: For those going on the cruiseline excursions, do they tender at Athinos first or do they tender at Fira? Thanks!

[CruiserBruce]

I know that there are some shore excursions from the cruiseline that depart first. My question is: For those going on the cruiseline excursions, do they tender at Athinos first or do they tender at Fira? Thanks!

Ship's excursions tender first at Athinos.

[24butterfly]

The reason I ask is that we are looking into a private excursion. We drop anchor at 2, and stay 'til 10. The tour company wants to meet us at 3:00 at the exit fm the cable car, but from reading around the posts, I'm thinking that 3 isn't feasable b/c of the tendering at Athinos taking time? I'm thinking that we may get off the ship 3:45 ish and the tour is 5 hrs....What do you think about this? Thanks again.

[CruiserBruce]

I would think 3:30 would be fine. The tour will wait for you, and not start the clock until you arrive. As mentioned in many other threads on this board about the tendering operation, it is a full tilt show. The ships use local tenders, or which there are many and they are generally larger than ship's tenders. Some ships open up 2 locations on the side of the ship for the tendering operation. I have been in a number of tender ports- this one is the most efficient I have ever seen. It goes pretty quickly.

 

I doubt they drop anchor. I think the caldera is pretty deep. The use thrusters to hold themselves in position.

 

But I understand your point- they intend to start their tendering at Athinos at 2pm, most likely. It is at most a 15 minute move to the Fira tendering location.

[Mcpe29]

We have arranged for a private tour while on Santorini. If our guide is willing to meet us at Athinos, does anybody know if Celebrity will allow us to tender with the rest of the guests going on X excursions even though we will not be joining them?

[CruiserBruce]

I would ask that question over on the Celebrity board as more Celebrity experts hang out over there.

 

On HAL (I know, you didn't ask about HAL) only excursion passengers were allowed off at Athinos.

[Mcpe29]

Ok, I will do that. Thanks.

[tom_uk]

My last visit to Santorini was in early October 2009 on Celebrity Solstice. We didn't make a separate stop off Athinios, the ship sailed to the normal anchoring area near the bottom of the cable car and stopped there. There was no delay for non-excursion passengers simply going ashore; tendering (by already-issued ticket) started very quickly.

 

Of course, Solstice is a big ship and it's entirely possibly that multiple tendering pontoons were in use, with excursions tenders taking passengers from a different pontoon. However, I didn't actually see that.

 

I blogged while I was on that cruise. Here's a post about getting tender tickets, and here's a post about the actual visit to Santorini that day. (Here's the link to an overview of the whole cruise.)

[24butterfly]

My last visit to Santorini was in early October 2009 on Celebrity Solstice. We didn't make a separate stop off Athinios, the ship sailed to the normal anchoring area near the bottom of the cable car and stopped there. There was no delay for non-excursion passengers simply going ashore; tendering (by already-issued ticket) started very quickly.

 

Of course, Solstice is a big ship and it's entirely possibly that multiple tendering pontoons were in use, with excursions tenders taking passengers from a different pontoon. However, I didn't actually see that.

 

I blogged while I was on that cruise. Here's a post about getting tender tickets, and here's a post about the actual visit to Santorini that day. (Here's the link to an overview of the whole cruise.)

 

Thank you.