Time Change in St. Maarten

[gatorcruiser10]

I booked a tour through Bernard's Tours for our Oasis cruise in December. Before I booked, I read many reviews about Bernard's Tours and a complaint I saw often was the miscommunication of the time Bernard tells you to be at their tent vs. the time it actually is on the ship. From my research, I believe that the time on the ship does not change to local time (Atlantic time). I am slightly confused now because I just googled the current St. Maarten time and it is the same time currently as eastern time (which is the time zone oasis goes by).

 

Does anyone have any insight into this? In general, is the time different on the island vs. the ship? In my cruise planner, it says we arrive to St. Maarten at 8am. Bernard says to be at the tent at 8:30am in his email. Sorry if this is a silly question!

 

 

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[Clarea]

The times given on the pre-cruise itinerary are supposed to be local times.

[Ocean Boy]

When the U.S. is on daylight savings time the Eastern time zone and those areas of the Atlantic time zone that do no observe DST like the Caribbean islands have the same time. When we go back to standard time there will again be a one hour difference between the east coast and St. Maarten.

[gatorcruiser10]

When the U.S. is on daylight savings time the Eastern time zone and those areas of the Atlantic time zone that do no observe DST like the Caribbean islands have the same time. When we go back to standard time there will again be a one hour difference between the east coast and St. Maarten.

 

 

 

Ok, that makes sense. So on our December cruise, technically if the ship does not change its time to local time, the ship's time will be one hour behind the local time. Does anyone know if oasis changes their time on the ship to local time?

 

Hopefully, like Bob was saying, royal puts the local time of the island as the arrival time in the cruise planner. If that's the case, we will just need to quickly get off the ship upon arrival since Bernard is saying to be at their tent 30 minutes after the oasis is set to arrive in port.

 

 

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[Ocean Boy]

The last time that we were on Oasis the ship did not change over to local time. That does not mean that it won't change on your cruise. We have done multiple cruises on Independence. On some cruises it changed to local time and on other cruise it stayed on eastern time for the entire cruise.

[nicstress]

In the winter months St Maarten is an hour ahead. The Freedom didn't change either. It was nice in respect to our excursion because we got done well before we needed to be back.

 

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[MikeBTN]

The ship generally does not change time, so you will always be on Eastern time. I did once sail during a time change and the ship DID change its time to match the home port. Always check local times vs your home port time the day before sailing so you know what to expect. We missed the Tortola ferry to the Baths earlier this year and got 2 hours less time at the Baths than we had planned.

[gatorcruiser10]

Again, I just hope that the time listed in the cruise planner is the local time as far as the "arrival" time into port. Otherwise 8am arrival, would by 9am local time and we'd be 30 minutes late for our tour. Just nervous but hopefully it'll all work out.

 

 

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[MikeBTN]

Again, I just hope that the time listed in the cruise planner is the local time as far as the "arrival" time into port. Otherwise 8am arrival, would by 9am local time and we'd be 30 minutes late for our tour. Just nervous but hopefully it'll all work out.

 

 

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The cruise planner is always on ship time. They know what time you get there....you'll be fine. You may want to shoot them an email just to confirm.

[Intent2smile]

We were on LOS last year during daylight savings. Try made sure we knew what time it was locally. I stopped a crew member and asked the time. She told me if ever in doubt to look at the time on the phone in the room. It worked the time on the phone was local time

[CarpeCerevisi]

As far as I've encountered, the times stated on the itinerary are ship's time. As has been suggested, contact your tour supplier if in question since they should have a schedule of ship arrival times in their time zone.

 

The worst time mix up I've seen was on Labadee when two ships were there. One ship was on EST and the other on AST. People from both ships were at the jet ski excursions booth ashore with 9:00 and 10:00 reservations trying to check in for the same tour.

 

 

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