Bay of Islands tenders

[Margaret51]

 

We are sailing on the Celebrity Solstice (first time) in January and our first port is the Bay of Islands, which is tendered. We are due to drop anchor at 7am and were hoping to take an independent cruisetour from Paihia at 9am. Will we have sufficient time to get ashore and make our way via shuttle (5 mins I've been told) to Paihia (from Waitangi Wharf, I assume)? NB we have no special status to "jump the queue".) Two hours would seem to be a reasonable amount of time to get ashore, but you might know differently! We hope someone can advise.

 

Looking forward to our New Zealand adventure. :-)

[kiwichick62]

Hi Margaret, are you sailing on Celebrity Solstice January 17th?  If so, we have an active roll call with lots of info shared if you are interested.    Sorry I can't answer your question but I would think two hours should be plenty of time to get ashore.

[Margaret51]

5 hours ago, kiwichick62 said:

Hi Margaret, are you sailing on Celebrity Solstice January 17th?  If so, we have an active roll call with lots of info shared if you are interested.    Sorry I can't answer your question but I would think two hours should be plenty of time to get ashore.

Hi kiwichick62! Yes we are on the Solstice on the 17th. Can't wait for our Kiwi adventure - although there's the little matter of Christmas to deal with first! Am trying to get our plans in place early so the two don't clash - and the excursions sell out! Will check out the roll call soon.

[lyndarra]

You should be ok. Try and get an early tender ticket if you can. It is only 5min by shuttle.

[Margaret51]

7 minutes ago, lyndarra said:

Try and get an early tender ticket if you can.

Thanks. What is the best way of getting a tender ticket? We anchor at 7am, but according to yesterday's Solstice visit to Paihia, the first passenger tender wasn't due to leave until 7.45am and I'm aware that cruise tours and Elite status , etc will have priority. What time should we think about queuing? Have only tenderd once before (Bar Harbor) as we try to avoid them!

[MicCanberra]

Celebrity usually only issue tender tickets once you are ready to disembark, so make sure your whole party is ready to go first thing and there should be no issues.

One thing to note is that the weather may slow the tendering down though if it is choppy.

[Margaret51]

Thanks, MicCanberra. Am hoping that it won't be too choppy in the Bay of Islands. 🙂 Will bear in mind that we both need to be there, but my question is: in order to be on one of the earliest tenders, how early should we start queuing for tickets? Don't the ship tours have priority? Then the Elite club, etc? It will be our first port of call, so unfortunately, we won't have any prior experience to fall back on. 😞

[mr walker]

Not Celebrity specific, but our experience is that the ship will advise location & time for the ticket handout - often it is announced by CD after the nightly showed, which many miss as they charge off out of the theatre lest they starve 🙂  Our experience has been that often they start handing out the tickets a little earlier than advertised, so maybe get there a bit before. As long as you don't sleep in you'll be ok. I'm sure the tour operator won't leave without you. Enjoy! 

[MicCanberra]

They normally have to doors/locations for loading the tenders, one would be for ship excursions until they have all been off loaded and then other would be for the other passengers. Elite tend to skip the line, ticketing system. I would make sure to be ready to go at 7am, get a ticket as soon as possible.

[Margaret51]

Thanks, both. Feel a lot happier now that I have an idea about what might happen. 🙂

[MicCanberra]

Enjoy and don't stress about it too much, the tour companies know what may occur with the tendering.

[EnthDegree]

On 10/16/2018 at 11:41 PM, Margaret51 said:

 

We are sailing on the Celebrity Solstice (first time) in January and our first port is the Bay of Islands, which is tendered. We are due to drop anchor at 7am and were hoping to take an independent cruisetour from Paihia at 9am. Will we have sufficient time to get ashore and make our way via shuttle (5 mins I've been told) to Paihia (from Waitangi Wharf, I assume)? NB we have no special status to "jump the queue".) Two hours would seem to be a reasonable amount of time to get ashore, but you might know differently! We hope someone can advise.

 

Looking forward to our New Zealand adventure. 🙂

 

Margaret - we will be joining you on the Solstice from Auckland on 17th January. 

Like you we were intrigued as to the tendering arrangements for Bay of Islands and we watched live AIS Marine Traffic on her last visit. Celebrity appeared to be utilising a minimum of four of its own tenders and from memory each of these can hold about 150 passengers. Couldn't tell if private tenders were also being employed but given no then that equates to being able to move 600 people on each trip to shore. Solstice was anchored quite far out in the bay and it would probably have taken about fifteen minutes per trip. So basically the whole ship's passenger capacity could have been moved ashore in five trips or two and fifteen minutes but not everyone goes ashore at every port.

By the way we have a dedicted cruise website set up for this sailing. You can access it by expanding out signature below, click on the link, sign up to Shutterfly for free and you will be able to access a wealth of information on each of our ports of call including lots of links to shore providers etc. Just remember to quote your Cruise Critic username when applying as we have had some snoopers trying to log in!

[MicCanberra]

They really only cannot load more than two tenders at a time and also only unload two tenders at the marina at one time. The loading and unloading can also take up to ten minutes each along with the ten-twenty minute journey each way. But as mentioned, not everyone gets off and more importantly not everyone wants to get off first thing, some leave it til late morning or even after lunch.

[Margaret51]

On 10/18/2018 at 7:29 AM, Margaret51 said:

" according to yesterday's Solstice visit to Paihia, the first passenger tender wasn't due to leave until 7.45am "

Thanks for the comments. I'm still not sure that we would make a 9am trip, but as you say, there may not be too many people who want to get off the ship that early. Explore, the firm we were looking to book with told me: Most of the time people do not have issues with making it to the Paihia wharf in time for the 9:00 am departure if the first tender to Waitangi is from 7 am however if you are worried you may not make it in time you can book the "Discover the Bay Cruise" in our Paihia office on the day but this will be dependent on availability.  So that is a possiblity.

 

I have also emailed Celebrity who said: If you would like to do your own tours this is absolutely fine, two hours will be enough time for you, however I would suggest making sure you are ready to disembark as early as you can, so that you can be off the ship as early as possible and not held up in the queues. They also added: Be aware that the port agencies can change the port times at any time, however we will update you of this if there are any changes prior to your cruise.  So will need to check up on that. If we book in advance, we can cancel up to 24 hours.