ship time vs. island time

[HarperSays]

Can anyone tell me if Carnival changes the ship's time at each port? Our only cruise has been with Norwegian and they keep the same time as the embarkation port. I thought I would ask before I start looking into excursion times. Specifically we are going to San Juan, Antigua, Tortola, St. Thomas and Nassau in October. Thanks!

[tef43]

I've seen it vary from ship to ship. It will be published in the Capers.

[BlueJacketsFan1]

No, the ship is always on the same time it was when it left it home port.

[HarperSays]

Not sure if this makes a difference, but we will be on Freedom ship.

[Ron_L]

I've seen it vary from ship to ship. It will be published in the Capers.

 

Actually, it wasn't in the Capers when we were on Valor a couple of weeks ago. I was surprised. Even if it was, however, that does no good when you are planning excursions. Knowing when I am on board is fine, but in order to plan and choose the right excursion I really needed to know ahead of time.

 

k&mluv2travel, maybe someone who has been on the Freedom will be able to confirm for you. You can also go to the roll call forum for the Freedom and see if anyone who has cruised recently can help. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any consistency across the various Carnival ships. Valor stayed on Eastern time the whole cruise, but i have seen reports here on CC about Carnival ships changing time at the various ports.

[tef43]

It can also depend on itinerary and time of year.

 

One example: Departing from FL today, you would be on EDT. If you ported at SJU and STT, they are on AST and do not observe daylight savings time. EDT = AST so no time change is required.

[Disneycruisers]

When we sailed the Glory to the eastern caribbean in 2005, there was no mention of 'island time' in the Capers, but there was (I think) a sign as we were leaving the gangway. We'll know this time to set our watches ahead. (We're going on the Freedom too.):)

[HarperSays]

Thanks, I'll check a recent sailing on Freedom's roll call!

[lilytuck]

Can anyone tell me if Carnival changes the ship's time at each port? Our only cruise has been with Norwegian and they keep the same time as the embarkation port. I thought I would ask before I start looking into excursion times. Specifically we are going to San Juan, Antigua, Tortola, St. Thomas and Nassau in October. Thanks!

Ship time is the time zone that the ship sails from. San Juan does not use daylight savings time so during the summer months it is on Eastern Time. During Standard Time it is on Caribbean Time 1 hour ahead of Eastern.

[Ron_L]

It can also depend on itinerary and time of year.

 

One example: Departing from FL today, you would be on EDT. If you ported at SJU and STT, they are on AST and do not observe daylight savings time. EDT = AST so no time change is required.

 

Good point! We ran into that with Grand Cayman since they don't observe DST. I used the Meeting Planner at timeanddate.com and put in the ship time (EDT for Valor when we sailed) and the ports and set the date to be the week hat we were cruising. It gave me a nice table that showed the difference between ship time and local time (assuming that the ship time doesn't change).

 

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html

 

Another good tool for Firefox users is Foxclocks. It adds the current time for whatever cities/countries that you configure to the status bar at the bottom of the Firefox window. I put in Miami, Cayman IS, Belize, Honduras and Cozumel and i have the current time in all of those places any time I open Firefox.

 

Yes, they are still there even though we have cruised :) I can't bring myself to remove them.

 

http://www.stemhaus.com/firefox/foxclocks/

[Pegs222]

Ships time is what you need to go by. If you are going on a private excursion they may not go by the same time as the ship so it is important to keep track to time and when the ship is leaving port.

[HarperSays]

Good point! We ran into that with Grand Cayman since they don't observe DST. I used the Meeting Planner at timeanddate.com and put in the ship time (EDT for Valor when we sailed) and the ports and set the date to be the week hat we were cruising. It gave me a nice table that showed the difference between ship time and local time (assuming that the ship time doesn't change).

 

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html

 

Another good tool for Firefox users is Foxclocks. It adds the current time for whatever cities/countries that you configure to the status bar at the bottom of the Firefox window. I put in Miami, Cayman IS, Belize, Honduras and Cozumel and i have the current time in all of those places any time I open Firefox.

 

Yes, they are still there even though we have cruised :) I can't bring myself to remove them.

 

http://www.stemhaus.com/firefox/foxclocks/

 

Very helpful...thank you!

[elsplace2]

We are going on the Freedom (Cozumel, Costa Rica and Panama) in Oct and I have asked this question in a previous post about a month or two ago....I got a variety of answers from "its up to the captain of the ship," to "you stay on ship time" to "they went to local time depending on the port/ship", etc. VERY CONFLICTING answers, I ended up calling Carnival themself and asked them and they told me they stayed on ship time, but of course they are wrong sometimes too..... I asked a cruiser who had just got off the Freedom and she said they stayed on ship time. So I am assuming that the Freedom will stay on ship time.

 

Let us know what you find out when you go on the roll calls.

[HarperSays]

We are going on the Freedom (Cozumel, Costa Rica and Panama) in Oct and I have asked this question in a previous post about a month or two ago....I got a variety of answers from "its up to the captain of the ship," to "you stay on ship time" to "they went to local time depending on the port/ship", etc. VERY CONFLICTING answers, I ended up calling Carnival themself and asked them and they told me they stayed on ship time, but of course they are wrong sometimes too..... I asked a cruiser who had just got off the Freedom and she said they stayed on ship time. So I am assuming that the Freedom will stay on ship time.

 

Let us know what you find out when you go on the roll calls.

 

Will do. I will also give Carnival a call and see what they say. Thanks!

[matt314hew]

Good point! We ran into that with Grand Cayman since they don't observe DST. I used the Meeting Planner at timeanddate.com and put in the ship time (EDT for Valor when we sailed) and the ports and set the date to be the week hat we were cruising. It gave me a nice table that showed the difference between ship time and local time (assuming that the ship time doesn't change).

 

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html

 

Another good tool for Firefox users is Foxclocks. It adds the current time for whatever cities/countries that you configure to the status bar at the bottom of the Firefox window. I put in Miami, Cayman IS, Belize, Honduras and Cozumel and i have the current time in all of those places any time I open Firefox.

 

Yes, they are still there even though we have cruised :) I can't bring myself to remove them.

 

http://www.stemhaus.com/firefox/foxclocks/

 

I just got the FoxClocks. Thanks

[AryMay]

We are going on the Freedom (Cozumel, Costa Rica and Panama) in Oct and I have asked this question in a previous post about a month or two ago....I got a variety of answers from "its up to the captain of the ship," to "you stay on ship time" to "they went to local time depending on the port/ship", etc. VERY CONFLICTING answers, I ended up calling Carnival themself and asked them and they told me they stayed on ship time, but of course they are wrong sometimes too..... I asked a cruiser who had just got off the Freedom and she said they stayed on ship time. So I am assuming that the Freedom will stay on ship time.

 

Let us know what you find out when you go on the roll calls.

 

We are also booked on the Freedom and I was trying to find out about the port times in Panama so asked this question on several threads and got many different answers as well.

 

However...I finally got a couple of people who had just returned to check their Capers and it did say that the ship turned their clocks back an hour before getting to Panama. I was also able to see some of the scanned Capers online and it did indeed say to turn your clocks back an hour. Once the ship left Panama then the clocks were turned back to EST. (Currently Panama is the same time as Central DST here in the US.)

 

So...it sounds to me like (at least for the western Freedom route) the ship does switch to local time.

 

Sorry I don't have time to search for the threads I mentioned...but perhaps you could search some of the posts I've made and find it.