How long does the tender ride take?

[bossladypu]

Is it feasible to do the early submarine ride, then go back to the Magic for lunch and get off again to do the 1 or 1:30PM Stingray City tour and to get back on the ship at the designated time?
I have no idea how long the tender takes. I don't know if we are being realistic to get off and on the boat at Grand Cayman or not. Any info would be greatly appreciated. Our 60 days will be coming up shortly and I'm trying to get everything set up in advance. I've heard wonderful things about Captain Marvin's, but my question is, do they refund your money like Disney does if you cannot do the excursion because of weather or a tendering problem? Thanks in advance.

 

[The4OfUs]

It seemed really short, maybe 10 mins max?

When we went to get BACK on the tender, we saw HUGE (seriously, blocks long!!) lines and got very discouraged...we stood in one line and someone noticed our DVC lanyards and said "If you're on Disney, this isn't the right line, it's that one..." and pointed to the OTHER one. So we trudged to the end of THAT huge line, and then I saw someone from Celebrity talking to people in that line, so I asked her...nope, wrong line again.

She pointed us to the Disney one ... right in the MIDDLE of those two, which we didnt' see because all the unhappy people in the two long lines were BLOCKING it...there was no line. *grin* I noticed that Disney's tenders were bigger than those for the other ships, which was very cool.

 

[mrsfuzzmo]

Why not just catch lunch on the island? Experience some of the culture? That's one of my favorite things to do on a cruise; get off on the earliest tender possible, get back to the ship on the last! There's plenty of time on the ship, the port time is just to short, why would you want to spend it running back and forth?

 

[jollytammy]

I think you're great to go back to the boat for lunch. We did. We did stingray city, then took the tender back to the boat. No line, the boat ride was quick. I thought Grand Cayman was a little commercialized. Since we were on a limited budget, we usually tried to eat on the ship.

The biggest wait for the tenders seems to be the ones first thing in the morning when everyone is trying to get off at the same time. After that, they didn't seem to be busy at all.