Port adventures

[theotherlostprincess]

i have a question about a port adventure. I want to do the blue lagoon sea lions but they say that it gets back around 5 or so. If i book it through disney will they wait for us if we are running late due to traffic,etc or will the boat leave us?

 

[DISNEY FANTASY]

If you book a Disney tour they wait for you.

 

[over50visits]

If you book a Disney tour they wait for you.

We have personal experience in that...once our tour returned about 30 minutes after all aboard time, and the ship was waiting for us.

I believe, though, that in unusual circumstances, the ship may not wait for you, then Disney will assume all costs of taking care of you (meals and hotel) and flying you to the next port to meet up with the ship. I've never heard of that happening, but I think that's the ultimate protection. I suppose the port authorities could force a ship to leave on time, but I'm just daydreaming here. I've never ever heard of that happening.

But, with many, many excursions, I never have the least worry if they were booked through disney.We get back when they get us back, and the ship will be there.

 

[tink too]

i have a question about a port adventure. I want to do the blue lagoon sea lions but they say that it gets back around 5 or so. If i book it through disney will they wait for us if we are running late due to traffic,etc or will the boat leave us?

Traffic will not affect this tour at all. The boat to Blue Lagoon is a short walk along the pier from the ship, once you return to Nassau pier you have a short walk (through the market) and you're back at the ship again. We did this back in January and really enjoyed it.

 

[Tonka's Skipper]

If your on a Disney tour, Disney is responsible to get you to the next port to met up with the vessel. That means the ship will wait as long as it can or they will fly you on to the next port.

If you on a self booked tour, the vessel will likely also wait for you as long as they can, however if they sail it is your responsibility to catch up with the vessel.

The reasons the vessel may have to sail include costs to stay as the dock and a sailing time to arrive at the next port on time.

There are some video clips on bing and utube showing passingers trying to get to the vessel. They are indeed funny , sad and scary all at the same.time.

I have read the most common reason for passingers being late returning to the vessel is drinking.

AKK

 

[DISNEY FANTASY]

On our recent Baltic cruise, people were late in St Petersburg day two and Tallinn, there were announcements if this or that family were on the ship from whatever deck they were on and to make themselves known to guest services. We were about 40 mins late out of St Petes and 55 Mins at Tallinn, but we made that time up.

I would say a common cause is time zone changes and not reading how long the ship is in port, Tallinn for example was a short stop 8am to 12.45pm and the gangaway had a massive queue to security up to 1.15pm. I think some were surprised by the early departure.

 

[theotherlostprincess]

Thanks for the answers everyone! I guess im going to try to book through disney instead of on my own since they seem to be responsible for you getting on the boat at some point. Thanks!!!!

 

[MunFam]

I am a travel agent and chose to book all of family's excursions on our own. We did not go anywhere too far away from the ship...well, one port we did, but I made sure that our trip insurance covered the excursions I booked privately so in the event we did miss the boat, our insurance would pay to get us to the next port. I specifically chose to book my own in Cartagena because I did not like any of the tours DCL was offering. Prices were fair, but the amount of time they were allowing for what they were seeing was just too much (because of the mass amount of people, it takes more time to go from place to place)...so instead we hired a private guide and some other families from our tour group joined us. We saw what two or three combined DCL tours covered in the same amount of time. We planned it to be back 2 hours before all aboard and we were, so sometimes its better to just go out on your own...and other times, its better to go on a DCL tour.

 

[Andasibe]

Agree with others, at times booking individually is easier. However, we did blue lagoon on our last trip and it was just a few dollars cheaper to do it on our own, not really worth the leg work to self book. I would consider the convinience when deciding book on your own or through DCL.

 

[over50visits]

An example of an excursion we did NOT get from DCL was the trolley tour at Key West. At that time, the Disney tour did not allow for jump off/back on with another trolley. So we just went to the trolley stop right off the ship and signed up for one we wanted. It was hugely more fun to be able to get off at various sights, spend some time, and catch a later trolley coming through (very frequent).

In Key West, though, you'd have to really work hard at it to miss the ship. It's not that long a walk even from the farthest point at the end of Duval.