Boarding at Tender Ports Inclusive vs Private tour

[VeroSue]

Can you please clarify the recent thread that stated the following:

"While deciding to do tours on your own or with a private company is appealing, remember that at tender ports, you will not be allowed on the tender until the Regent excursions have boarded the tenders. On the way back to the ship, if you are unlucky enough to arrive at the tender dock the same time as a Regent excursion, you probably will have to wait until the next tender arrives as they receive first priority."

My question is how do they know if you are NOT with the inclusive tour. Can't you just get up at the same time as they announce one of the tours and mix in as part of the group

[Travelcat2]

You make a good point and I have not personally challenged the "Regent tours" first policy. Probably, if you got in line as soon as they anchor, before the rest of the passengers, you could get off the ship. However, once the tours are called, the lines can be non-stop for up to an hour.

[ChatKat in Ca.]

I recall they give you tender tickets. Excursions get the lower numbered tickets and non excursion people are given a higher sequence number.

Just as a reminder to be grateful that on the Regent ships, I don't think it's ever been an hour. However, on Princess this May they skipped our number in error and there was an 90 minute wait for the tender - we did not disembark in Santa Barbara for two full hours after tendering began and they ran 4-6 tenders.

[RachelG]

If you are going out on your own prior to "open tendering" which starts when all the ship's tour groups have left, you have to get a tender ticket in the theater where everyone on tour picks up their tour number.
On our recent Mariner cruise, we waited till open tendering once, and we got tender tickets once. Did not have to wait long at all to have our number called, maybe 10 minutes at most. On the previous Voyager cruise, we had to wait a very long time once, because of all the ship's tours leaving at the same time.
So my advice would be to plan your day so that you can either just leave when open tendering starts, or be prepared to possibly wait a while.
Now coming back to ship is not a problem. Tenders are first come, first serve and don't have anything to do with whether you were on a tour or not.

[Travelcat2]

If you are going out on your own prior to "open tendering" which starts when all the ship's tour groups have left, you have to get a tender ticket in the theater where everyone on tour picks up their tour number.
On our recent Mariner cruise, we waited till open tendering once, and we got tender tickets once. Did not have to wait long at all to have our number called, maybe 10 minutes at most. On the previous Voyager cruise, we had to wait a very long time once, because of all the ship's tours leaving at the same time.
So my advice would be to plan your day so that you can either just leave when open tendering starts, or be prepared to possibly wait a while.
Now coming back to ship is not a problem. Tenders are first come, first serve and don't have anything to do with whether you were on a tour or not.

Just a comment about when you return to the ship. I agree that tenders are first come, first serve. . . . but, returning group occasionally get there before you.

[RachelG]

Just a comment about when you return to the ship. I agree that tenders are first come, first serve. . . . but, returning group occasionally get there before you.

Yes, if you get there just the same time as a returning tour group, you will have to wait along with everyone else. But they don't get priority over you.

[mborchgardt]

My wife and I were on Mariner in September. We were "on our own" in Delos, Mykonos and Santorini. I was very disappointed that we had to wait -- and it was a fairly lengthy wait -- until after the tours had tendered over. I noted in the review I wrote after our cruise that I heard one of the staff say that there were 75 non-tour people waiting for a tender and they still had 2-3 tenders of tour people who needed to go first. We did not have this experience on Voyager before the "free excursions", so I assumed that so many more people were taking excursions resulting in a longer wait for indepedent guests. I think they need a better way. We were over an hour late to meet our rental car on Santorini which substantially eats into the time you when you are only there for 8 hours or so. I thought that perhaps they should let independent guests register for a transfer tender along with the other excursions so that you could get over quicker if you signed up in advance. This was really the only thing we were disappointed with on our cruise.

[Wendy The Wanderer]

I think they need to "merge" independents with the rest. You know, allow a small stream of independents off as the tours go, so that people can meet their tour guides etc. Not sure this is doable but it makes sense.

[Tony & Trevor]

mborchgardt

Why did you not disembark form the ship on the first tender?

I have never come across showing your tour bus number-or whatever to the tender crew / security.


Kind regards

Tony

[mborchgardt]

Tony-

They actually did had out little colored cards in the Constellation Theatre and you had to give those to the staff who were manning the exit out onto the tender platform. I'm not sure how common this is. It did not happen on our previous cruise, but that was several years ago before free excursions.

We actually did "sneak in" an earlier tender for Delos just because the whole waiting thing seemed so ridiculous. But that caused a problem because they had given cards to exactly the number of passengers that the tender holds, so it threw their whole system off. We felt really awkward and just decided to follow procedure going forward.

Also, another disappointing factor was that they published an "open call" time in the Passages which indicated the time at which independent guests could (theoretically) go straight to the tender platform without going to the Theatre for a card first. However, they were never ready to accept independent guests at the appointed time -- it was always 45 minutes or so later. It seems like they should have had the whole timing thing down since Regent has probably been to these ports 100s of times. Maybe they were afraid that if they published the real time in Passages there would be an outcry from the indepedent travelers.

Luckily we only had 3 tender ports on our cruise. If there had been more I'm sure my disappointment/anger would have grown.

I guess if we were sneaky enough we should have signed up for tours just to get a higher tender priority and then ditched the tour once we were on shore. But that didn't seem right either.

All in all, it was still a great great cruise. But I do think the number of tender ports will factor into any future cruise/cruiseline decision.

[PaulaJK]

I have never understood why the majority of the tours are scheduled to depart in the same time frames, e.g. 8 buses off between 9am and 9:15am. The tour times could easily be staggered. Additionally, Regent could send off [whether on the tender or gangplank] one or two tour groups and then alternate with an independent travelers group. There is absolutely no reason other than their self-serving one for all of the tours to be so scheduled and for the independent travelers being required to wait up to an hour to debark. And yes, they do have staff standing at the gangplank checking tickets.