Do your excursions start at the ship, or the end of the Pier?

Yup I finally booked my excursion, but have never been to Progreso. Are you picked up at the ship, and bussed to your site, or do you take the free bus, and meet your excursion guide at the end of the pier? We are doing an all day excursion. Would hate to miss the bus, or should we get FTTF? Or are the excursion groups taken off the ship based on the time of their pre paid excursion? *they did this when we were in Belize, because you have to tender)

The Carnival excursions will start at the ship.....so to speak. You will still have to walk off the ship and through the small shopping area before boarding your bus. You will not however have to go all the way to town. You do not need FTTF for this excursion you'll have plenty of time. Enjoy Uxmal!

Thank you. I guess then that the excursion begins there, at the ship, I hope it ends there. I hate it when people give me "shopping options" and let me return on my own. I am so excited for this cruise, it's a new ship for us, a new port, and we are cruising with newbies.

We did Uxmal just a few days ago. You start close to where you get off the ship and end at the same spot. There are a few shops there to look through when you get back. You won't have much time prior to the start of the excursion.

Ours started at 8:00. We left the ship around 7:45, got to the excursion line around 7:55 and they started walking us to the bus about 8:00. The bus left at 8:10 after a few stragglers joined us. We reached Uxmal at 9:45 and were there exactly three hours before leaving to come back. Took roughly the same amount of time for the return trip. Spent about fifteen minutes going through the shops and were back on the ship an hour before sailing.

Uxmal is fantastic! We really enjoyed it!

Happy cruising!

Well thank you all for the feed back. I am really looking forward to our adventure. Newbies got booked on the same excursion, which is working out well, and we leave for NOLA on Friday-cant wait.

Have a great time! :)

Thank you, and I will do a review when I get back.:)

Would hate to miss the bus, or should we get FTTF?

I realize the OP's question has been answered but wanted to point out for others that FTTF would provide no benefit at a port where the ship is docked at the pier. FTTF would only help with priority tendering at a port where the ship is tendered. And even in that case, if you've booked a tour through Carnival that leaves relatively early, you'll have a meeting place onboard for priority tendering so that you're off the ship in time to make your tour's departure time.

I'm back with a few minutes of my own. So, we had a wonderful time. We booked Uxmal through Carnival, there were 3 buses which went, all with different leave times, so even though we planned to meet up with some roll call people, it didn't work as we all were assigned different depart times.

We had Carlos as our tour guide, and after listening to several other tour guides give their talks, I cant tell you how lucky we were. Not far to get to the bus, just walk through the first store we see and the excusions met up there.

I was just coming to ask this exact question! Thanks for all the helpful answers, this is our first cruise and I admit I'm overwhelmed trying to figure it all out!