tender tickets

I have seen a few threads and posts here mentioning tender tickets. When my DH and I sailed on the Sky earlier this month, we didn't need tickets to get on the tenders. In fact, I didn't know anything about them until I started reading the afore mentioned posts. Now, I am booked on the Jewel next November. Do we need tickets to tender off the ship? If so, how do we get these tickets? Any info would be appreciated.

Which ports are you visiting?

I have seen a few threads and posts here mentioning tender tickets. When my DH and I sailed on the Sky earlier this month, we didn't need tickets to get on the tenders. In fact, I didn't know anything about them until I started reading the afore mentioned posts. Now, I am booked on the Jewel next November. Do we need tickets to tender off the ship? If so, how do we get these tickets? Any info would be appreciated.

It looks like you're on a NY-Port Canaveral-Great Stirrup Cay-Nassau-NY cruise. Only GSC is a tender port. In my experience, the larger ships, such as the Gem and Jewel, do use tender tickets there. The procedure for obtaining your tickets will be announced on board. Typically you have to appear at some spot on the ship starting at a particular hour to get your tickets unless you are in a suite, a VIP, or Gold or Platinum Latitudes members, in which case priority tender tickets that will allow you to disembark at any time on the next available tender will be delivered to your cabin.

Here is the theory behind these tickets.. They don't want everyone to just rush to the tenders all at once. So the morning of the tender ride.. about 7:30 or 8 am, the ship will have an announcement that the tickets are avaibable near the main desks (by the photo display). Those passengers that really want to get to the island early will go to that location to get tickets #1, 2, 3 and so forth... When it's time to tender, they will start calling ticket mumbers.. ex: "All passengers with tender ticket #1, please report to the tender site".. this prevents a mad stampeede of passengers who just want to be the first on the island. By the way, if you purchase a shore excursion or item like a "clam-shell", your voucher (receipt) can be used as a tender ticket and will access you onto any tender you wish.. they will explain that to you. So in a nutshell, the tickets are for crowd control. Now as an aside, and it was passed on to us by a crew member.. if there is no realy big rush to the tenders.. no unbelievably long line and crush to get to the island, they will not even ask to see your ticket. But if there is a long line and tempers flare up, you can expect them to be more vigilant of who has a ticket.

If you reserve a life preserver to snorkel they will get you priority tender. Just do it through the shorex desk. We have are own equip but they make you wear the vest. I don't think it costs. They dont ask if you have equip so easy way to get priority tickets

Also, you don't have a particular tender you have to board once you get a ticket. If you get ticket #3, then you can get on any tender after they call for #3. If you want to get onto GSC early and aren't buying an excursion package, then just have one member of your party go pick up tickets right when they start offering them the morning of GSC. If you're not an early person and don't mind waiting a little while, then you can probably go get a ticket later in the morning and still be off the ship at a reasonable time. On our curise my mother picked up our tickets about an hour after they started handing them out, we got #6, and were still called about 45 minutes after the first passenger tenders started. As two of the tenders can hold about 300 people on them, it doesn't take very long for them to get everyone who wants to go off the ship.

On the way back it's just first come first serve, and we were able to get right on a tender when we were ready to head back to the ship which was about an hour before the last tender left.

The tickets themselves are just a card with a number on it, very similar to the ones you'll get when you check in prior to embarkation.