Tender Tickets - what are peoples experiences?

Anyway went down and said we were Elite and they said unless I had a piece of paper, Elite had no priority. 😡 what piece of paper? Our ship cards said Elite

Normally, you do not just show up at the tender line and get priority. You probably needed to meet the Captain's Club Host/Hostess and be escorted to the tender.

Sorry you had problems. :)

well I'm happy to say the tender process worked very well and I was impressed with how the whole thing worked.

Solstice had her tender boats working as well as larger catamarans that seated about 200 people..... and we had no problem getting on or off....

We did meet some people who said their tender boat (larger catamaran) had trouble docking up to Solstice on the return from Cairns and it took several attempts and an hour to get the boat secure so passengers could disembark and get back on Solstice

Ok, have to throw this in. Was on Shilouette last August in Edinburgh and had to be tendered. The issue was they were using the life boats.

Anyway went down and said we were Elite and they said unless I had a piece of paper, Elite had no priority. 😡 what piece of paper? Our ship cards said Elite!

 

My question is, what it someone for the first time ever cruising and just happens to book a suite, they get priority! What happened to loyalty? 🤔

 

Not an issue on our South Pacific Cruise in January ( many tenders) we have the owners suite! 😂 on RCCL.

The procedure is a bit different it seems each cruise. Suites and Elites usually get tender tickets from their cabin attendant, but have been also told to go to a specific location.

Tendering also varies with whether using lifeboats or local boats, the length of the tender - Bar Harbor ME was 45 minutes! - and the weather as sometimes too rough to tender at all and returning if rough very slow.

They key to this and all other stuff on board is ASK. Don't be angry. If you need to know something ask the Captain Club host, cabin attendant or someone how X works.

The Solstice if it is using its own boats only is absolutely shocking when tendering is involved. If one is not on a priority tender list and there are several ways of getting on one , be in a suite, be on a ships excursion, be an Elite member or higher, be a blue Chip member of a certain status to name but a few one will need to get a Tender ticket. Tender tickets are issued on a first come first served basis and there is no limit upon how many tickets one can get. If one is in a party of 20 one can get 20 tickets. Be advised though that even if one is holding a low number tender ticket it may still take a while to get ashore after priority tender ticket holders. One cruise had almost half the passenger list Elite or above so it took the majority of the remainder a while to get ashore. If the round trip takes a while this will also mean long waits. If one has booked a private excursion ensure that the operator will wait for until all the party are ashore