Silhouette Tendering in Grand Cayman

[erinpdx]

I have read several posts about the tendering process in Grand Cayman. I know that people with Celebrity booked excursions have priority. We have booked a private excursion. We supposedly arrive at 10:00 and our excursion meeting time is 11:15. Will we make it? I have read some recent reviews that it took people hours to get off the ship. Any recent experiences??

[phoenix_dream]

How long it takes people to get off the ship generally has more to do with the state of the seas than anything. Rough waters can really delay the tender process as it takes longer to board and disembark. this happens on occasion in Grand Cayman. It is true that people on Celebrity excursions get priority. Also getting priority are higher level Captains Club members, which can be many or few depending on the cruise. So it is hard to predict.

 

I would speak with the tour director and ask them how to handle this. I suspect others have had the same concerns and they have a plan in place.

[cle-guy]

I'd say that may be tight....

 

I was on your same itinerary in November.

 

My experience was arrived at 11:05 am, suite tendering started at 11:45, Celebrity Excursions started tendering around noon, and general tendering started around 12:15. I read of people who didn't tender till 2:45 and had tender tickets numbered 41 or so.

 

Maybe now that Sillie has its propulsion fixed, a 10AM arrival will actually be earlier, and they will start tendering promptly at 10. In our case arrival was 11 am (delayed an hour due to the propulsion issue) and we arrived just after.

 

So you really need someone who has done Grand Caymen last year or on another X ship to determine how much earlier than posted arrival time the ship arrives, earlier arrival allows time to set anchor and handle the arrival paperwork and dropping the tenders etc.

 

Grand Caymen is a great example of a port that doing X excursions makes a lot o sense, and I'm a self-excursion advocate, but here, seems it's safer to book with X (or book a suite to get off sooner).

Edited January 12, 2015 by cle-guy

[KevP]

You should have a plan B ready. We missed our private Grand Cayman tour in December due to the timing of the tender process there and that we were late to the port.

 

The azipod is reported fixed so that hopefully helps a lot....

 

We went down for tender tickets about 20min before they started handing them out. I would recommend being there much earlier than that with your schedule. There were big delays between boats the day we tried it. Tender ticket 8 and they probably would have waited as the private operator called us looking for a status when we were still on the ship. If we had group 8 we would have been boarding the tender. We had 9 and were still on the ship and they couldn't wait that long. The difference in group 9 vs 8 cost us about 25-30 more minutes delay.

 

As Cle-guy said, if Cayman is important to you it may be worth doing a ship run excursion to get the most out of it...we are 0-2 in trying to do a private tour there. Next time it may be the first ship excursion we have ever done...

 

I have read several posts about the tendering process in Grand Cayman. I know that people with Celebrity booked excursions have priority. We have booked a private excursion. We supposedly arrive at 10:00 and our excursion meeting time is 11:15. Will we make it? I have read some recent reviews that it took people hours to get off the ship. Any recent experiences??

[erinpdx]

Thanks for all the feedback. Sounds like my best bet is to go down early and get in line for tender tickets. I'll be interested to see the reports after this week now that the ship has had some repairs. Hopefully it will now be arriving in Grand Cayman on time.

[Caribbean Chris]

The tendering location and tender dock normally places visitors right at the town of Georgetown on the west side, which is very convenient for shopping.

 

But - just a point of info - sometimes due to high winds that make tendering dangerous, ships are directed by the port officials down to the south side of the island.

[cle-guy]

Thanks for all the feedback. Sounds like my best bet is to go down early and get in line for tender tickets. I'll be interested to see the reports after this week now that the ship has had some repairs. Hopefully it will now be arriving in Grand Cayman on time.

 

I'd say even if you DO arrive on time at 10am, 11:15 to meet a tour is way too soon unless you are elite or in concierge or above and get priority tendering. Even then, there X booked excursions may still be clogging the first few.

 

10:00 am arrival

10:30 ship is secured and ready for disembrkation

10:45 1st tender leaves with suite guests before general announcement made

11 am 1st tender arrives at the port

11 am 2nd tender leaves ship, with priority guests - those in concierge aqua and more suites, and elites, as well as X excursions.

11:15 1st tender back at ship to get 2nd load of guests....likely more elites and priority tenders

 

You haven't even made it on a tender (let alone reached shore) by the time your 11:15 excursion is set to go.

Edited January 12, 2015 by cle-guy