Carnival Blue Lagoon excursion return times

[haply]

Hello. We are signed up for the Blue Lagoon excursion through our June Carnival cruise. Our ship is scheduled to leave Nassau at 5 PM. Will they make us take the 2 PM ferry back or allow us to take a later ferry? Really would like to spend more than a couple of hours on the island. Thanks in advance-

[maryred]

The next and last ferry leaves BLI at 4 pm, it then takes 20-25 minutes to get to the ferry terminal on Paradise Island (if all on time it is now 4:20-4:25pm). Once you wait for the water taxi to fill up it might be another 10-25 minutes (if all goes well it is now 4:30-4:50pm). Via water taxi it is only about 5 minutes crossing once it leaves Paradise Island plus the walk back through back to the docks which takes at a health fast walk 10-15 minutes depending on which slip number your ship gets (if nothing goes FUBAR it is now 4:50-5:15pm). Most ships have an all aboard time of 30 minutes prior to departure and unless waiting on a whole group (contracted through the cruise line) still with it's guide/leader that has been delayed it will leave at it's scheduled time.

SO you need to ask yourself is the stress of making it back after the all aboard is called but before departure occurs or the specter of missing the ship by minutes really worth an extra 2 hours at the beach?

Edited May 17, 2017 by maryred
Syntex

[BNBR]

I'm pretty sure you won't be taking a water taxi from Paradise Island if you are doing the Carnival excursion. Our ferry boat picked us up at the pier next to the ship. They will let you know on the Blue Lagoon Island which boats you can take back. We had 2 options and if I recall, about 3 - 4 hours or so on the island. It's well managed. I would plan on the early boat, but ask/listen to see if there is a second option.

 

I feel like we got on a 2PM ferry back to the ship, but we were already on the island for many hours and that was the late ferry for our cruise.

[maryred]

I'm pretty sure you won't be taking a water taxi from Paradise Island if you are doing the Carnival excursion. Our ferry boat picked us up at the pier next to the ship. .

It is true that the excursion ferries go back to where the big ships are docked, but only if they stick with the published times for their excursion. The ycould try to luck out (the excursion guide allowing it) getting the ferry scheduled for a different ship also on BLI. If they wait for the regular ferry, it only goes back to the terminal on Paradise Island and from there they will need to get back to the docks in Nassau on New Providence Island on their own.

[haply]

Thank you. We did book the excursion through Carnival so will most likely return directly to our dock. When we did the excursion through Royal Caribbean a couple of years ago, we were able to go back on the 4 PM ferry (again, took us directly back to our boat dock). Hoping that it will be the same this time around.