Itinerary time ?

[Irule7]

Is the port arrival time on the itinerary local time or ship time?

[Clarea]

Pre-cruise itineraries are supposed to be local time.

 

You really cannot predict shp time as the Captain can opt to change it whenever.

[rubytue]

Spin off of this question - Every ship I’ve been on changes to local time. So you have overnight time changes. I read a review that mention a RCL ship and a comment implying ship time was different. Does Royal not change to local time? 

 

My parents live in one time zone and their airport is another (2 hours away). I find the time adds a level of stress to travel day

 

edit: @Host Clarea answered while I was typing. I hope we change!

Edited December 8, 2018 by rubytue

[Clarea]

1 minute ago, rubytue said:

Spin off of this question - Every ship I’ve been on changes to local time. So you have overnight time changes. I read a review that mention a RCL ship and a comment implying ship time was different. Does Royal not change to local time? 

 

My my parent live in one time zone and their airport is another (2 hours away). I find the time adds a level of stress to travel day 😣

 

Sometimes the ship changes to local time, sometimes not.  Unpredictable.

[rubytue]

Just now, Host Clarea said:

 

Sometimes the ship changes to local time, sometimes not.  Unpredictable.

Thanks! Your other answer popped up while I was typing (and the dog interrupted lol)

[Irule7]

Our itinerary says we get into St. Martin at 8 and I booked a shuttle to Pinel at 8:30.  I just realized that St. Martin is one hour ahead of Ft. Lauderdale and was concerned we’d miss our shuttle.

[michelleandpaul]

We just returned from the Allure of the Seas.  We had one stop (Roatan) that had a different time zone.  I contacted Royal Caribbean about 8 times prior to our cruise to check on whether the itinerary was referring to eastern or central time for that stop.  I was given a different answer each time.  The only response they would give me in an email basically indicated I would find out once I was on board.  Once we got on board, the Guest Services Supervisor told us the times were always listed as ship time (at least on that ship & itinerary).  From what I have read in forums here, this can always vary & it can be very unpredictable.   

 

We got completely screwed over on independent excursions because the times given on our itineraries (on our invoices) and in the Royal Caribbean app were different than the actual port times (and we did not receive those actual times until the evening prior to each stop, in the Cruise Compass). 

 

We completely missed our Nassau excursion because we planned it around a 7am arrival (which was on our itinerary & in the app), but the actual arrival time was 8am (which we did not find out until the day prior).  And, the Guest Services representatives were very clueless about all of this.  Two of them tried arguing that we missed our Nassau excursion because of a time zone difference (there was NO time zone difference with Nassau). 

 

After the Nassau fiasco, we were assured 3 times by the Guest Services Supervisor on the ship that our arrival time for Roatan would be 8am eastern time, but then learned the evening prior to that stop that we were arriving at 9am eastern.  We missed half of our excursion due to that.  We could not trust anything anyone told us.  

 

The independent tour operator that we booked with told us that the cruise lines are notorious for not giving this information ahead of time so that it is difficult to book a non-cruise line excursion.  This was so frustrating for us & I probably would not do another cruise because of this.  I prefer to do excursions with independent companies, and it was just too stressful to have all of these mixups.  

 

 

[NateUpNorth]

I stand to be corrected on this, however - if you google search the local port/ port authority/ port schedule for any of your stops they will generally provide docking schedules in the local time zone. You can use that to determine if an excursion is viable.

 

(pending of course any delays, mishaps or other schedule interruptions that may occur)

[SRF]

Maybe you should have words with your excursion operator. 

 

They should know when the ship will arrive and adjust their schedule to accommodate their customers.

 

And BTW, the itinerary is NOT guaranteed.  It is possible to totally miss a planned stop.    The ship can be early or be delayed for various reasons.

 

Again, any company which provided excursions to cruise ship passengers, who is not flexible, does not deserve any business.

[timf2001]

The safest move when booking a private excursion is to allow at least 90 minutes from the ship's scheduled docking time.  This gives an hour for potential time zone discrepancies as well as 30 minutes padding in case of crowds getting off.  The worst case is you have extra time onboard the ship in the morning to get ready or eat a leisurely breakfast.

[Irule7]

So I’m back from my cruise that I was referring to in my original post.  We were on Adventure of the Seas.  We did turn our clocks ahead and the time on the itinerary was local time.  HOWEVER, that’s the time the ship gets to port, not the time you get to leave the boat.  They say 30 minutes extra for clearance.  I didn’t realize this, so I booked a taxi through Caribbean Paddling at 8:30.  Luckily I had the internet package and they have a chat feature so I was able to ask them to wait in case we were late.  They had no problem with it.  We also learned that all aboard time is 30 minutes prior to the leave time on the itinerary.  All in all it wasn’t a big deal, but now that I know, I can plan better next time.

Edited December 19, 2018 by Irule7