Greece Tender Information

[kristicruise]

I am going on the Pearl in August and would like to know about NCL tender procedures.  I do not have a high enough status to get priority and only have 2 NCL tours booked.  Apparently we tender in Santorini, Mykonos, Zakynthos, and Corfu. The questions I have are 1. How long are the tender rides?, 2. How long does it usually take to get a tender ticket, not on a NCL tour. 3. Do you get your tickets the night before or the morning of the port? I am trying to book non NCL tours and would like to estimate what time I should reserve.  Thank you in advance for your help.

[kochleffel]

When I was on the Jade in 2022, we docked at Mykonos and Corfu. Santorini was the only tender port. Our itinerary didn't include Zakynthos.

 

[KeithJenner]

NCL information about which ports will be tendering is not very accurate.

 

I’m not aware of Corfu being a tender port. We certainly docked there and there is no mention of tendering on the port info page I looked at.

 

In Mykonos there is space for one ship to dock and the rest will tender. I’ve been there many times and have only tendered once or twice. It is probably better to tender (if your plans are to head into Mykonos town) as it is a relatively short journey and drops you off in town. If you dock then you need to use shuttles to get into town. It isn’t clear when they find out if they will be tendering or not. On one cruise we asked the evening before and they weren’t sure (or at least weren’t telling). I’ve seen it suggested that it just depends which ship turns up first.

 

I’ve never been to Zakynthos.

 

Santorini is certainly a tender port, but the biggest problem is the cable car which takes you from the area where the tenders arrive and the town of Thira. Im

going to be generous and describe the whole arrival/departure procedure from Santorini as a disaster. A less generous description would use the word dangerous, as people start to use the footpath which can be quite risky due to the donkeys going up and down (someone was killed on there a couple of weeks after the time we walked it).

 

Basically, the Santorini tender is ok, but if there are a few ships in port the cable car can take in excess of an hour. I have seen reports of queues of 2-3 hours to get down again in the evening (we left early to avoid the crowds and only waited about 30-40 minutes last time).

 

If you take an NCL excursion they drop you off elsewhere and you avoid that queue but at the end most tours drop you off in Thira so you do need to queue to get down. We always book a cheap excursion to avoid the first queue, but have now decided we will stay onboard on Santorini day.

 

Basically, check how many ships are in port on that day, and their timings, and plan. You can have a good day on Santorini but turning up blind will probably mean that you just spend a day in queues. I would highly recommend booking a tour there.

 

As for NCLs tendering procedure, that can depend by ship and port. At some point they will make tender tickets available to reserve. I’ve seen this happen right at the start of the cruise, the day before and even on the day. If you want to leave early then find out when they will be made available and get there early. This could be early in the morning. I suspect that Santorini tender tickets get snapped up very quickly as people want to try to avoid the queues at the cable car.

 

One last thing about Santorini, I believe that there may be some independent tour operators who pick you up at the bottom of the cable car and take you off by boat (no experience of this myself, but I think there are options). If so then these are the only private tours that I would consider. Meeting someone in Thira town would be a logistical and if there are other groups involved then you could be waiting ages for them.

Edited June 4 by KeithJenner

[kitkat343]

The cruise lines might list ports in which most ships actually dock as tenders in case there is overcrowding and they wind up having to tender.  Passengers with disabilities need to be warned of the possibility of a tender prior to booking because they may not be able to disembark.  There are ports like St. Lucia where sometimes you dock, and sometimes you tender and passengers with disabilities need to be warned.

 

Santorini was just discussed in this recent forum:  

 

 

There are three ways up:the cable car (which can have really long lines), the donkey ride and walking along the donkey path.  The day we were there, there were also really long lines for the donkey ride.  We were going to try to walk up the donkey path, but people who had tried it earlier than us were coming down warning us that they had tried it and it was impossible (there's donkey poop on cobblestone roads and a lot of donkeys to navigate).   There were several ships in port that day, so even the line to get donkeys was quite long.   There have been concerns raised on  these forums that the donkeys aren't treated well.  

 

 My donkey scraped me against the wall, so my knee was a little scraped up and my brother lost a sandal halfway up the donkey path.  There is a store at the top that helpfully sells sandals, but please note that this isn't an ideal way to travel.

 

 Sometimes there have been reports of private ferries running from the port to Oia, so you might want to check the greek cruise critic forum or tripadvisor closer to your sailing date to see if those are running closer to your sailing.  A private tour guide in Santorini should be able to explain your options if there are any alternatives.  It's definitely worth looking at either a ship tour or private tour to avoid the lines (this is a port that otherwise would be fairly easy to DIY).

[CCJack]

For our upcoming NCL cruise we booked the NCL  Oai excursion in Santorini just to avoid the cable cars going up.   We still need to deal with them going down however.

 

In past years we almost always tried to find independent excursions.  However, in the last couple years we have moved back to ship excursions.  Mostly for the "getting off of the ship" reasons and not "missing the ship" concerns.   Several cruises we have been on the ship's excursion passengers have been given priority to get off, even if docked.   In Flam, our ship (not NCL) docked, let ship's excursion people off then backed away and tendered everyone else, while a different ship took the dock space.  I feel cruise lines are starting to entice people to use their excursions by offering these perks sort of like Disney letting their resort guests get in the park first!

 

[davencl]

I count myself unbelievably lucky.  We took a NCL tour in Santorini so avoided the normal tender dock.  Took bus from other dropoff point.   There was no line for cable car to get down.   I don't know why.  This was on the GEM last august.

[KeithJenner]

5 hours ago, CCJack said:

For our upcoming NCL cruise we booked the NCL  Oai excursion in Santorini just to avoid the cable cars going up.   We still need to deal with them going down however.

 

In past years we almost always tried to find independent excursions.  However, in the last couple years we have moved back to ship excursions.  Mostly for the "getting off of the ship" reasons and not "missing the ship" concerns.   Several cruises we have been on the ship's excursion passengers have been given priority to get off, even if docked.   In Flam, our ship (not NCL) docked, let ship's excursion people off then backed away and tendered everyone else, while a different ship took the dock space.  I feel cruise lines are starting to entice people to use their excursions by offering these perks sort of like Disney letting their resort guests get in the park first!

 

The Oia excursion is the one that we usually do in Santorini. It is an OK tour which is fairly cheap and doesn’t take too long. Oia is nice although we tend to just stay at a bar for a while when there lately.

 

The tours in Santorini lose the back on board guarantee as you are left on your own at the end, so the real benefit of an NCL tour there is just avoiding the cable car (which is a significant benefit).

[KeithJenner]

4 hours ago, davencl said:

I count myself unbelievably lucky.  We took a NCL tour in Santorini so avoided the normal tender dock.  Took bus from other dropoff point.   There was no line for cable car to get down.   I don't know why.  This was on the GEM last august.

Yes, you were lucky. It’s all down to the number of ships in port and timings. We had a similar situation a couple of years back when there was just us and a smaller ship there and we walked straight on to the cable car. The next time, a year later there were six ships and queues measured in the hours later that day.

 

As I said earlier you really need to check out what other ships are in port and plan accordingly. If there are no other ships in port then it is not as much of an issue.

[mapleleaves]

Both times I visited CORFU, we docked.

 

Both times I visited MYKONOS we were scheduled to tender, but docked. Even with docking, It took about 20 minutes to get into town.

 

My one visit to SANTORINI (via Gem) was via tender of course.  Tender tickets were available the day before, with the line starting at 8am.  We got in line early at 7, but there were still 12-15 pax ahead of us.  We were scheduled to arrive at 2pm but arrived at 1:30 so the tender process began a bit early. The tender ride was about 15-20 minutes to reach the pier.  We were on the 2nd tender and got there by 2. There was a long queue for the cable car., so we didn't get up to Fira until 4pm.  No line for the cable cars at 6:30/7pm when we returned tho.