Tendering in Mykonos on Celebrity

[RJjjj]

We are arriving in Mykonos at 7am on a Celebrity cruise. Can we safely make a 9am excursion not booked through Celebrity? I understand Celebrity excursions get priority on tenders. 

[John Bull]

That's a tough one.

 

It depends whether on their itinerary Celebrity's "7am" is when they arrive or when they're cleared for disembarkation - different cruise lines, even different ships, tend to choose the one or the other. The difference in ports like Mykonos isn't long, usually about 30 minutes. But 7am is early, that suggests it's ship's arrival time, so probably best to add 30 minutes.

 

It also depends whether your ship moors off-shore & passengers are tendered, or your ship berths at the cruise quay (about 2 miles from town) and passengers travel to town by large water-bus or bus or taxi.

Regardless of what your itinerary says, the decision about who tenders & who berths is frequently switched according to which ships are involved and the weather & sea-state.

Yes, if it's a tender port those on early ships' excursions - and sometimes those in high-grade cabins - have priority disembarkation. However, unless things have changed, tenders aren't ship' tenders, they're high-capacity local boats and extremely efficient.

But if the ship berths there's no priority - the water-bus & local buses & taxis are operated privately. Waterbus is fun, but taxi is quicker & not overly-expensive and might better suit your timing.

So if your ship berths at the quay you'll probably find that you get to town more quickly.

 

Do you know the meeting point? The harbour ? Or one of two bus stations ?

All are a reasonably short walk from the landing point for ship's tenders & the water-bus, but there's sometime confusion about the location of the bus pick-up point.

 

Sorry, I'm going to duck out of advising whether the timing is safe.

Others may know better than I.

And you can ask the excursion operator, but if it's a booking agency (Viator, Cruise Excursions, etc) you're unlikely to get a reliable answer. 

 

There's little need for "excursions"  on Mykonos - where are you planning to visit?

 

JB 🙂

 

[John Bull]

Hi,

Just noticed that was your first post - so a belated welcome to Cruise Critic.

 

Also noticed that you've asked in the general forum - you'll get a better response in the forum which deals specifically with Greek ports

So I suggest that you repeat your question there.

It's https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/463-greece-ports/

 

JB 🙂

[Host Kat]

15 hours ago, RJjjj said:

We are arriving in Mykonos at 7am on a Celebrity cruise. Can we safely make a 9am excursion not booked through Celebrity? I understand Celebrity excursions get priority on tenders. 

 

10 hours ago, John Bull said:

... Also noticed that you've asked in the general forum - you'll get a better response in the forum which deals specifically with Greek ports

So I suggest that you repeat your question there.

It's https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/463-greece-ports/

 

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[CCJack]

We were there a couple weeks ago on NCL.   Tendering went real well, no issues, quite quick.   We were not on a ship's excursion. However, they announced a couple days prior to register for a tender group, we could register on our TV in our room.    We were group 3 and we were off 10 or 15 minutes after the first group.   Not sure how celebrity handles, but they may have something similar.

 

[Milhouse]

Just a single data point:

We were on Celebrity Constellation June 2023 with a stop at Mykonos, arriving at 7am.  

We took our time getting off the ship since we've been to Mykonos a few times but still were able to tender ashore to the Old Port by about 8:45am.  

Not sure how common/much of a risk this is but twice during previous X cruises on Reflection (tho quite a few years ago) stopping in Mykonos, the itinerary showed we were supposed to tender but we ended up docking by the new port area further north.  

[RJjjj]

Thank you for the input. 
it is frustrating that you cannot get a definitive answer from Celebrity on what they are doing. I moved the start of our tour back to 10am to give us more leeway depending on where they put us ashore.