private shore excursions at the tender port (Bar Harbor)

[DonnaK]

We were planning to make our own arrangements at each port, and not book Princess excursions. I've been reading reviews of Canada/NE cruises on both Princess and RCI, and all of them say that it's a problem at the tender ports (Bar Harbour and Saint John) getting off the ship if you are not booked on a ship's excursion. Those on ship's tours get priority tendering, and it may be hours before the "freelancers" are allowed off the ship. Now, we've been to many Caribbean tender ports, and never ever had an issue getting off the ship whenever we wanted.

 

Is this the case?

[sopo pirates]

As a tour guide in Maine, I am aware that many cruise lines do try to get their excursion pax on the tenders first in Bar Harbor. You may get lucky though, several cruise lines use the services of a local tour boat operator and can tender 300+/- pax at a time vs the seating capacity of the ship's tenders. Yes some folks have had to wait awhile to disembark their vessels, others have been lucky enough to fill in seats when an excursion tour has loaded the tender and there weren't enough seats to fit the next tour also.

 

Unless there are multiple vessels in St. John, you should be able to dock at their pier - nice arrangements there - in past years, they present every lady disembarking the ship with a rose.

 

Jo

SoPo Pirates

[Host Caroline]

Just my opinion but in a port with as much to offer as Bar Harbor we are taking a very early ship's tour to get off as soon as we can. We have priority tendering on Princess as "elite level" passengers but are cruising to Canada/NE on RCI and have had "issues" with the tour people getting off first. We are taking what looks like a wonderful schooner sail and brief trip up to Cadillac Mtn early which will leave us 6 hours in the afternoon for lunch, sightseeing in Bar Harbor and maybe even a brief trolley tour. Most of the cruise lines offer an informative and relatively inexpensive walking tour if you don't want to spend much... but that's just me.. I don't want to sit around on the ship for another hour when they begin tendering..

.... now if it was a tender by some change in Jamaica that would be a diff. story.. no rush at all 'mon:eek:

[KelJ]

We were planning to make our own arrangements at each port, and not book Princess excursions. I've been reading reviews of Canada/NE cruises on both Princess and RCI, and all of them say that it's a problem at the tender ports (Bar Harbour and Saint John) getting off the ship if you are not booked on a ship's excursion. Those on ship's tours get priority tendering, and it may be hours before the "freelancers" are allowed off the ship. Now, we've been to many Caribbean tender ports, and never ever had an issue getting off the ship whenever we wanted.

 

Is this the case?

 

My suggestion would be to definitely book an early ship's tour. I was on the 7-3-08 sailing of the Explorer to Canada/NE and, while we had a ship's tour and were off early, those without ship's excursions had a tough time getting off. Pop over to our roll call and read some of the reviews.