We had a few different things going on.
*We had new passengers who have never sailed before who had no clue we weren't docking. They thought they could just walk off the ship. Didn't have a clue what a water shuttle (the new term for a tender) was.
*We had other passengers who understood there were water shuttles being used but thought they could just go get on one.
*Experienced passengers thought they should just go to the dining room and get a ticket when they were ready to go ashore.
*Very experienced passengers thought they could just show their Elite cards and get on the next shuttle.
But this ship started handing out tender tickets at 10am for our 1 pm arrival. Much, much earlier than you'll find on the other ships. And Elite passengers went to an entirely different place for their numbered tickets.
It was quite the mess. We were down in International Cafe during the arrival time and watched swarms of guests who had not followed any of the instructions given. It was great people watching for sure, but the poor cruise staff!
Here we are at 3:40 in the afternoon and the ship is on water shuttle group number 92. Yikes. (Update: At 3:50 tickets were no longer needed. So that makes it close to three hours to get everyone who wanted to go ashore outta here.) Yep, we're skipping it to watch the view from our balcony instead. Not sure if we'll make it out tomorrow, but I'm guessing not.
You can find the Patters from this voyage here.