What time is ship's time?

[Savagekids]

I'm booking an excursion though a company other than Disney. For a sailing on the Fantasy in September, what time does the ship run on? Does it stay on Port Canaveral time for the duration of the cruise or does it change with the ports?

I know, if I book though Disney this would not be an issues, but they don't have what we are looking for and won't allow our youngest to go.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

I'm booking an excursion though a company other than Disney. For a sailing on the Fantasy in September, what time does the ship run on? Does it stay on Port Canaveral time for the duration of the cruise or does it change with the ports?

I know, if I book though Disney this would not be an issues, but they don't have what we are looking for and won't allow our youngest to go.

GENERALLY, the ship will change time zones, if the itinerary crosses into different ones. BUT NOT ALWAYS.

If the itinerary your cruise has crosses a time zone, you won't know for sure what time the ship will be observing in port until the night before, when you can see that information on the next day's Navigator.

I've been on cruises where the ship just stayed on it's "own" time for every port. And ones where they did time changes to match with the port time.

 

[SG131]

Not sure what direction you are going, but when we did the eastern carribean in May we did not change time zones at all. Interesting fact, the islands we visited were on Atlantic Standard time and do not participate in daylight savings so there was no time difference between PC and our ports.

 

[Savagekids]

We are doing the Western Caribbean. Cozumel, Grand Cayman -> Jamica -> Castaway Cay
So in reality there are time zone changes, I just didn't know if the ship will change with them or stay on EST time for the whole week.

 

[lbus42]

We went on.Western Caribbean a couple of years ago and the ship changed time zones. They will tell you the night before if the time zone changes the next morning.

 

[lklgoodman]

We went on.Western Caribbean a couple of years ago and the ship changed time zones. They will tell you the night before if the time zone changes the next morning.

Ditto^^^when we went in 2017.

 

[TikiThunderPirates]

I'm booking an excursion though a company other than Disney. For a sailing on the Fantasy in September, what time does the ship run on? Does it stay on Port Canaveral time for the duration of the cruise or does it change with the ports?

I know, if I book though Disney this would not be an issues, but they don't have what we are looking for and won't allow our youngest to go.

You can usually find the port information for your specific port on the internet via a Port information page (not through Disney) and it will tell you what ships are coming into that specific port, what time they dock and what time they leave, for upwards of a year out. In local time. For example let's say you are going to Barcelona you can check the Barcelona port page, and see that the Magic will dock at 7:30am and leave again at 5:30pm local time.

 

[tbholc81]

We are doing the Western Caribbean. Cozumel, Grand Cayman -> Jamica -> Castaway Cay
So in reality there are time zone changes, I just didn't know if the ship will change with them or stay on EST time for the whole week.

We just got off this cruise on the Fantasy yesterday. We changed time zones. Went an hour back for Cozumel and then jumped a ahead a few days later.

 

[scgustafson]

I'm booking an excursion though a company other than Disney. For a sailing on the Fantasy in September, what time does the ship run on? Does it stay on Port Canaveral time for the duration of the cruise or does it change with the ports?

I know, if I book though Disney this would not be an issues, but they don't have what we are looking for and won't allow our youngest to go.

Unlike some other cruise lines, DCL ships change the onboard time to match the local port time, or the current time zone on a transit. These changes are done at night before going to bed, and normally the stateroom clock will be changed by the cabin host(ess) at turndown service, at which time, they will put a card on the bed informing you of the change that night and which way to move your own clock when you go to bed. This information will also be noted in the Personal Navigator for the day that has time change that night. So, all times listed on the DCL website for ashore and all aboard times for a port, will be in that port's local time.
But to answer the true question, from a ship's operations and navigation perspective - the ship always remains on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), also know as either Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or Zulu (Z) time, which is the maritime and aviation standard.

 

[jrabbit]

Disney Ships always stay on M.V.T. - Mickey Vacation Time , which goes by much faster than WFMDC (Waiting For My Disney Cruise) time which goes by way to slowly!!

 

[PrincessShmoo]

Unlike some other cruise lines, DCL ships change the onboard time to match the local port time, or the current time zone on a transit. ...

Not always:

 

[scgustafson]

Not always:
View attachment 421187

This must be the very rare instance where they did not got to port time.

 

[Rob1872]

We just got off this cruise on the Fantasy yesterday. We changed time zones. Went an hour back for Cozumel and then jumped a ahead a few days later.

When we went to Cozumel and Costa Maya in November 2 years ago, we stayed in the same time zone the whole time. I thought that the Mexican state that has Cancun/Costa Maya/Cozumel shifted from CST to EST in 2015. Maybe they don't make the daylight savings shift, so they'd be the same part time and an hour off part time.

 

[scgustafson]

When we went to Cozumel and Costa Maya in November 2 years ago, we stayed in the same time zone the whole time. I thought that the Mexican state that has Cancun/Costa Maya/Cozumel shifted from CST to EST in 2015. Maybe they don't make the daylight savings shift, so they'd be the same part time and an hour off part time.

Quintana Roo, the state that Cancun, Costa Maya, and Cozumel are all in, is always in the equivalent of US Eastern Standard Time (EST: UTC -5), as it does not observe daylight saving time.

 

[jenmiller114]

I would think this was a crazy question but we were on Carnival earlier this year (first and last time) and they did not change time at port. They said to stay on ship time. I think it's asking a lot to expect people to know what time it is on the ship vs. the actual time at the port when phones automatically change, etc. Especially people who are boozing all day in Mexico! Would like to know how many people miss the ship because of that??? Disney has always changed time with the port. I may not appreciate it when I lose an hour of sleep but that sure beats missing the boat!

 

[PrincessShmoo]

Disney has always changed time with the port.

Maybe on all your cruises, but certainly not all cruises. We've been in at least one port (see picture I posted above) where we were directed to remain on ship's time. I think there was one other, but I can't recall the specific port.

There are signs at the ship's exit, a notice in the Navigator, and a reminder by the CD at the show the night before to stay on ship's time. I'm not sure how many, if any people miss the ship due to this. In fact, every cruise that I've been on where we were waiting for late people, those ports were not "ships's time" ports.

 

[shafke]

We just got off this cruise on the Fantasy yesterday. We changed time zones. Went an hour back for Cozumel and then jumped a ahead a few days later.

Yep... just back ourselves... time changed back 1 hour night before Cozumel and moved forward again after leaving Jamaica. Your room steward should set the clock in the room so I would go by that as the official time.

 

[kiford]

I don't remember which cruise it was, but there was one time where they did not change the time to port time but I don't recall which one it was or why it wasn't changed. It might have been a Med cruise. I'm pretty sure when we did the Western 3 years ago (Cozumel-GC-Jamaica-CC) we changed with the port time. Out of 10 cruises, I recall only that one time and since we always do DCL excursions, we didn't really worry too much about it.

 

[BCV23]

We have experienced what PrincessShmoo described. I think it was actually at Cozumel but not sure at all about that. As she said, there is notice to stay on ship's time. Every other time we've been in Cozumel, we've been on local time just as in every other port we've visited.

 

[KVH]

When I step on the ship, time is no different than the spoon in the Matrix. There isn't one . . .