Thread: Ship Time vs. Island Time

On our RCL cruise we went by ship time and on HAL we went by port time and changed time zones so often it was confusing. Really prefer one time zone for whole trip.

On both of our cruises, HAL and Celebrity, the ship stuck with the actual time zone of the location whereever we were. Sure this means changing time zones but it always matched the islands.

How is this different from flying where you change flights in intermediate airports?

Sometimes the time on the ship does not match the local time. I've encountered this more than once. It's a pain for sure. I'm thinking this was the case in Grand Cayman ... I just can't remember!

Originally Posted by Ziggy7

eeeeks !!! research, reseach, research .... dont get left behind! No excursion is worth that!

Don't worry! WE won't!!! I'm very very careful about that! I'll cancel the excursion first!!!

Mike - I'm sure Godfreys won't be a problem. I don't know much about Joyce Prince but it sounds like she specializes in the cruise ship excursions so it probably won't be an issue.

Originally Posted by mechcc

On our RCL cruise we went by ship time and on HAL we went by port time and changed time zones so often it was confusing. Really prefer one time zone for whole trip.

try doing that on an around the world cruise....

Originally Posted by sailyn

Sometimes the time on the ship does not match the local time. I've encountered this more than once. It's a pain for sure. I'm thinking this was the case in Grand Cayman ... I just can't remember!

I beleive this occurs more frequently in GC than anywhere else since GC is on Central Time and the rest of the Caribbean islands and ports are mostly on East Coast time. So in order to not have the passgeners changing time back and forth for just one port stop, some ships elect to not change time to match Central time and just leave everything on East Coast time or ship time.

And therefore you end up with a 1 hour difference between ship time and island time

Originally Posted by jstducky

I beleive this occurs more frequently in GC than anywhere else since GC is on Central Time and the rest of the Caribbean islands and ports are mostly on East Coast time. So in order to not have the passgeners changing time back and forth for just one port stop, some ships elect to not change time to match Central time and just leave everything on East Coast time or ship time.

And therefore you end up with a 1 hour difference between ship time and island time

Cayman Islands are NOT on Central Time. Cayman Islands are on GMT -5 hours, year round. That is the same as Eastern Standard Time. During times that DST is not in effect in the US, GC time will be the same as EST. When DST is in effect, GC time will be one hour behind EDT... which, for those months would be the same as CDT... but it isn't CDT and is never the same as CST.

Confusing? That's why it's better to compare time zones based on the difference from GMT.

Ahh I didnt know that GC didn't follow Daylight Savings. Thanks Grumpy!

You are most welcome, jstducky...

Now that we've come close to beating another horse to death.... TLH is gonna get real mad one of these days... here's a link to the site I use when checking out time zones for specific locations. http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/ It will even show the exact current time as compared to the time that you have set on your computer clock.