Santorini Ideas

[baltodave]

Hi Everyone,

We will be in Santorini, Greece in June, 2026 (albeit on Celebrity Xcel; not an RC ship).  Any ideas for how the to spend the day?  Also, is it a tender port or docked?

We generally like beautiful beach days (with 2 chairs and an umbrella). 

 

Thanks!

[AlmondFarmer]

My family to be there in June 2026 as well.

we purchased passes to new beach club.

[baltodave]

5 minutes ago, AlmondFarmer said:

My family to be there in June 2026 as well.

we purchased passes to new beach club.

in the X cruise planner, there are two choices.  Do the beach club first and then tour Oia and Fia  ($147 pp) or tour first and the the beach club ($161 pp).  Both seem a bit pricey to me. 

[AlmondFarmer]

I purchased morning beach for June 20th on Xcel.

$126 adult, $93 child.

[baltodave]

2 minutes ago, AlmondFarmer said:

I purchased morning beach for June 20th on Xcel.

$126 adult, $93 child.

We are on the same sailing. Ended up booking morning beach club for $146 pp

[Peter D]

On 11/17/2025 at 12:48 PM, baltodave said:

 Also, is it a tender port or docked?

 

It is a tender port and excursion tendering is the way to go.  Royal Caribbean excursions provide direct tendering back and forth which is very nice.  Otherwise, you go to the main drop off, and have to either ride the cable car or walk the 'donkey stairs'.  Neither are great options, especially during the busy times of days.     

[Pattycruise]

I was fortunate to do a back to back on Royal in Aug/sept this year and Santorini was a stop for both weeks.  I booked 2  different excursions and essentially knew nothing about the port (shame on me). 
 

what I learned-the excursions are tender but not to the area with the cable car-it was a different area. So when we got back, if we wanted to go to the cable car we had to take a different tender.

i had not checked to see how many ships in port and we really lucked out.  We were one of 2 ships weeks one-and the other ship was coming in late.  I was so glad our tour guide mentioned that fact as I  never thought to check! !  When we were done with our excursion we quickly took the tender to the cable car and explored-no wait in either direction (I had heard nightmares about the wait times and the walk).  So we were pretty much explored all we wanted to on week one and  cancelled the week 2 excursion and we didn’t bother exiting the ship week 2 when there were 5 ships in port at Santorini. 
 

so, my advice-check how many ships will be in port  (you can try cruise mapper for this) and then plan wisely. 
 

[Cage]

We docked in Santorini.

[function12]

We were there back in June of 2025.  The water was beautiful but COLD!!! In the 60s cold.  We did a boat tour around the island and then when up to the town.  We took the cable car up and down.  It gets very warm up there.  Very little wait going up but about a 30 minute wait coming back down.  Then had to wait a little bit for a tender to get back to the ship.