Santorini, Greece Port Reviews

You can wait hours for the team to take you up and the walk up the 528 stairs is not for the faint of heart but faster. The donkey’s are an option. Try to get off the ship early or be in shape for the steps.

Beautiful excursion seeing all parts of the island with an excellent guide

Did not do an excursion. One cable car only for ascent to town. Better set-up would be debarking at ferry pier below town, where buses and taxies could transport passengers to town.

This is a tender port and we were there with three other cruise ships. Our tender to shore and the time to get up to the top of the village by cable car was almost 90 minutes. Take that in to account with timing of tours. You can take the steps but it is almost 600 steps up and you’ll be dodging donkey dumps all the way up

VERY LONG LINES TO GO UP AND DOWN THE TRAM. VERY, VERY HOT WAITING IN LINE. OVER AN HOUR EACH WAY.

Nightmare, two hours in heat waitibg for tram up mountain.

It is what it is, a bucket list stop. Once you've seen the blue domes, you're done. It was SO busy in Oia that it was not as enjoyable as I've experienced in the past.

We did on our own - took the tender boat to Fira followed by a boat transfer + Bus to Oia. Best decision. We enjoyed on our time without the crowds and took the bus transfer back to Fira. Then skipped the crowded cable car in favor of walking down (not for everyone).

On the day we docked at santorini, there were 3 other cruise ships in, a total of 12,000 people all trying to get to the same place. Firstly, to get ashore it's tendor boat only, the tendors drop you at Fira old port which is at the bottom of a cliff. The only way to the top is to walk (30-45mins), cable car or donkey(DON'T USE THE DONKIES!). We were the first tendor of the ship at around 08:30am, even at that time the que for the cable car was over 45 minutes, so we paid €30pp for a private boat trip to Oia with coach transport back included. We arrived at Oia by 9:30am and had a lovely breakfast, we originally wanted to stay till around 3-4pm but by 12:30 we were back on the ship. The streets we're overcrowded and you literally couldn't move in areas, Once we got back to Fira, we decided to walk the donkey track down which took 30mins, we did hear some people waited nearly 3 hours at the top to come down by cable car. In my opinion, the best way to see santorini is either on the Internet, or by boat or plane. Its honestly that bad, if we were ever on cruise with santorini as a port of call again, we wouldn't bother getting off the ship.

See it once…3-4 hour wait for a sky lift down is ridiculous.