Busses, Busses, Everywhere!

Today was a long day.

I help out giving tours at the Painted Church near my home. The church was painted by the priest at the time between 1899 and 1904. SOme days there are a few visitors and on a typical day when a ship comes into port we may have 3 busses of tourists from the ship and a bunch of cars from people here for a wek or more. Many people on board those ships will book a tour which includes the Painted Church, the Place of Refuge (a National Park) and a stop at a coffee place. People book that excursion through the ship because they are only on island 1 days in most cases and if that tour gets back late, the ship will wait for them. If they just get off the ship and book their own transportation they save considerable money but must be back to the ship on time as it will not wait for them. There are Youtube videos of people running along the dock or pier as they ship disappears in the distance.

So as I say, normally 3 busses to the church as there are all sorts of other excursions they can bookm. The ship today was a somewhat different experience. They did offer the same 3 locations but I do not think the yoffered as many options as othe rships do. This is I belive that the ship tries to offer more informative and selective destinations on island.

So as the church we knew what was coming and tried out best to handle the visitors. Rather than 3 busses, they told us to expect (drum roll) 16! Five times the normal arrivals and I think every person on the ship visited the church. We moved our gift shop to the community enter across the parking lot from the church, we had volunteers directing busses and my Sister and I tag-teamned the tours. I think we did about all we could to accomodate the influx of visitors.

Naturally as expected it all went downhill and I have to blame the bus company. Here is why.

The drivers make 3 stops. They have an opportunity to pace themselves but have no way to do that it appears. The coffee site I believe is the one where the ycan accomodate multiple busses at a time. Certainly the National Park can because it is a self-directed tour. Our church can accomidate multiple busses however there are only so many pews to sit on inside. We can handle a full busload of people but if a second bus comes duringa tour we have a logistical problem. So imagine what it was like when we were staring t ogive a tour and a second bus arrives. Then minutes later a third buss. At one time we have 4 busses in the parking lot. We were bring abussload of people in the front of the church while mletteing the current tour out past the alter and trying to get them to the community center. Total chaos.

I don’t know if the bus companys pay the church but I can tell you that the church really relies upon donations from visitors. On a regular boat day the busses are further apart, people enjoy fruit stand and small gift area and get to the use the bathrooms and head back on the bus. Today it was like hearding cats. Each bus was scheduled for a 30 minute stop. We got them into the church but the people coming in the handicapped entrance often missed some of the tour information. Then after a quite brief tour they were herded out the back and the next bus filed in. Most people missed going to the more elaborate gift shop set up and just got back on the bus for their next destination. I think our donations were quite low even though we had what I call a ‘Boatload’ of visitors (see the pun.. people from the boat… you know if I have to explain the pun it’s just not worth the trouble).

So for a group that was looking for a cultural stop, I feel they may have been a bit disappointed.

We will be talking to the cruise ship and the bus company to see if they can better schedule the busses. We tour guide have already cut short our informational talk and it seems quite rushed.

I just heard that we may need to have the discussion soon as this same tour may happen again in a month!