Train Help from Civitavecchia

I mean this in a pleasant way, but I want to re-write your OP, as I believe you meant it to read:

We have 8 cruisers over 60, but with no walking impediments, canes, or other aids, in [ MONTH OF YEAR?] in { YEAR?]. (This is to gauge crowding, sun and heat, for example.) Our ship docks at 6AM, coming from [Shengen zone?], and has an all-aboard time of [6:00PM made that up], for a sail-away of 6:45PM. We want to do "Rome In A Day", at the lowest possible cost. None of us want to pay 175 Euros for the ship's day tour of Rome. We'll only be carrying tiny daypacks. Everyone will have a sun-hat and a water bottle.

Here are some past posts on this sort of request:

https://search.ricksteves.com/?button=&date_range=2y&filter=Travel+Forum&query=rome+in+a+day&utf8=%E2%9C%93

Among the many issues to consider are,
Are you at the Cruise Terminal building, or will you be bussed to the Port entrance traffic circle?
Missing the ship's departure and being left behind
Advance booking of tough tickets, like Coliseum
Actual visit desires in Rome
Local transportation in Rome
"Wrangling cats", and your authority to order people to stop shopping
Disparate wishes by various members of the party
Time of last bus transfer from port entrance you YOUR ship

By excursion tickets, do you mean local companies that sell many kinds of 59-passenger bus tour? Or do you mean book a 10-passenger van for a custom tour for all 8? Or do you mean that each person will choose and book their choice of excursion IN Rome?

Civ. is a distance from Rome proper and you can waste a lot of time getting to/from Rome if you don't know what you are doing. I highly recommend you look into the ship's excursions. You will pay more up front than if you put it together yourself, but you are availing yourself of experienced people who know how to get this done.

Not sure if this is your last stop or one mid-cruise. If it's your last stop, then you also have to factor in luggage handling. If mid-cruise, then even more important you use the ship's excursion, IMO. If you do it all yourself, and miss your connection back to the ship, you are on your own to catch up with the ship, which will sail without you.

Hi Tim . . .

Thank you for your reply!!! I welcome your thoughts!!

We have 8 cruisers over 60, but with no walking impediments, canes, or other aids, cruising to Rome in May 2025. Our ship docks at Civitavecchia at 6AM, coming from Naples, Italy, and has an all-aboard time of 5:00PM, for a sail-away of 7:00 PM. We want to efficiently do "Rome In A Day", at the lowest possible cost. None of us want to pay 175+ Euros for the ship's day tour of Rome. We'll only be carrying tiny daypacks with what we need.

Among the many issues to consider are,

Are you at the Cruise Terminal building, or will you be bussed to the Port entrance traffic circle? -- I believe we will be at a cruise terminal building.

Missing the ship's departure and being left behind -- trying to avoid that with our efficient planning!!

Advance booking of tough tickets, like Coliseum -- looking for those now on Viator; any other suggestions? Is it better to buy some kind of attraction pass or buy them direct from the venue?

Actual visit desires in Rome -- Vatican City area -- walk around, not tour; Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica; Colosseum; the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon and Piazza Navona. Being a picture taker, I might like the view of Palatine Hill from Circus Maximus!

Local transportation in Rome - not fans of public transportation; perhaps a good walking tour??

"Wrangling cats", and your authority to order people to stop shopping -- they are on their own! We will set a meeting place and time!

Disparate wishes by various members of the party - that may be an issue -- 3 want the full Vatican tour and 4-5 want to spend more time seeing the most of the sites

Time of last bus transfer from port entrance you YOUR ship -- have not found that out yet --

10-passenger van for a custom tour for all 8 and/or each person will choose and book their choice of excursion IN Rome?

You will be at one of the cruise terminals and then be given the option of being bussed out to the port bus station at the north end of town. Unless you are at an unusual berth (unlikely with NCL) your best option will be to just walk out of the south port gate then to the railway station (just called Civitavecchia) and take the first available train. Get off the ship at the first available opportunity and you should beat the crowds to the station.

There is a cruise train-https://cruisetrail.com/civitavecchia-port-to-rome/

However this gets back to Civi after your all aboard time, though I have always had 30 minutes all aboard time on my around twenty cruises (none on NCL), never 2 hours. But that is NCL for you. A deliberate ploy to make you take their over-priced excursions.

One of the several reasons why NCL don't interest me as a cruise line.

Look at the Trenitalia website closer to the time but for a 5pm onboard time (if that is stuck to rigidly) you would currently want the 15:12 from Rome Termini also calls at Ostiense at 15:23 and Trastevere at 15:27, arriving at Civi at 16:22. Preferably the train 30 minutes earlier.

Just a few random thoughts.

I have no experience with cruises, so others will have more reliable logistical advice, but I have read warnings here about how busy the Civitavecchia station will be when a lot of the cruise-ship passengers descend upon it. If you decide to take the train, you should buy those tickets ahead of time to avoid potentially long lines at the ticket machines and staffed windows. You can do that online at trenitalia.com. There's a bus ("Civitavecchia PortLink") that connects the cruise ship terminal to the Civitavecchia station. You can buy a ticket covering both the bus and the train. I don't know what the process would be if you arrived at the bus without a ticket.

Most departures cost 10.60 euros one way; the trip takes 88 to 108 minutes. I took a look at ViaMichelin's driving time estimate; at 91 minutes to Roma Termini station, it's not really better than the train, but it would offer you more flexibility in departure time, and you'd be able to choose your own destination in Rome. This you would obviously need to arrange in advance so you'd have a van.

Neither the bus nor the train (unless you happen to take the high-cost Frecciarossa train departing at 10:50 AM) offers reserved seats. The bad news is that you may have to stand (though I don't know whether that's allowed on the bus); the good news is that the tickets cannot sell out. That means you don't need to buy the tickets early. Do practice ahead of time so you know how the purchasing process works.

As for your sightseeing priorities, I must tell you that the Sistine Chapel is not part of St. Peter's basilica; it is part of the Vatican Museums. You have to walk all the way through the Museums to reach the chapel. You have no possibility of getting there early enough to power walk straight to the Chapel and have a relatively pleasant experience there. It will be a sardine can for you, and walking in and out will take a good bit of time (the crowding will make it impossible to move faster than the people in front of you). When you exit the Museums, you will have a long walk to the entry point for St. Peter's, and you will face a very long security line there. There's no ticket required for the Basilica, so there's no way to shortcut the security line unless you want to pay 100+ euros for a combination tour of the Vatican Museums and the Basilica offered by a private company like Walks of Italy, in which case you will probably be allowed to use the tour-member shortcut from the Sistine Chapel into the Basilica.

I'd recommend each of your group think long and hard about how important the Sistine Chapel is, because it's going to take a major chunk of time. The folks who are all-in on the Vatican may want to consider the well-priced tours offered by the Vatican Museums. Unfortunately, the Museums do not offer a combination tour also providing access to St. Peter's, so the Vatican Museum tour groups do not get to use the shortcut between the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's.

You can buy Vatican Museum entry tickets here: https://tickets.museivaticani.va/home/calendar/visit/Biglietti-Musei. Entry tickets and tour tickets go on sale well ahead of time, but not necessarily at the same time. The regular entry tickets tend to sell out first --but 2025 is a Holy Year, so who knows? They do not typically sell out instantly when they are put on sale, but they do sell out well in advance--sometimes far in advance. You'll need to watch the Vatican Museum website like a hawk so you can grab the tickets you want on the only day your group has available to see the Vatican.

The Colosseum is the toughest ticket in Rome. Buying that ticket means getting up in the middle of the night when tickets are due to go on sale. Earlier threads on this forum will provide details. Tickets including the underground level are extra hard to score.

they are on their own! We will set a meeting place and time!

oh that sounds very risky to me

Sometimes you just need to spend a bit of money to get what you want. I don't know anything about cruises but know from reading this forum that I would book the excursion offered by the cruise.

What are you going to do if someone fails to appear at the meeting point. I personally would not accept the job of being responsible for this arrangement. I advise you to run as fast as you can in the opposite direction. With so little time (say, 8AM-4:30PM) on the ground beside the ship, and with a train ride of slightly over an hour, that leaves you with less than six hours in Rome, if things go well. Your group really should take the "overpriced, rip-off, proprietary cruise ship" trip. Big bonus: If they are late, the ship will wait.

May is not remotely as hot as June, but it will still be plenty crowded. You might have to stand on the train, but I can't predict that. You have the sad duty of telling the "Vatican" fans that they will wait in the security line at least one hour, and another line to get into St. Peters, after their Vatican Museums tour. This is a prescription for disaster.

(I have been to Rome many times, but only once to the Vatican.) We found the walk from the ship to the train in Civitavecchia to be long, cobblestoned, and not that easy to follow. (Using our host here, Rick's, book.) You should seek out Rick's official "Rome In A Day" trip, maybe in his "Cruse Ports" book in your biggest public library, or possibly on the internet. But it's not hard to find posters here who found the walk trivial. Because our 320 passenger ship used the proprietary port busses, we had to find the right coach, and sit in it (no A/C ...engine off) until the driver's departure time (to three different cruises) from the traffic circle to the piers. For security reasons, you cannot walk on the piers independently.

If you go forward with this, one of the first things is to read our host's Train Travel instructions, blue menu top left,
https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/transportation/trains
You'll go to the Trenitalia site and type in "Civitavecchia All Stations" to "Roma Termini". You'll see that (I think) there are at least two trains an hour, but they all make a different number of stops, and take slightly different times. That's important because you are syncronizing an uncertain boat disembarkation with a predicted guess at your train time, to meet an inflexible bus tour with many passengers who have nothing to do with your group. Do you use public transportation at home, ever? It's real change for some people to not be guiding their armored SUV from one mall to the next, under their own control!

I'm not suggesting that you must buy these, just a few Euros, tickets in advance, or at a discount. But in fact, taking the "first train", with 1743 of your closest personal friends who just got off the ship, is a challenge of its own. I'm talking about making a transcript of all the likely train departure and arrival times, and thinking about things. I'd hate to be stuck in a line of 30 people with iffy credit cards, at the train ticket machine! That's also an obvious problem with the local number-route busses, or even the provided cruise terminal shuttle bus.

You need to do some clock-math here. It seems unrealistic to assume you can get to Rome before close to 10 AM (not being a cruiser, I have no clue whether even that is realistic--check the train schedule on trenitalia.com). By train you'll arrive at Termini Station, leaving you a considerable walk, Metro ride or taxi ride from any of the places you want to see. Maybe people will be able to get to their (varying) first stops before 10:30. If it's a popular ticketed sight like the Vatican Museums or the Colosseum, they could be in line for a while, even with pre-purchased tickets, so the sightseeing might not actually start by 10:30.

How much of a risk taker are you about the timing of your return to the ship? There are train/bus combos scheduled to get you to the terminal at 3:35 PM, 4:25 PM and 4:45 PM. I think the 4:45 arrival time would be kind of crazy, so let's look at the first two. (There are earlier options, of course.) To get to the cruise ship terminal by 3:35 PM, you have to leave Roma Termini at 2:12 PM. To arrive at 4:25 PM, you'd need to board the train at 2:42 PM. This is assuming the (slow, regional) train is on time. That is most certainly not guaranteed.

It seems to me you will have not much more than 4 hours, at best, for your Rome sightseeing unless you choose a cruise excursion that takes some chances with its timing (and I don't know that they do that--but I've read that cruise-tour passengers get off the ship first, which would help). To me, this argues for a walkabout sort of day rather than trying to get inside the popular attractions, unless you cave and take the ship excursion. There is much to enjoy on the streets of Rome, and most of the gorgeous churches are free to enter.

It's unfortunately true that, because of the geography (Civitavecchia's distance from Rome), Rome just isn't a good city to see on a cruise.

Adding to acraven, I didn't express it very well, but I was trying to point out that you are not as "in control of your own fate" on public transportation, as compared to seated in a GM massaging Captain's Chair behind the power steering!

That is, when all 1743 of those people are on the "last" train to Civitavecchia, MAYBE the town puts Two extra busses (Ha!) on the next run of the trip to the Port. But even the articulated bus only carries, what, 100 people? The other 1443 people have to power-walk from the station to the port, assuming that it stops at both the traffic circle and at the Cruise Terminal. (I don't know about that.)

It is absolutely true that the cruise company lets people off in a strategic order. After the booked company tours get off, people in Premium Concierge Sedan Chair cabins get to get off.

I've been on only 10 or 12 cruises, but I have been on at least 3 proprietary excursions that were SERIOUSLY late returning. One time, the ship had been forced to move to another part of the port, because their slip was booked for an incoming ship. OTOH, when I had a Viking cruise director book an expensive night at the St. Petersburg White Nights Festival (just for us), the cab driver they booked had been given a phone number that let him find out that the Soviets had ordered the ship to move to the other side of the river! Worth the money.

These comments are starting to get a little silly. The people on tours are not going to be on the port shuttle bus, the tour buses are going to go straight back to ship side.

Any other ships in port that day will be on their own schedules. not the same as yours. The port does know how many people are on each ship and will run buses accordingly.

Also not everyone chooses to disembark anyway at any port. Some will stay in the resort and city of Civi and some go elsewhere than Rome.

If you are ready as soon as the gangway is ready then you will be off while those going on tours are still at breakfast.

I have certainly walked within the port all the way from the outer pier (using marked and signposted walkways) and if you use the south gate- Once you leave the station you have to go to Via Giuseppe Garibaldi and along the sea you will find yourself in front of the pedestrian passage. Once you enter on the right you will find one of the bus stops. Wait at the shuttle stop, in a few minutes you will be taken to your destination for free.

I have also entered the port on foot through the Fortress entrance and wandered around freely.

isn, the OP said they are booking local tours through Viator in Rome proper. They are not driving back to Civitavecchia. This whole thread is about the train to Rome and back. I'm not worried about how people on the expensive proprietary trips from the gangplank or the Cruise Terminal get back. They have nothing to worry about.

Whether the walk to the port is tedious is a matter of opinion, not "fact."

Did you stroll the entire port before or after 9/11? The Italian soldiers with machine guns would not allow us to walk to our ship. But, then, I didn't have an Imperial passport to hold up in the air.

Tim,

Long, long after 9/11, not long before Covid.

To the best of my knowledge Italy was never part of the British Empire, so unless you have an Italian passport one's nationality would make no difference.

As stated there is at least 1 other total!y unpoliced foot entrance from the town, as there are 8 tourist sites (maybe more) within the port complex as well as the various long distance ferry terminals.

My berth was one without a terminal building a long way down the sea wall, where the TIC was in a tent. They actual!y encouraged exploration of the port and city. No one batted an eyelid at you doing so.

If I have limited time like that I am always off the ship ASAP, and in fact will always be up and on deck for arrival at a port. If I have to miss breakfast so be it. I am not joined to the ship by an umbilical cord. In practice there is usually an ear!y bird coffee and pastries breakfast on my ships as the gangway is set up and the ship cleared.

hey hey marianne
reading your post with "assuming and expectations" about your day in rome is too much. don't mean to sound mean, lots for you to think about. have a sit down meeting with your group about issues involved getting to rome.
there are 5 ships in port that day with over 20,000 passengers trying to do the same thing as you. it won't be easy, time consuming plus the distance from port to central rome. they are expecting over 30+ million people for the jubilee and will packed worse than a can of sardines, traveling during high season with high demand to see the vatican and other attractions. getting tickets will be tough to get, some are date/timed stamped, skip the line tickets are for buying tickets not going thru security line to enter. years ago we were in security line for 2 hours and moved 5 feet! got out of line, went to another beautiful church, met that priest, let us take a picture with him, he kissed my forehead & blessed me. that made my day.
even though we (2) spent 5 days in rome before our cruise out of civitavecchia, there was a protest with thousands of people blocking the area and roads around piazza navona where we stayed, with so many cops everywhere. no shuttles/taxis allowed within so pulled our luggage thru cobblestones to main road, found one taxi and paid 140E to get to port with many people missing the departure of ship and had to fly to next stop of barcelona.
viator is a third party reseller for tours that may cancel last minute, i would seriously think about ship excursion that will get you back to ship on time. we have hired private taxi/tours in different ports (some you are seeing) and was adament about getting back to ship before departure. they made itinerary ok with us, shared cost and it was a fabulous tour. sometimes it's worth taking ship excursion if it's important seeing attraction, instead of stressing out, language barriers & getting lost in someplace new to your gang
cruisemapper.com is a site you can use to check ships, ports, tracking that gives great info.
look up other ports, are they docked or you take a tender to dock. i don't like when cruise line misleads people (livorno is not florence which is about 2 hour train ride. we also buy food to take on train (sandwiches, deli meats/cheeses/bread, drinks/wine have a corkscrew, napkins) and enjoy the ride. done that many times
venice is not trieste (anywhere from 2 1/2 to 4 hour train ride or a bus ride). we have used booking.com for hotels or email direct to hotel to see if a discount, may have or may not, all you can do is ask. remember check-in is 2-4pm unless approval for early check-in, check-out 10-11am.
packing light is tough, don't overload your bags, don't know if ship has laundry (probably have to pay), we brought a small plastic container of laundry soap, sink washed and hung in cabin on sea days.
hoping this gives you options/ideas to think about, not happy camp land but your knowledge/research ahead of time helps out
aloha

Marianne,

I'm really not trying to be Debbie Downer, just offering food for thought.

We've taken many cruises, including ones starting from Civitavecchia and ones ending there as well. So we are very familar with getting to and from the cruise port from Rome using the train. In addition, we've been to Rome a number of times independent of cruises.

The greatest challenge trying to do a day trip to Rome from the port on your own, is making sure you get back to the ship on time. And, as someone mentioned, there will be four ships in port with passengers trying to do the same thing.

With that thought in mind, I would not try to do it using the train, or even a private driver. Been there and done that. Strongly suggest a ship excursion.

Yes, the ship excursions are expensive, but the ship will wait for you if there is a delay getting back. And the excursions are not as expensive as getting 8 people to the next port if your group doesn't make it back in time. And the ship will leave you. Believe me, we've seen folks running along several piers as the ship pulled away.

Don't mean to rain on your parade. Just relating what we've experienced.