The Greece cruise ship mistakes that derailed travel writer Chantelle Kincy’s long-awaited trip were, by her own admission, entirely self-inflicted, and the numbers behind Santorini’s overcrowding suggest she was far from alone in making them.
Kincy, founder of travel site Flannels or FlipFlops, published an account of her Greek itinerary on Business Insider, describing how sky-high expectations met grinding queues, exhausting terrain, and a nagging sense that she had seen neither island properly.
Greece Cruise Ship Mistakes Start at the Port
Kincy’s first error was choosing a cruise as her mode of entry. She arrived in Santorini as one of thousands of passengers disembarking simultaneously, then spent several hours simply trying to reach the villages she wanted to explore, by tram, donkey, or a steep walk uphill.
The scale of the problem she encountered is documented in Greek Trip Planner’s Santorini tourism statistics: in 2023, the island recorded 63 days on which cruise passenger arrivals exceeded 10,000–11,000 people, with single-day peaks reaching 17,000. In response, the island introduced a daily cap of 8,000 cruise passengers from 2025, enforced through an algorithmic berth allocation system operating months in advance.
The cap has a scientific basis. A 2018 carrying-capacity study commissioned by the Municipality of Thira, led by Prof. Eleni Lekkakou and colleagues at the University of the Aegean, used 17 indicators covering infrastructure, water supply, waste handling, road networks, archaeological site load, and social cohesion to arrive at that figure, according to Greek Trip Planner’s Greece overtourism data.
Cruise passengers are now also subject to a €20 (approximately $23) per-person levy, introduced two years before the cap came into force, according to Luxury Travel Advisor. The Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) told the same publication it was ‘supportive’ of Santorini’s intention to enforce the passenger limit.
Two Islands, One Day Each, and the Oia Queue
Kincy’s second mistake was treating Santorini and Mykonos as boxes to tick. With only a day on each, she never moved beyond the most crowded attractions.
Nowhere was this clearer than at the blue-domed churches in Oia, on Santorini’s northern tip. The viewpoint allows photography of up to five domes simultaneously, according to Routed Family, and it draws visitors from every ship in port. Kincy described waiting over an hour for ten seconds in front of a church. She eventually hired a local guide to take her to the island’s quieter eastern and southern shores, where she found black- and red-sand beaches and small churches with no queue.
The practical fix is timing. Santorini View advises visiting the Oia churches between 6:30 and 9:00 a.m., when crowds are thin and the morning light is at its best for photography. Arriving before the cruise tenders begin running makes that window achievable for land-based visitors.
The broader context is the sheer volume of people converging on a small island. Santorini’s annual visitor-to-resident ratio is approximately 220:1, a figure Greek Trip Planner describes as a defensible approximation rather than a published official statistic. The island received roughly 3.4 million annual visitors in 2024, of whom approximately 1.34 million arrived by cruise ship, per the INSETE 2024 Statistical Bulletin cited by Greek Trip Planner, though the source notes that figure may involve some double-counting of passengers who arrive by sea and depart by air.
Greece as a whole set a record in 2025, welcoming 37.98 million international visitors, with August 2025 alone seeing 7.466 million arrivals, according to the Greek Tourism Confederation via Trading Economics.
Athens Without a Plan, and the Heat
In Athens, Kincy made a third error: she arrived without an itinerary and spent hours wandering the wrong parts of the city. Her advice for next time is to stay in the Plaka neighbourhood, within walking distance of the Acropolis, Syntagma Square, and restaurants worth booking in advance.
Her final lesson was physical preparation. September heat in Greece proved more punishing than she had anticipated, and the cobblestone streets (photogenic but relentless) wore her down. She ditched the dresses for trainers and a ponytail by day two.
Kincy says she would return, but travelling more slowly: fewer islands, longer stays, and a base on shore rather than a ship. She listed Hydra, Kimolos, and Ithaca as quieter alternatives to Santorini and Mykonos.
With Santorini’s 8,000-passenger daily cap now in force and the per-person cruise levy adding to the cost of a day trip, the arithmetic of a cruise-based visit has shifted. Whether the cap is tight enough to change the experience on the ground will become clearer as the 2026 summer season peaks.