Britannia crowds boarding

On my last P&O cruise, I had a 3 pm boarding time, but the P&O coach from Lancashire arrived at 12.30. Obviously I didn't fancy sitting on my suitcase outside the terminal waiting till 3.

People driving down will have a similar dilemma. If their boarding time is an hour before sailing, they aren't going to carefully time their journey so that given a clear road and no accidents they will get there an hour early. As people who have driven in Southampton know, traffic delays can happen.

On my last P&O cruise, I had a 3 pm boarding time, but the P&O coach from Lancashire arrived at 12.30. Obviously I didn't fancy sitting on my suitcase outside the terminal waiting till 3.

 

 

 

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Whenever we have travelled by coach the coach driver is given a time to arrive. Everyone on the coach has had the same checkin time. It's ludicrous to be given 3pm when the coach is given 12.30.

 

P&O don't help themselves sometime.

 

David.

We were dropped of at the terminal by Eavesway coaches on the 13th June at 2:10 . Inside the terminal 2 minutes later.

We got on board at 3:35 pm,.:(

Never waited this long with other cruise lines !!!

Callyscally

I must admit, I have never really had a problem at Southampton. I liked the idea of getting a coloured card on check in and this was your order of boarding. That seems like a fairer system to me. We flew to Sydney to join Aurora and arrived at 0700. We had to wait 2hrs in the airport for a coach to take us to the Holiday Inn Sydney where we were given a hot breakfast, allowed to leave our luggage and enjoyed a walk around Sydney. We were taken to the ship terminal at 3pm and boarded. To be fair, we were satisfied with how it had been organised. Unfortunately, some people on other flights had been taken directly to the ship terminal and had been sat waiting for over 4 hours. Moving and processing large numbers of people is always going to be challenging.

Whenever we have travelled by coach the coach driver is given a time to arrive. Everyone on the coach has had the same checkin time. It's ludicrous to be given 3pm when the coach is given 12.30.

 

P&O don't help themselves sometime.

 

David.

The coach time was supposed to be 2.30. We had an exceptionally clear run and fewer pickups than usual. (And I'm sure car drivers have the same 'problem'!)

With just under four weeks to our cruise on Britannia we have been allocated a cabin and a boarding time which is 16:00 :eek::eek:

Some people might see this as a problem but we are staying at the Mecure Dolphin the night before and I phoned them and asked about check out and was told that they are only too happy to look after our bags for us after check out (which is 1200).:)

So the plan is to check out late morning, have a walk around Southampton (which neither of us has been to apart from boarding cruise ships!!), get some lunch, visits the Solent Air Museum (15 minutes walk from the Hotel) and return to the hotel by 1500, taxi to the cruise terminal and board at our leisure. Job done methinks!! :D

Peter and Jenny

We sailed on this cruise and were originally given a check in time of 12.30pm but then received an email from P&O asking us to arrive 45 minutes later. We had travelled down from the North and stayed in Southampton the night before. We did as we were asked and arrived at 1.15pm which was a bit of a chew as we had to vacate our hotel by 12noon. It was chaos when we arrived at the terminal - we had to wait 50 minutes just to park our car and then had over an hour to wait in the terminal. We spoke to people on Britannia who had later check in time than us but had not been asked to arrive any later which is why I think the chaos occurred - it was purely a knock on effect. Bad organising by P&O I'm afraid. Disembarking was very swift and well organised. Mind you, we disembarked at 9.45am and there were already people sitting in the departure lounge!!!:eek:

With just under four weeks to our cruise on Britannia we have been allocated a cabin and a boarding time which is 16:00 :eek::eek:

 

Some people might see this as a problem but we are staying at the Mecure Dolphin the night before and I phoned them and asked about check out and was told that they are only too happy to look after our bags for us after check out (which is 1200).:)

 

So the plan is to check out late morning, have a walk around Southampton (which neither of us has been to apart from boarding cruise ships!!), get some lunch, visits the Solent Air Museum (15 minutes walk from the Hotel) and return to the hotel by 1500, taxi to the cruise terminal and board at our leisure. Job done methinks!! :D

 

Peter and Jenny

We've done that in the past. Just becareful re the Dolphin. When we stayed there they said they would look after luggage when we checked out. When we returned we found the main cases still by the desk just feet away from the main door. We were not impressed.