Reasons to fly in a day early

[worldspan]

Reason to fly in a day early ? You are on a 12 day Alaska cruise tour originating with 7 day cruise at Vancouver. Your first flight to Vancouver is cancelled and then your 2nd flight to Vancover is cancelled. Bottom line you will miss the ship at Vancouver. Oh well, join the ship two days later in first port of call, Ketchikan ? NO!!!!! Remember the 200 yr old "Jones Act" which prohibits for e.g. in this case boarding in one American port like Ketchikan and disembarking in another, this case Seward (Anchorage) when there are no foreign ports in between.

 

Bottom line, you are unable to take any of your 7 day cruise and best you can do is join the "cruisetour" portion 7 days later to finish off the last 5 days.

 

Happened to people I know

 

Worldspan

131 cruises strong

[Keith1010]

I don't care where you fly. If you can't drive there to make the ship and have to fly, go a day or more early.

 

Keith

[Gail & Marty sailing away]

gives you time to get rested.

[mrsfuzzmo]

We always fly in a day or two early. I prefer two, but it depends on my vacation time. Sometimes we've even gone 3 days early.

 

In addition to the lessening of the anxiety levels, we make it all part of the trip. I find out some great reataurants to try, local things to see, etc. It's like adding an extra couple of port days to your cruise. That's the biggest bonus of all.

 

For our honeymoon, we were schedule to sail out of Barcelona, Venezuela (Windjammer) and we had 5 flights (four connections) in one day to get down there. We did plan to go the day before "just in case". Well, our very first flight out of the 5 was delayed by 45 minutes because of fog, which in turn made us miss our connection, which in turn switched our flight patterns completely, which in turn had us landing in Caracas Venezuela at 1:00 am, which in turn....(much more to the story inserted here)......had us taking a dugout canoe out into the ocean for two hours to get to our sailing ship!

 

Kind of wished we had two extra days that trip!

[fleckle]

Thank you all for making me feel a lot better about flying into Seattle the day before our cruise! I thought I was being overly paranoid.

Simply being sensible, not in the slightest paranoid.

 

The few incidents that have been described here barely scratch the surface of all the possible things that can go wrong.

 

One could fill several large books describing things that have gone wrong to cause delays on people's travels and still would not cover all the possibilities.

 

If you talk to frequent travelers, it would be extremely rare to encounter anyone who has never experienced delays or cancellations, or had checked luggage missing at some point.

 

Even if driving to the port, it is possible to encounter mechanical breakdowns or traffic delays.

 

There are no guarantees, of course, but arriving a day or two early greatly increases the likelihood of your being on the ship at departure and of having your luggage catch up with you if it should be delayed or mis-routed.

 

In addition, you get the previously mentioned benefits of starting your cruise rested and relaxed and having some time to enjoy the embarkation city, which is like getting an additional port to visit.

[EGG]

We enjoy a walk to unwind or maybe a swim and then dinner in the embarkation city. Next morning we have a light breakfast, a walk maybe with some sightseeing or a few hours by the pool.

 

We love the first day of our cruise. Lunch on the ship, explore the ship, change or make any reservations if necessary, meet up with cruise critic friends and enjoy sailaway. If you have fixed seating you can see how many people never make it to the dining room the first night. I am sure those are the people who flew in the same day and they were exhausted.

[emmtee]

For UK cruisers flying in a day early gives your body a little time to adjust to time difference...

 

And the same goes for US cruisers flying to the UK. We arrived in London a few days before our Baltic cruise sailing from Dover. I spent the entire first day sleeping, which was a shame because there's so much to see in London.

 

I have a bad habit of doing last minute laundry and packing the night before we travel. I might get 2 hours of sleep, but usually I don't dare go to bed for fear of oversleeping and missing my flight. I'm so tired that first day; it's better to catch up on my sleep in a hotel room than on the cruise ship.

[emmtee]

Thank you all for making me feel a lot better about flying into Seattle the day before our cruise! I thought I was being overly paranoid.

 

Seattle is such a beautiful city - so much to do. If you can stay an extra day at the end of your cruise, you'll have more time to enjoy the city and avoid the chaos at tha airport. It's a real zoo when the cruise ships return and everyone is flying home at once.

[Cruisin' Chick]

Even if you're not starting a cruise in winter, there are other weather conditions that can be affecting air travel (even if the beginning or ending of your flight might have decent weather).

 

There are some ports (such as Vancouver) that require a ship to depart during specific tidal conditions. So a ship might not always wait for a late flight.

 

For our last cruise, about 200 passengers didn't make it onboard because of snow on their end and a rainstorm in LA on this end. The captain even waited four and a half hours and finally made the decision to sail without them.

[chipq]

Just too many things can cause a flight delay. We are now in Fla four our Saturday cruise already relaxed in vacation mode. The flight departed west coast on time but air traffic delays in Houston and weather arounf FLL, we arrived almost an hour and a half late. Would have been stressful. Last summer fly to BWI and with 30 mins to go they shut the airport down due to severe weather and turned us back to Nashville. We finally arrived 5 hours late. I fly at least one day early.

 

 

http://luv2cruise.blogspot.com

[Sandi3667]

Thank you all for making me feel a lot better about flying into Seattle the day before our cruise! I thought I was being overly paranoid.

 

We drove to Seattle, and still went up a day early. It gave us time to stop & have a leisurely lunch. We went to bed early, slept in (too excited to actually go to sleep early), had a relaxing breakfast at the hotel, then took the shuttle to the port. Instead of racing through an unfamiliar city and trying to find parking, we were on board the ship by noon.

[Matcodixon]

After finally booking the Mediterranean cruise we have been wanting to take for many years, we are flying in 3 days early..

 

First, it is a couple of long flights there and didn't want to take any chances at all.

Second , Well our departure port is Venice... Enough said. :D

[LandlockedCruiser01]

Before discovering Cruise Critic, I just thought about flying in the day of. Arriving the day before didn't even occur to me. Cruise Critic reviews convinced me otherwise; the fear of missing the ship was just too much. So for my first cruise, I did just that. My flight to Miami arrived right on time. It was raining that day, so I spent most of the time sitting in the hotel room, watching TV. During the short time the rain actually stopped, I wandered around the neighborhood a little. It was quite plain and suburban, but better than sitting inside all day. It was nice to enjoy the warm Florida weather, though; it was much warmer than Chicago at the time.

 

All in all, it was kind of boring. My plane arrived on time, so if I flew in the day of, I could have made the ship and saved money I spent on the hotel room and the meals. But I was just lucky that time; there's always a "what if". So I just treated as a form of travel insurance, budgeted accordingly, and made the most of my hotel stay.

[geoherb]

Even when we have lovely weather (for December), lousy weather other places can cause delays in the airlines' schedules. Before one Christmas cruise, our flight was scheduled to be around noon. We ended up not leaving until after 4 p.m. because of a snowstorm in New England delayed our plane there. We had to change planes in Orlando. Fortunately we made it. Unfortunately our checked bags did not. The airline delivered our bags to our hotel sometime during the night and we were able to enjoy our cruise.

 

We met another family on that cruise whose bags did not make a connection. They were without a change of clothes the first few days until the bags finally caught up with the ship.

 

That was also the cruise where a lot of passengers missed the ship. One of them was the Protestant minister. The Catholic priest ended up doing an ecumenical worship service. The minister never caught up to the ship.

[bus man]

My plane arrived on time, so if I flew in the day of, I could have made the ship and saved money I spent on the hotel room and the meals.

 

Maybe, maybe not. Just because your day-before flight arrived on time, does not mean that the same flight the next day (the day of the cruise) would have been on time.

[dfish]

For our very first cruise to Alaska from Vancouver we opted to fly in a day early. All flights went smoothly and we arrived on time. When I went through immigration the officer asked me what time my ship left that afternoon. I told him not till the next day as I didn't trust the airlines to keep to schedule. He told me that was a very smart decision. He said I wouldn't believe the number of passengers who arrived late and were totally stressed out about making it to the ship on time.

 

I figure this guy has seen a lot more of it than any one of us and if that's his advice, I'm taking it.

[Keith1010]

Fly in a day or more early.

 

Keith

[RN4Nsy]

We always go at least 1 day ahead for all of the above reasons. Mostly because of weather delays/plane issues. It really does take the stress out boarding the ship. Relax, explore your embarkation city and enjoy your trip!

 

Myra