Private transfer vs. Celebrity port to airport

[edgee]

Celebrity Choice Air has booked us on a 10:45 flight from Rome back to Washington Dulles. Ship arrives at port at 5 a.m. We are concerned about using Celebrity transfer bus due to reports of stolen luggage and unwillingness to allow even small bags containing valuables to remain with passengers on transfer bus. Would appreciate any advice on how early we can plan to be off of the ship and have private limo driver meet us at the pier..or also would reconsider use of cruise line transfer if anyone can report positive experiences. (I have also posted this question on Italy ports board, but since it is sort of Celebrity specific, I thought i may get better advice here) Thanks for any experience fellow Celebrity cruisers can share.

[ThursdaysChild]

Celebrity Choice Air has booked us on a 10:45 flight from Rome back to Washington Dulles. Ship arrives at port at 5 a.m. We are concerned about using Celebrity transfer bus due to reports of stolen luggage and unwillingness to allow even small bags containing valuables to remain with passengers on transfer bus. Would appreciate any advice on how early we can plan to be off of the ship and have private limo driver meet us at the pier..or also would reconsider use of cruise line transfer if anyone can report positive experiences. (I have also posted this question on Italy ports board, but since it is sort of Celebrity specific, I thought i may get better advice here) Thanks for any experience fellow Celebrity cruisers can share.

 

I suggest you plan to self-disembark (which means you carrying all your luggage off) as soon as the ship is cleared at Civitavecchia. It may dock at 5 AM, but may not clear for another hour. Have a VERY reliable company such as RomeCabs scheduled to pick you up. With a pickup by 7 AM you'll be at FCO at least 2 hours ahead of your flight which should suffice.

[dln929]

I don't know if this will be exactly useful to you but we booked our flight using Choice Air and arranged for the Celebrity transfer bus to bring us to the ship (we arrived the morning of the cruise). So we did the opposite of what you're wanting to do. It worked out pretty well. Our luggage didn't go missing and no one even looked twice at our large-ish tote bags. I'm afraid I was so jet-lagged that I didn't notice if any of the other people had the 21" carry-on suitcases though. Is that the size people were reporting bad experiences with? I'm wondering if the reluctance to accept those on the bus had anything to do with lack of bus baggage storage (like the kind Megabus and Greyhound have). The transfer buses are the same kind used for shore excursions. But like I said, I'm not sure about it.

[dobes3kh]

I suggest you plan to self-disembark (which means you carrying all your luggage off) as soon as the ship is cleared at Civitavecchia. It may dock at 5 AM, but may not clear for another hour. Have a VERY reliable company such as RomeCabs scheduled to pick you up. With a pickup by 7 AM you'll be at FCO at least 2 hours ahead of your flight which should suffice.

 

 

I agree. This is exactly what we did in Rome and we were quite happy with RomeCabs. Our pickup was at 7am and although we had to wait for another couple to show up (there was a couple already waiting for us in the van), we still managed to make it to FCO well before 8am.