2nd Embarkation Port in Europe???

[cruzluvr54]

DH and I have just booked the Liberty of the Seas, Oct. 12, 2014 7N roundtrip Barcelona. I just noticed that on Day 2, when we dock in Provence (Marseille) there is another embarkation for a 7N roundtrip from that port.

 

Has anyone experienced this double embarkation before, and does it have any impact on our sailing or debarkation in the port that day?

[MADflyer]

 

Has anyone experienced this double embarkation before, and does it have any impact on our sailing or debarkation in the port that day?

 

RCCL calls it inter-porting. It has been the norm for European lines like MSC for years.

 

In 2013 they had 3, with Naples having embarkation as well.

 

As far as getting off the ship, probably not. I have sometimes seen 2 gangways open at times, one for in-transit and the other for disembarking passengers, but not always.

 

Their bags are outside cabin on what would be your first night onboard. You get fresh set of newly embarking passengers and this is when they may have bags with them to carry on, slowing the lines up a bit.

 

The MDR tables are usually seated by language and age and the MD has taken this into account, so that usually your table embarks the same day as you. The table beside you may switch out.

 

As RCCL ships have so many Americans you do not notice it as much as on MSC, but in Europe certain nights can have more of an Italian crowd, Spanish crowd or French crowd, depending on who has to get up early and leave the ship. The Formal nights usually move to a night when no-one embarks and hopefully a sea day.

 

The entertainment staff has to adjust somewhat as they have first-nighters onboard. RCCL has muster drill for each group. This was issue recently as some lines did not do it daily and that was a big mistake.

[doubledown13]

We just booked the June 30, 2014 Liberty out of Marseilles, which looks like the second day after it leaves Barcelona. I was curious about how that will work as well.

[Sultan84]

We just booked the June 30, 2014 Liberty out of Marseilles, which looks like the second day after it leaves Barcelona. I was curious about how that will work as well.

 

We did this last year out of "Toulon", actually a small town next Toulon, in La Seyne sur Mer. It was the easiest embarkation ever. We got there early because the public parking had a special deal but was only going to be staffed until lunch. We first went to the ship and there was hardly anyone there. The shore crew told us we would leave our car at the port, free of charge. So we actually parked right in front of the ship. We could still see the car when we had lunch at windjammer and we saw it again when we had breakfast arriving in Toulon.

I am not sure how many people embarked, it must have been a couple of hundred, but that is nothing compared to the crowds usually seen on embarkation day. Everything was fast and easy.

The nice thing is, you get to the ship and the cabin hallways are open, everything is accessible. Hardly any luggage to be on-loaded so we had our luggage before getting ourselves to the cabin.

We had a safety meeting in French and English and then the gala evening. The rest of the cruise was as usual.

It was great watching the others get off in Barcelona and we could stay on another day. We really enjoyed the time between general disembarkation and general embarkation.

There was a little glitch in getting disembarkation information to our cabin, so we had to ask at the reception desk. Since we had our car in front of the gangway we did self-disembarkation and enjoyed the easiest check-out ever.

We had done my-time dining, our tips were pre-paid, so the staff was not worried because we did not tip on Friday night.

Only tiny problem: on Saturday, regular disembarkation in Barcelona, the cabin steward was so busy getting the other cabins ready, he did not get around to doing ours.

I would say we had a better, more laid-back cruise because we had such a stress-free check-in and check-out.

[cruzluvr54]

Thank you for the very informative replys! I think this will add a wonderful atmosphere to the cruise. We are very excited to return to Europe and do a little more exploring on our own.