getting to Harwich with help from X

[suec12]

We sailed out of Southampton two years ago and took the megatrain - what a deal! but Harwich seems to be a very different story.

 

I assume we can book a transfer with X from LHR and return - what I saw on the website included Windosor Castle - what is the straight transfer cost?

 

If we fly in a day or two early, am I correct that X has a bus? service that picks up from various London hotels (booked on our own?). Price?

 

And then there is a train option run by the cruise lines (X and RCL?) I think I saw all these bits of info in various places where I was looking in the past but can't find them at the moment. Price?

 

Any help is appreciated!

[upwarduk]

There are some suggestions here:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1968787

 

Post 3125 here:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1595127&page=157

Edited February 19, 2014 by upwarduk

[4774Papa]

We sailed out of Southampton two years ago and took the megatrain - what a deal! but Harwich seems to be a very different story.

 

I assume we can book a transfer with X from LHR and return - what I saw on the website included Windosor Castle - what is the straight transfer cost?

 

If we fly in a day or two early, am I correct that X has a bus? service that picks up from various London hotels (booked on our own?). Price?

 

And then there is a train option run by the cruise lines (X and RCL?) I think I saw all these bits of info in various places where I was looking in the past but can't find them at the moment. Price?

 

Any help is appreciated!

We did the TA on Infinity to Harwich and then the B2B British Isles Crusie in May. We stayed three days in England before flying home.

 

I researched the best way to get from Harwich port to our hotel near Heathrow airport.

 

There is a train station at the Harwich port that you can take to London, but not every train is direct. You have to change trains sometime and may have to lug your luggage more than your like changing trains. Car services are very expensive. Also, you would have to use a taxi (don't want to take the underground with luggage) to transfer to the train to Heathrow.

 

We decided not to use X's transport service, so I cannot comment on that, but we did rent a car through Thrifty and it went very well, except having to drive on the M25 on Friday afternoon (please don't try that, it is worse than Atlanta traffic by far). Thrifty has a car rental office at the Heathrow Sheraton.

 

If you haven't seen Windsor Castle, I highly recommend going there. I don't know the cost of the X transfer.

[upwarduk]

I believe the X transfer from Heathrow was $101.

 

We used it, but we had air with Celebrity, so all transfers were included. It took 2 hrs from LHR to Harwich, but we were lucky with the traffic.

 

A direct train leaves Liverpool St Train station, when ships are in port. Otherwise, you have to change in Manningtree, which is a couple of miles from Harwich. Alternatively you can change at Colchester, which means that you don't have to lug your luggage up & down stairs.

 

I found the majority of this information from our Roll Call, 2nd link at post 2.

Edited February 19, 2014 by upwarduk

[cheriooo]

Our first trip out of England we did use the celebrity bus that left from london. We didnt use Celebrity for any pre cruise hotels or air travel. I just called Celebrity and booked the transfer. I will say it was a little disorganized at the start but it was ok. Our second time we stayed in London and left for Harwich we used Eddie Manning car service (http://www.eddiemanning.com). They offered a straight through transport or one with stops in Windsor Castle or Stonehenge. We did the Windsor castle tour and we were very happy. If we were to do this again I would probably go with eddie manning. There are +/-'s with doing private transfers and Celebrity transfers.