Not Impressed with Embarkation

[caribill]

 

In departure day sleep in the night before get up and have a nice relaxed breakfast, then about 3 hours prior to the departure time say 2 pm for a 5 pm sailing take a relaxed cab to the ship and walk at a casual pace through all the checkins and directly on to the ship and to your cabin.

 

Does not always work.

 

On our most recent cruise (Houston) we reached the port at 11 AM and were boarded by 12:30, shortly after boarding started.

 

People who arrived at 2 PM spent an hour outside in the rain before the line length even allowed them to get into the building.

[caribill]

Just curious, did your documents list progressive embarkation?

 

We were on the Nov. 3rd cruise on Ruby. Once inside the terminal a lady was standing guard. She was stopping Priority boarding people unless they were on Aloha or Baja decks. Luckily we were on Aloha and were able to proceed once we proved to her we were within our time to check in, on the proper deck, and had our health forms completed and reviewed.

 

The boarding times are not meant to be enforced, only a suggestion to try to keep the process evenly spread out.

 

Princess knows that families arriving together may have different suggested boarding time.

 

Princess knows that the Princess xfers from the airport will have people on it probably with every suggested boarding time.

 

Princess knows that people must often be out of a hotel by 11 AM and do not expect them to wait until 3 PM to show up to check-in.

 

That lady standing guard was not representing the true intent of the suggested check-in times.

[geoherb]

sorry you had problems. Port everglades is always slower it seems. Miami is great, in my experience, with speed and everything. perhaps port everglades is more of a cargo terminal?

Port Everglades is one of the world's busiest cruise ports. It is also a busy cargo terminal, but that should not affect cruise schedules. Most of the time the delays are caused by circumstances--too few Customs agents to clear a vessel or deep cleaning for norovirus from the previous cruise. Port Everglades holds the world record for number of cruise ships disembarking/embarking on the same day--15. We were getting off the Grand Princess that day and things were crazy. It's a good thing we made reservations to fly back the next day.

 

My brother and his wife just came back on the Oasis' trans-Atlantic. They missed their flight because they could not get off the ship until after noon due to long lines at Customs. Apparently the first cruise to a port during a season will experience delays.

[reg32]

Sorry if this is a silly question- we are new to Princess.

We plan on bringing more than 1 bottle of wine per person and paying the corkage fee on the extra bottles. Should we just keep the wine in our carry on bags to declare?

[Working 2 Cruise]

Sorry if this is a silly question- we are new to Princess.

We plan on bringing more than 1 bottle of wine per person and paying the corkage fee on the extra bottles. Should we just keep the wine in our carry on bags to declare?

 

Yes.