Ventura -Southampton Embarkation Review

[kalos]

Our New Year cruise from Portsmouth had been cancelled so we booked the Ventura New year cruise to replace it .

We had booked the Port Solent Premier Inn on a saver fare months ago , so decided as this was the night before

Ventura's cruise we would still use it and overall glad we did for a few reasons .

 

With the Ventura embarkation they had given us a 3.30pm boarding time so we had some time to kill.

There are two Premier Inns at this location with a 24 hour Tesco with petrol Station.

(we refuled up ready for going home .99p per ltr ) Also next door is a Pizza Hut and KFC.

 

The next morning we kept our room until 12 noon ,fuelled the car and had a bite to eat in the KFC and then

had a steady run along the M27 over to Marchwood to park the car ready for our cruise .

 

We were then bused over to the ships port (Mayflower) Southampton which was heaving with traffic and cars were

queuing almost out of the port gate but the coach just whisked us past all of this to the porters who took our cases from us .

 

The time was now 13.40pm as we walked into the building expecting to sit back for a hour before they would board us to the ship .

 

What happened was as we walked into the port building a man gave us our Health Forms to fill in and at the top of the slope the lady

looked at our boarding time and told us to go to an available desk and check in .

There was no cards with numbers etc we just checked in and went through to security which again was busy but no queue's and just

after 2pm we were in our cabin with our cases about 30 mins behind us .

 

If this is the new embarkation system then I would say it works for us .

[minikiss]

On the 16th Jan we will be boarding Ventura for the first time. In fact the 1st time on a P&O ship. We have been given the same time 3.30.

When I saw it I was very disappointed as we are only on her 2 nights......

Princess operate a similar system but we have never been made to wait till our allotted time.

We are driving down the same morning and are now trying to find places to kill time😞 if we get there to early.

M.I.L suggested IKEA but I'd rather be on board with a drink in my hand 😀 than walking around for what could be an hour or so.😢