Early arrival at Brooklyn cruise terminal

[Ben Nevis]

Due to our "not so perfect" travel schedule we will be dropped off at the cruise terminal around 11am ,will the embarkation hall/area be open for guests ? we will be happy if we can  sit/relax in the area and wait for our appointed time slot to embark.

Any help with this timing issue would be appreciated. 

 

[navybankerteacher]

11 minutes ago, Ben Nevis said:

Due to our "not so perfect" travel schedule we will be dropped off at the cruise terminal around 11am ,will the embarkation hall/area be open for guests ? we will be happy if we can  sit/relax in the area and wait for our appointed time slot to embark.

Any help with this timing issue would be appreciated. 

 

I recall getting there about 11:00 a couple of times -no problem. One time we got our boarding time advanced - so we were on board well before noon.

Edited August 23, 2022 by navybankerteacher

[butterfly55]

We will be arriving in NYC even earlier, about 7:30 because of airline's time frames. We thought we would wait at the airport for a couple hours before heading to the pier? I saw that navybankerteacher indicated that 11:00 should not be too early but does anyone know what is the earliest time they will allow cruisers to arrive and wait? Thank you.

[lx200gps]

1 hour ago, butterfly55 said:

We will be arriving in NYC even earlier, about 7:30 because of airline's time frames. We thought we would wait at the airport for a couple hours before heading to the pier? I saw that navybankerteacher indicated that 11:00 should not be too early but does anyone know what is the earliest time they will allow cruisers to arrive and wait? Thank you.

We just departed the BCT on Saturday, returning Sept 24. Because the NJ and NY traffic turned out to be a lot easier than I had forecast, we arrived in the BCT parking lot around 9AM. The terminal area was a zoo of disembarking pax, buses, taxis etc, but we were easily able to drop our luggage with the porters and head inside the terminal. (I don't know if there's a correlation, but we dropped our bags around 9AM, literally one of the first half-dozen passengers who did so, but our bags didn't arrive in our cabin on the Enchanted until after 4:30PM.) Once inside the terminal, we had to sit in a pre-security waiting area until the security opened up around 10:30 give or take. Once through security, check-in took all of a few minutes then we had to sit in the PES waiting area until boarding started somewhere between 11 and 11:30AM. Sorry I can't be more exact on the timing, I wasn't taking careful notice of the time at that point.

 

[butterfly55]

51 minutes ago, lx200gps said:

We just departed the BCT on Saturday, returning Sept 24. Because the NJ and NY traffic turned out to be a lot easier than I had forecast, we arrived in the BCT parking lot around 9AM. The terminal area was a zoo of disembarking pax, buses, taxis etc, but we were easily able to drop our luggage with the porters and head inside the terminal. (I don't know if there's a correlation, but we dropped our bags around 9AM, literally one of the first half-dozen passengers who did so, but our bags didn't arrive in our cabin on the Enchanted until after 4:30PM.) Once inside the terminal, we had to sit in a pre-security waiting area until the security opened up around 10:30 give or take. Once through security, check-in took all of a few minutes then we had to sit in the PES waiting area until boarding started somewhere between 11 and 11:30AM. Sorry I can't be more exact on the timing, I wasn't taking careful notice of the time at that point.

 

That is a lot of useful information. Thank you very much.

How did you get to the pier from the airport, JFK or LaGuardia? Was that easy?

[lx200gps]

7 minutes ago, butterfly55 said:

That is a lot of useful information. Thank you very much.

How did you get to the pier from the airport, JFK or LaGuardia? Was that easy?

Sorry, can't help with that, we drove down from Montreal. Stayed overnight in northern NJ then drove to the BCT  on embarkation morning

[butterfly55]

5 hours ago, lx200gps said:

Sorry, can't help with that, we drove down from Montreal. Stayed overnight in northern NJ then drove to the BCT  on embarkation morning

Thanks anyway.

[AF-1]

If you are cruising out of Brooklyn,  did you get an arrivals group number?  I am sailing on Enchanted Princess 8 Oct and I have an arrival time of 11am that Princess assigned.

[lx200gps]

1 hour ago, AF-1 said:

If you are cruising out of Brooklyn,  did you get an arrivals group number?  I am sailing on Enchanted Princess 8 Oct and I have an arrival time of 11am that Princess assigned.

Just disembarked from her a few hours ago, having checked in 17 Sept for the hurricane trip. From the time we walked into the terminal until we walked onto the ship, there was precisely zero interest in what our arrival group was, or any of our documents except for our passports. Our Arrival Group was the first one, but it made no difference, they didn't care. YMMV of course.

[AF-1]

4 hours ago, lx200gps said:

Just disembarked from her a few hours ago, having checked in 17 Sept for the hurricane trip. From the time we walked into the terminal until we walked onto the ship, there was precisely zero interest in what our arrival group was, or any of our documents except for our passports. Our Arrival Group was the first one, but it made no difference, they didn't care. YMMV of course.

Thank you for your feedback.  Sorry your trip had bad weather and missed ports

[navybankerteacher]

5 hours ago, lx200gps said:

Just disembarked from her a few hours ago, having checked in 17 Sept for the hurricane trip. From the time we walked into the terminal until we walked onto the ship, there was precisely zero interest in what our arrival group was, or any of our documents except for our passports. Our Arrival Group was the first one, but it made no difference, they didn't care. YMMV of course.

This has been my experience - with QM 2 sailings from Southampton and Brooklyn, Celebrity sailings from Bayonne and Harwich, HAL sailings from Fort Lauderdale and San Diego -- the assigned time seems to be a MYTH.  Once, on Cunard from Southampton, we simply checked with one of the functionaries and swapped our later time assignment to an earlier time.