Embarkation, Early arrival

[drpack]

I'm booked on the Emerald Princess out of Fort Lauderdale in October 07. I noticed it will arrive in port on Thursday for a Saturday departure. Since the previous passengers will have been off the ship for several days, I was wondering if they will allow boarding earlier than normal?

[spongerob]

Most likely, the ship will do one or maybe two familiarization/VIP cruises during the intervening time. It's doubtful you'd be able to board earlier.

[drpack]

Most likely, the ship will do one or maybe two familiarization/VIP cruises during the intervening time. It's doubtful you'd be able to board earlier.

 

I had thought of that. The ship is coming to the US from a 17 night med cruise. I assumed they would need extra time in port to replenish and switch operations for sailing in the Caribbean.

[spongerob]

It would be nice to think that a day might be taken to prepare the ship, but that's not how things are done. As an example, Caribbean Princess made her first cruise from FLL, and arrived a couple days early after deadheading across the Atlantic. The night before the first "official" cruise, the ship went out on a VIP trip for the naming ceremony, returning around 5 AM. Most of the crew were up all night, joining in the party. When we boarded, there was plenty of evidence of the previous night's activities still laying about, bars were not ready to be opened, and several crew members were obviously hung over. It didn't make a good impression.

[Pam in CA]

The Emerald is joining the fleet in April and the naming ceremony will be in June so my guess is that in October, they would be doing a short TA or VIP cruise. Regardless, there's a reason why there's a gap of a couple of days and I doubt they'll start embarkation early. I've been on some cruises that have started embarkation at 11:00 or 11:30AM, but I wouldn't expect to be able to board that early.

 

I take that all back. The cruise before is the ship's first trans-atlantic to the U.S. It'll take a couple of days for the U.S. Coast Guard to do inspections and clear the ship to cruise in the U.S.