Istanbul Debarkation Question

[steveNcindy]

My sister, neice and nephew are taking their first ever cruise and are on the Sept 5 12 day Med cruise that debarks in Istanbul. They arrive in Istanbul on Wednesday at 12:30pm but the itinerary states debarkation Thursday at 10am. They have to be at the Istanbul airport on Thursday at 7am and have asked me what the debarkation procedure is on NCL.

 

I have only cruised on Carnival and Princess and cannot answer how this will occur and was hoping the good people of the NCL board could explain the procedure so I can let them know what to expect.

 

Many thanks :D

[Clay Clayton]

I had a similar concern in April 2008 when planning our trip. I never could get an answer from NCL before time to book our tickets and it turned out in order to use award seats, we had to fly out the following morning anyway so we ended up having a second day in Istanbul. But to what you want to know, some others in our CC rollcall had flights similar to your family and they were allowed to leave the ship at anytime. If there flight leaves at 7am, then they will need to leave very early. We have a 6:50am flight and left our hotel at 4am and while we had a little bit of wait time, it wasn't much more than enough to get a cup of coffee.

 

They are in for a GREAT cruise...wish I was going again.

[sjbdtz]

Since you have arrived in Istanbul on the Wednesday, you are cleared by customs and free to leave the ship & roam the city throughout the remainder of Wednesday, and Thursday.

 

They could do a self-disembark Thursday morning at 5a.m.......but I've just got to ask, having been to Istanbul before, heading back in a month, and still feeling I haven't given it enough time.... why on EARTH are they trying to catch a 7a.m. flight?

[auducky2]

We are on this cruise. We have a 6am flight out on Thursday. We were told that we could disembark anytime after 5pm or so on Wednesday by our PCC.

[steveNcindy]

Thanks so much for the response, I will let them know.

 

Very much appreciated :D