boarding question

[Monkeespaw]

I am going on the 7 nite Western Carbbean cruise in July. When is the absolute earliest I can board the ship? The Birnbaum book stresses 1:00 but I have heard you can board as early as 11:30. What is the earliest anyone has boarded? thanks

[DeniseMB]

The terminal opens at 10:00 am, they start boarding between 11:30 and noon. In the meantime you can sign your child up for the kids club. Have camera ready because characters may appear suddenly. :mickey:

[Ed]

:ditto:

We've always gotten aboard between 11:30 and roughly 12:15. Trick is to either (1) book a concierge suite :D or (2) get to the terminal and into a check-in line as early as possible.

:captain:

[TammiMcMan]

Both our cruises, we were actually the first ones onboard around 12:25pm. It all depends on how quickly the ship is cleared and what maintenance things they may have going on. You won't get your stateroom any earlier than 1:30 though. That's pretty much standard on all cruises.

DCL uses a numbered system for boarding. The earlier you arrive at the port, the lower your number.

[hlkeck]

Does anyone think that the boarding times and/or access to rooms will be different for the first cruise after dry dock?

We are on the Oct 18-22 Wonder and we will be the first cruisers...just wondering if anything will be different for us?

[DisneyFr33k]

:ditto:

We've always gotten aboard between 11:30 and roughly 12:15. Trick is to either (1) book a concierge suite :D or (2) get to the terminal and into a check-in line as early as possible.

:captain:

They also can check you in at the airport. That is what we did last February. We even got our boarding cards there - the order in which you board. We got group 2 when our friends checking in next to us got group 4.

[Monkeespaw]

Thank you everyone! I am going to shoot for 11:30. CANNOT WAIT!

[Phantod]

hlkeck,

I hope your experience with your cruise ship coming out of dry dock is not anything like what we experienced with the Caribbean Princess when it came out of dry dock this past January.

Fortunately (?) we came in to San Juan very late, and got on board without any hassles. But we heard the horror stories. When people got there at the regular boarding time, they were shuttled to the convention center. You see, the ship was in no condition to be boarded. As I understand it, they were still hauling "garbage" off the boat. Then they bussed over 2000 people to all board the boat at the same time at 5PM. So as I understand it, some people were at the convention center for 5 or 6 hours, and then it took an additional 2 hours just to get boarded.

And they weren't even done with the work. It seems like a fourth of the people on board were workers, and major areas of the ship were still undergoing renovations.

We will NEVER do that again, getting on board anywhere near the time when a ship is coming out of drydock. And although we were pretty loyal to Princess, we are now rethinking that.

Of course, they did give us a whole <sarcasm> $75 credit toward another cruise within the next 12 months. Yep, what a deal!:mad:

[hlkeck]

Yeah, I've been worried about this a bit. Here's to keeping your fingers crossed.

Don't spend that $75 in one place! Wow, what great customer service! :ack:

[Donald_Quackers]

From what I understand, you shouldn't have to worry about that happening with DCL. The worst I heard was the color of water in one of the pools or something after the Magic's last drydock.

That certainly sounds like it was very unpleasant.