You may be thinking that boarding a cruise will be a hectic experience, especially if it’s your first cruise and you’re comparing it to air travel.
After all, an aeroplane is carrying around 300 passengers, whereas a fully occupied cruise ship could have up to 5000 passengers on board.
Now, you don’t want to be standing around for hours on end, nor do you want to arrive too late. So just how early should you arrive for your cruise?
The answer depends on your cruise line, but as a general rule of thumb, your cruise line will provide you with an allocated time slot to arrive to board the ship, and you can arrive any time within that time window. The boarding process could take up to 1 hour.
How Early Should You Arrive for Your Cruise?
Cruise lines offer two types of boarding process, general boarding and staggered boarding. Let’s look at each of these in turn.
General Boarding
General boarding is where the cruise line offers all passengers a general window to board the ship. This is likely to be in the region of about 4 hours to allow for plenty of time for passengers to board.
The downside to general boarding is that it encourages everyone to turn up at the start of the window, which could be very chaotic if a few thousand people all turn up to board at once!
The upside is that, unlike staggered boarding, you’re not left waiting until later on in the day to board the ship while others are able to get on board and start sipping cocktails hours before you.
Staggered Boarding
Staggered boarding is when you’re able to select, or the cruise line selects, a specific small time window for you to turn up to the ship. This is often done as 30-60 minute time windows.
This is a great method because it means you know that you’ll be joining a smaller queue with passengers only boarding within that time window.
The downside is that you could end up getting on the ship 4-5 hours later than other passengers. You can generally turn up before your slot, but cruise lines don’t like you doing that because if everybody did it there would be chaos, which kind of defeats the object of staggered boarding in the first place.
Arrival Times by Cruise Line
Celebrity Cruises
Celebrity Cruises recommends arriving at check-in when boarding begins, usually 4 hours before departure time.
Cunard Line
Cunard Line operates a staggered boarding process, and recommends you arrive at the time stated on your boarding card. You can check-in 21 days before.
Disney Cruise Line
For most sailings, boarding opens at 1100am. Disney Cruise Line operates a staggered boarding process and you will be able to select a specific time window when you check-in online ahead of your embarkation day.
MSC Cruises
For MSC Cruises, embarkation begins at the time stated on your boarding card. Check-in closes 2 hours before the cruise departure time.
Norwegian Cruises
According to Norwegian Cruises, guests should arrive no later than 2 hours before the cruise departure time, and be on board no later than 1 hour before.
P&O Cruises
P&O Cruises operates a staggered boarding process. You will be given a departure time after you check-in online, which will be displayed on your boarding pass.
Princess Cruises
Princess Cruises allows passengers to select their embarkation time on the MedallionClass app 30-45 days before departure.
Royal Caribbean
Passengers on Royal Caribbean cruises must be on board the ship no later than 90 minutes before the ship’s departure time. Passengers are able to select their boarding time on the Royal App check-in.
Viking Cruises
Embarkation on Viking Cruises begins at 1100am for all staterooms, with all passengers expected to be on board the ship 2 hours before departure time.
Virgin Voyages
Passengers on Virgin Voyages are able to select their departure time. They ask passengers not to show up more than 30 minutes before their allocated time to allow for a smooth process.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, the process varies slightly from cruise line to cruise line. However, there are some consistent themes that one should stick to on embarkation day.
- Don’t arrive before your allocated time
- Arrive at check-in at least 2 hours before
- The ship won’t wait for you if you’re late