Arrival appointment flexibility at Southampton

[jamesporritt]

Are arrival appointments strictly enforced at Southampton, or can you turn up earlier in the day? We have an appointment for Harmony on the 22nd at 1pm, but would like to turn up before that.

 

Cheers,

James.

[ChipLondon]

I think the 1pm appointments are being offered as they may still be finalising preparations for first paying guests, and they want to ensure the ship is ready.

 

Also the invited guests on the previous 2 day sailing ( lucky us ) will have been partying hard the night before, and are therefore not early morning people.

I am sure that others who are not staying on for the 22nd sailing will be asked to leave the ship at the usual by 9.30 time, but there are bound to be some not wanting to rush.

 

I also think they will want to get new guests on board asap so that money can be spent across the bars, so I am sure the ship will open up earlier, but the 1pm is stated so anyone arriving earlier cannot complain if boarding is delayed.

 

I would risk arriving a little early, but understand that facilities in Southampton are not great although there is a large waiting area, if the port has opened the check-in hall, see you on the ship.

Edited May 6, 2016 by ChipLondon

[AliBaliBee]

Hi James

 

We boarded on to Ovation on 22nd April and there was no one checking the appointment time. We turned up 30 minutes early and we were checked in via someone standing with an iPad (no desks) in no time at all. Everything now is done via the iPad, even the health check questionnaire we used to complete on paper.

 

Alison

Edited May 6, 2016 by AliBaliBee

[Biker19]

You can go at any time but just be prepared for chaos - look for threads from the westbound Oasis TA 2014 I think.

[ChipLondon]

You are right the Oasis TA embarkation was chaos, but that was more to do with the port not opening the check in hall, therefore everyone was outside without any organisation or queue system.

 

Recent embarkations at Southampton for The Ovation sailings have gone smoothly. One of the reasons for that is the issuing of embarkation times, if people stick with their allocated slot it spreads the load on the check in procedure, unfortunately many ignore their slots and do arrive early.

 

As some have stated there is little checking of arrival times, and that procedure only kicks in when there is a build up of people, if the procedure is running smoothly then they just move people along and get them on ship asap.

 

 

You can go at any time but just be prepared for chaos - look for threads from the westbound Oasis TA 2014 I think.

[dutchclogs]

Chip, are you on board for the 29 May cruise as well?

Just curious how many Pinnacles, Diamond(+) there may be on board...

 

Are there still separate check ins for the various categories?