Strict arrival times

[zap99]

8 hours ago, sistersontheseasuk said:

We've done the luggage drop and gone back into Southampton and come back recently. No issues at all doing that, baggage handlers don't know your arrival time. We did have an issue very recently where we simply couldn't get close to the port area to drop luggage before taking our car to the car park, the traffic was horrendous! For all the planning in the world its extremely difficult to time your arrival with perfect accuracy. 

 

Lots of people don't actually want to queue jump and board early, they just want to be allowed to wait somewhere, like you can in an airport if you arrive early for a flight. The majority of the terminal buildings in Southampton have space to allow this (Ocean certainly does!) so it just seems like P&O are being intentionally difficult by not letting people inside to wait. 

We only live an hour, or so from Southampton, but still leave plenty of time. If we arrive too early we park up in mayflower? Park and watch the ships for a while and have a coffee. There is also the pier where the Red jet ferry goes from. Park up and have a coffee. P&O could give you and hour, or so free parking, that way you could wander down to Starbucks....I like coffee.

[Angel57]

1 hour ago, zap99 said:

We only live an hour, or so from Southampton, but still leave plenty of time. If we arrive too early we park up in mayflower? Park and watch the ships for a while and have a coffee. There is also the pier where the Red jet ferry goes from. Park up and have a coffee. P&O could give you and hour, or so free parking, that way you could wander down to Starbucks....I like coffee.

I’d not thought of the Mayflower Park to wait until nearer boarding time. Thanks for suggestion.

[zap99]

2 minutes ago, Angel57 said:

I’d not thought of the Mayflower Park to wait until nearer boarding time. Thanks for suggestion.

You need to pay for parking.....oh yes you do.😉

[Angel57]

14 minutes ago, zap99 said:

You need to pay for parking.....oh yes you do.😉

Nothing is free these days sadly…… and as long as I don’t have to use those parking apps, I’m happy!

[sistersontheseasuk]

1 hour ago, zap99 said:

We only live an hour, or so from Southampton, but still leave plenty of time. If we arrive too early we park up in mayflower? Park and watch the ships for a while and have a coffee. There is also the pier where the Red jet ferry goes from. Park up and have a coffee. P&O could give you and hour, or so free parking, that way you could wander down to Starbucks....I like coffee.

Totally agree Mayflower park is nice, but only when the weather is good!

 

When you've had a long journey and have been up for hours, sometimes all you want to do is find a quiet corner to wait in. Some people (appreciate not all!) are paying thousands of pounds for their dream holiday and they're being asked to wander the streets of Southampton for hours on end when there is a perfectly good terminal building that was literally made for people to wait in. 

[david63]

3 minutes ago, sistersontheseasuk said:

when there is a perfectly good terminal building that was literally made for people to wait in. 

The problem is that the terminal building was never designed to handle the number of passengers that the new ships have and you physically cannot accommodate 5,000 passengers in a terminal designed for 3,000 passengers.

 

As I said in an earlier post the infrastructure has not been adapted to cater for the new ships and until it is then this problem will exist.

 

We, as passengers, know the issues surrounding arrival times but for some inexplicable reason P&O either do not, or choose not to, understand these issues.

[cruising.mark.uk]

10 minutes ago, sistersontheseasuk said:

they're being asked to wander the streets of Southampton for hours on end when there is a perfectly good terminal building that was literally made for people to wait in. 

But, I think this is the issue.  Unlike airport terminals, I don't believe the terminals at Southampton were made for people to wait in.  Rather, they were made to process pax through booking in and security efficiently, with a capacity geared to doing that for the max pax load over a 4 to 6 hour period.  How many 'waiting' passengers can they accommodate comfortably?  2 or 300 maybe?  Even if it's 500, that's less than 10% of the pax on a fully loaded Iona or Arvia.  Hence, them trying to persuade passengers to adhere to the boarding time they are given.

[terrierjohn]

15 minutes ago, david63 said:

The problem is that the terminal building was never designed to handle the number of passengers that the new ships have and you physically cannot accommodate 5,000 passengers in a terminal designed for 3,000 passengers.

 

As I said in an earlier post the infrastructure has not been adapted to cater for the new ships and until it is then this problem will exist.

 

We, as passengers, know the issues surrounding arrival times but for some inexplicable reason P&O either do not, or choose not to, understand these issues.

If P&O would spread out boarding, as other cruise lines do, by starting at 10:30, then that would help to reduce the pressure on the terminal capacity.

[sistersontheseasuk]

I believe Ocean has capacity for 1000 people to be seated upstairs and around 100 downstairs, 5000 people are never going to turn up at exactly the same time, even without the guidance of the arrival times. Most people do try and aim for as close to their times as they can, and coaches obviously have set arrival times too.

 

Prior to these changes of people being asked to wait outside had you ever arrived at the terminal and found the building to be full? I know I haven't and I have sailed on full Iona sailings. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I also don't believe the queuing area outside would house as many people as the building could?

 

 

[david63]

2 minutes ago, terrierjohn said:

If P&O would spread out boarding, as other cruise lines do, by starting at 10:30, then that would help to reduce the pressure on the terminal capacity.

It would go some way but the bigger issue is that arrival times are allocated with a total disregard as to how/when passengers are arriving.

 

We all know of passengers being given an arrival time of, say, 13:00 but are on a coach that is not scheduled to arrive until 14:30 and similarly there are passengers having an arrival time of 15:00 who are on a train arriving at 12:30. There needs to be a correlation between designated arrival times and physical arrival times with an ability to arrive within 30 minutes of that time

[Cathygh]

2 minutes ago, sistersontheseasuk said:

 

Prior to these changes of people being asked to wait outside had you ever arrived at the terminal and found the building to be full? I know I haven't and I have sailed on full Iona sailings. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I also don't believe the queuing area outside would house as many people as the building could?

 

 

On May 27th I can verify that the teminal building had every seat free with probably 50-100 people outside in the naughty queue. 

There was also an early arrivals queue inside the teminal. At the top of the escalator boarding times were checked again and any one who had slipped through early was directed to the queue. There weere 6 people in it who went through check in fairly quickly.

[Cathygh]

1 minute ago, david63 said:

It would go some way but the bigger issue is that arrival times are allocated with a total disregard as to how/when passengers are arriving.

 

We all know of passengers being given an arrival time of, say, 13:00 but are on a coach that is not scheduled to arrive until 14:30 and similarly there are passengers having an arrival time of 15:00 who are on a train arriving at 12:30. There needs to be a correlation between designated arrival times and physical arrival times with an ability to arrive within 30 minutes of that time

Yes of course they should. Last time I travelled with Princess we had a Princess transfer fomr the hotel to the port  (in the US). I selected an arrival time of 12.30 on the app, but was allocated 2.30, which was the time the coach arrived at the port. Very sensible joined up thinking.

[david63]

9 minutes ago, sistersontheseasuk said:

Most people do try and aim for as close to their times as they can

Not sure that I would agree with that as there are many who believe that they can arrive at whatever time they please because that is what they have been told on this, and other, social media platforms.

 

11 minutes ago, sistersontheseasuk said:

Prior to these changes of people being asked to wait outside had you ever arrived at the terminal and found the building to be full?

Pre Covid the answer to that would be yes - and that was for ships smaller than Iona.

[david63]

2 minutes ago, Cathygh said:

I selected an arrival time of 12.30 on the app, but was allocated 2.30, which was the time the coach arrived at the port

That is because Princess ask for your method of transport so they know how their passengers are arriving.

 

You would think that Carnival would be like most other big organisations and take "best working practices" and use them throughout the organisation.

[terrierjohn]

5 minutes ago, david63 said:

It would go some way but the bigger issue is that arrival times are allocated with a total disregard as to how/when passengers are arriving.

 

We all know of passengers being given an arrival time of, say, 13:00 but are on a coach that is not scheduled to arrive until 14:30 and similarly there are passengers having an arrival time of 15:00 who are on a train arriving at 12:30. There needs to be a correlation between designated arrival times and physical arrival times with an ability to arrive within 30 minutes of that time

Crikey David you're asking for NASA standard computing, P&Os IT has difficulting keeping track of static data, and your asking it to compute variable arrival times for every single sailing!

[david63]

1 minute ago, terrierjohn said:

Crikey David you're asking for NASA standard computing, P&Os IT has difficulting keeping track of static data, and your asking it to compute variable arrival times for every single sailing!

Sorry, my mistake - the heat must be getting to me😇but I thought that as other cruise lines were able to do it then perhaps P&O could do it!!

[jaydee6969]

On 6/17/2023 at 11:30 AM, jaydee6969 said:

I can only assume this is a website error, but currently P&O site now states Mediterranean tier get priority arrival time, check in and welcome onboard reception. The T&C's do not, however they are dated 2017.

 

Screengrab from just now.

 

 

@molecrochip can you shed any light on this?  Does it look like a website error, or have the benefits been improved for Mediterranean level?

[FangedRose]

13 minutes ago, jaydee6969 said:

 

@molecrochip can you shed any light on this?  Does it look like a website error, or have the benefits been improved for Mediterranean level?

So at a guess that would mean the vast majority of passengers would get priority boarding. How would that work? 80%-90% of passengers entitled to board early?

 

Obviously a(nother) website error.

[Selbourne]

9 minutes ago, FangedRose said:

So at a guess that would mean the vast majority of passengers would get priority boarding. How would that work? 80%-90% of passengers entitled to board early?

 

Obviously a(nother) website error.

I would also think it was an error, unless they allocate the first couple of hours after suite and higher loyalty tiers to Mediterranean tier (which, as you say, will be a very large proportion of passengers) before they open it up to the rest. It would be a bit tenuous to call that ‘priority’ but better than nothing I guess. Our daughters would be pleased!

[Lee117five0]

12 minutes ago, FangedRose said:

So at a guess that would mean the vast majority of passengers would get priority boarding. How would that work? 80%-90% of passengers entitled to board early?

 

Obviously a(nother) website error.

I'm willing to bet only about 10% of people would be entitled to early boarding. Went on Iona back in October and everyone we spoke to had been on fewer than 5 cruises. It was something that surprised us as cruise ships have a reputation for being filled by people who basically live aboard. Quite a lot of people we spoke to were on their very first cruise. We spoke to just a single couple who'd been on like 25 or something. So we spoke to maybe 100ish people. About 30 were on a first cruise. About 30 were on a second. The other 40 were under 5. And just 2 were on a couple dozen.

 

When you're part of an exclusive group it's easy to think that everyone is part of it. We're not.

[molecrochip]

A lot of people on here may be Mediterranean tier, but Pacific and Atlantic are bigger tiers.

 

I agree that the website contradicts the booklet. I don’t know which is correct.

[Cathygh]

We got our Mediterraen pins on our last cruise and the info did say we get priority boarding. I thought it was a mistake but may be not?

[Megabear2]

9 minutes ago, molecrochip said:

A lot of people on here may be Mediterranean tier, but Pacific and Atlantic are bigger tiers.

 

I agree that the website contradicts the booklet. I don’t know which is correct.

Any way of finding out please?  Who would I ask if not.  I'd agree the board is very much weighted with high tier guests, my last couple on Arvia and Britannia were over 50% new cruisers and I met lots like Lee117 who were on a second or third cruise after an Iona cruise.

[Megabear2]

2 minutes ago, Cathygh said:

We got our Mediterraen pins on our last cruise and the info did say we get priority boarding. I thought it was a mistake but may be not?

I've never had a pin, did get my slippers though.  Mind you I never got my Cunard Diamond pin either, must be something I said!

[Cathygh]

Just now, Megabear2 said:

I've never had a pin, did get my slippers though.  Mind you I never got my Cunard Diamond pin either, must be something I said!

Got the slippers too, but they are huge and look ridiculous on my dainty feet