Embarking on Dream

[beasfriend]

What time is the earliest we can get on the Dream? What restaurant is open for lunch?

[amd1234]

I just read your review and we are traveling with my 3 yr. old granddaughter and its a family vacation with 5 adults and one 3yr. old. We are leaving on July 6 and hopefully all the kinks will be worked out! We have never taken an NCL and the only reason we decided to take this cruise was the destination and leaving from Boston. This is expensive and I don't want my family to be disappointed and maybe we made a mistake booking with NCL...:eek:

[CruisinMaterial]

You don't want to show up to the pier until the earliest at noon. Expect to wait in lines at that time. Both the 5/11 and 5/18 had late debarkations causing folks showing up early for their cruise to be in the way. We didn't get off today until 10:45AM and we were the second color called. The longshoremen are screwing off too much in Boston and it's delaying everything on that ship.

 

If you go early and get stuck in line don't blame NCL. They can't have their workers come ashore and do a much better job than these lazy union people.

[welove2cruise232]

That's very surprising, since they've always been so quick and accommodating in Boston...

 

Still looking for details on your cruise, CruisinMaterial!

[CruisinMaterial]

That's very surprising, since they've always been so quick and accommodating in Boston...

 

Still looking for details on your cruise, CruisinMaterial!

 

The review is long. It's posted some where already on here but you'll have to hunt to find it. The official review will be up whenever CC posts it. ;)

 

As for the quick and accomodating. The crew and the NCL logoed shoreside help are very accomodating and were very apologetic about the whole lengthy debarkation. The Assistant Cruise Director sounded clearly frustrated by the delays caused by the longshoremen. When we arrived in Boston we arrived later than I've ever done before. I was eating breakfast at 7:30AM in Terraces as we were vibrating turning around and backing in. It was nearly 8AM before we were tied up but debarkation didn't start until almost 9AM and by then the longshoreman hadn't removed one piece of luggage from the ship as we were watching the Queen Mary 2 pull in from the bow of the Dream. We could see what they were doing and the longshoremen had their children there driving the forklifts around. The other people who were driving forklifts were just sitting there doing nothing and there's a platform that has to be jury rigged to the ship for them to offload stuff because the pier is higher. Someone needs to light a fire under those people's behinds. I've never seen a lazier lot and if this doesn't get fixed for next year I can't imagine what will happen when that many more people are going through the terminal.

 

On the way out we sailed an hour late too because they were still provisioning the ship, again it was the longshoremen who were screwing off and not operating as efficiently as they do at other ports (Fort Lauderdale and Miami to be precise). There were plenty of them sitting around on folding chairs just staring at the two forklifts that were taking their time loading the ship. NCL isn't to blame for this they're hands are tied with seniority but maybe they could put a call into Ports of America (or whoever has that contract shore-side) and yell at them about it. If it's happened two weeks in a row for a 7-day then I have no reason to believe it won't keep happening from what I saw when we returned.

 

Hopefully the carpeting made it onboard as it was supposed to be installed during our sailing and it looks like it was left out in the elements all week since there wasn't enough time to load it as we were already late leaving! :(

[CruisinMaterial]

I didn't complain about the lengthy debarkation as it was nice to watch the QM2 dock. It took her quite a while to do so as she is quite big. The Assistant Cruise Director from South Africa (already forgot her name) was doing the morning announcements and she was sounding angered when on the intercom because she was coming on every 15 minutes to tell us there was still problems shoreside with the luggage and it wasn't ready and for us to wait and again apologized. I just wanted to clarify that in my post.

 

I was in no rush to leave but there were people who were international citizens who had flights to get on and they were sweating it out waiting for these lazy bones to get their butt in gear and get what was needed in place to get the luggage off. I guess I just have a different work ethic or else I think I'd find myself out of a job... I guess the same is not true for these folk. :eek:

[welove2cruise232]

LOL, reminds me of watching the longshoremen in NYC -- we were watching them on-load luggage for the next cruise (HAL Noordam -- we were in a stern balcony cabin), and dropping it in HUGE puddles on the pier -- thank goodness our luggage wasn't among the lot that was put in standing water! Another time (in NYC) we saw them drop a cart-load into the river! YIPES! Glad that wasn't my luggage!:eek:

[CruisinMaterial]

LOL, reminds me of watching the longshoremen in NYC -- we were watching them on-load luggage for the next cruise (HAL Noordam -- we were in a stern balcony cabin), and dropping it in HUGE puddles on the pier -- thank goodness our luggage wasn't among the lot that was put in standing water! Another time (in NYC) we saw them drop a cart-load into the river! YIPES! Glad that wasn't my luggage!:eek:

 

That's pretty funny because the way the NCL Dream is loaded, they have to take your luggage out over the pier and lower it into the ship. If they don't do it right I could envision luggage ending up in Boston harbor. :eek: Luckily that didn't happen on our cruise but people's luggage was destroyed because of clear mishandling of the luggage by again the shoreside folks (specifically the longshoremen).