When preparing for embarkation day, prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
Embarkation day gone awry
I’ve gone on nine cruises thus far and only two of them had effortless, easy embarkations. The other seven had some mishap or delay. Honestly, only two cruise embarkation problems were on me, the others were issues regarding the cruise lines. I’ve only gone on two Norwegian cruises and both of their embarkations were disasters! Embarkation day is almost always stressful no matter how much you prepare.
For this cruise, we made a huge mistake and didn’t realize until embarkation day that we needed to be in Trieste, Italy and not Venice. If you look at NCL’s listings, it says “Venice (Trieste).” I’m usually better about checking these things! In the case of Trieste, the troubles went far beyond our mistake of not being in the wrong port. Our mistake actually worked in our favor once we arrived and discovered the bigger, even worse disaster!
While we were panicking and finally driving two hours to Trieste from Venice, there was a monster rain storm and car wreck on the highway between locations. Our amazing driver rerouted us and we were able to drive along the most gorgeous coastline and through beautiful little Italian villages. Our driver informed us he had not seen these places either.
We also were able to stop at one of the most awesome roadside stops I’ve even seen and I live in Texas, land of Buc-ees! Sarni’s, a gas station owned by Eni was ridiculous amounts of fun. This was not your usual gas station, the food was restaurant quality and, because we were in Italy, it was gorgeous.
Finally arriving in Trieste: no embarkation in sight…
Once we arrived, we were concerned because we were LATE. We arrived with about an hour before final embarkation time, but little did we know what was ahead… After a smooth security check (I’m always scared of this point though), and we were in line! We stopped… We learned there had been a heavy downpour, delaying embarkation by hours.
The rain and wind had destroyed three of the four gangplanks, meaning they were only able to allow a small trickle of people at a time. People had been waiting for hours. They were left standing in long, winding lines for hours upon hours with no place to sit except the hard floors. No food, water or explanations were given for much of this time. At one point, a portion of the ceiling broke and fell on people. Something to note: cruise lines don’t always own their embarkation/ disembarkation ports. In the case of my cruises with NCL, they don’t own either port I’ve been to.
Eventually, platters of small sandwiches and cups of water were brought in. Where we were though, there were not enough sandwiches to go around. There was also no alerting people that water was available, it just “appeared” in large coolers on tables. One major suggestion for embarkation day is to have an embarkation day bag and a water bottle. I had the bag, but had broken my bottle the night before. Ugh.
Lines long enough to make Disneyland’s look short
Once onboard, we met a lovely couple traveling with their 90 year old grandmother. The three of them had early embarkation/ special access. Nonnie was never offered a chair or place to sit. No one was. They did not actually embark until sometime after noon although their time was 9am. Nonnie’s $300 pants were ruined to due luggage being left exposed during the rainstorm. (Nonnie is extremely well off but still…).
When the three of us cleared security, we waited another hour or more. They announced people who had embarkation times earlier in the afternoon could go through. Since we had set our time for 11am, we cleared through (see now why to set that earlier time)? We then waited and crawled our way through another line for at least another hour. There were a few chairs scattered about, sandwich platters were brought in and large coolers of water were made available. At this point though, some people had been there for hours. Even though we arrived later and only had to wait for about two hours, our luggage was wet.
Later into the cruise, we were all offered free laundry service. It also took several complaints and trips to customer service on my friend’s part to get the ruined pants resolved. We were not impressed to say the least. However, this is not a normal experience. This was a full-capacity cruise during peek tourist time.
