High Risk – I Flew to my 14 Day Cruise Departure City on Embarkation Day!

• Introduction: A 14 Day Atlantic Crossing on the Norwegian Escape
• Delta Air Lines Premium Select Experience (Premium Economy) – What has Changed?
• High Risk – I Flew to my 14 Day Cruise Departure City on Embarkation Day!
• Using Caesars Discount plus Amex Offers to Lower the Cost of Cruising Norwegian
• Starlink Internet Performance on Norwegian Cruise Lines Escape Review
• Bidding for Upgrades With Norwegian Cruise Lines is no Longer Cheap
• Family Balcony Cabin 15862 On Norwegian NCL Escape Review
• Comparing the Norwegian NCL Vibe Beach Club to Spice H20 Experience
• What to Expect from the free Main Dining on Norwegian Escape
• Comparing the old Norwegian NCL Cruise App to the New App – What has Changed
• What is the Weather Like on Transatlantic Cruises. Will you get Seasick?
• Entertainment on the Norwegian NCL Escape – Choir of Man is a Must See
• The Impact of Time Change on Transatlantic Cruise Crossings – The good and the bad
• Final Thoughts on another NCL Atlantic Crossing

Let me ask you a question that you likely know the answer to even if you are not a frequent floater i.e. a cruise enthusiast and even if you have never ever taken a cruise in your life.

• The question is: “What is the one thing you never ever do when taking a cruise”?
• The answer is: “You never ever fly in the same day the ship departs”

I bet you knew that answer right? Why is this the one rule that everyone follows for many obvious reasons.

The first of these is there can be a number of delays in your travels like issues getting to the airport (or having to return home when almost to the airport) and then the flights themselves could be delayed or even canceled. Even if all the flights work perfectly your bags may be delayed and then what do you do with maybe only hours to go before the ship leaves.

Clearly the ultimate reason why you should not risk flying in the same day the ship departs is because, no matter how special you are or what cabin or suite you are booked in, your ship will depart without you and will not wait and will sail around the scheduled time.

You can not fault the cruise lines for this because they may have to pay additional port fees if they do not depart when scheduled not to mention if late departing they may have to burn more expensive fuel to get to the next port i.e. cruise at a fast speed. Not only these but why should thousands of others be impacted because you were not smart enough to get to the port city a day or more before the departure date.

With all that in mind – why in the world would I even attempt to fly in the same day that my ship left port and an Atlantic crossing at that? I simply had no other choice because of a previous commitment and the risk looked acceptable. Let me try to explain my thinking.

While not the only reason I booked these flights, I wanted to get some value out of my Delta points flying in premium economy, which was only available, at the lowest points price, arriving the day the ship left. I did try to mitigate the risk of issues by driving up to Chicago the day before my flights so I would not have to risk driving issues day of departure (the AVID hotel is literally just around the corner from the airport and rental car return to O’Hare).

The other adjustment I made to reduce my risk was planning. If I were to fly out of my home town SBN or South Bend I would need three flights* vs. out of Chicago I could have just two and there was a later flight from Chicago that would work connecting to the direct New York to Barcelona Delta flight. (I put a * next to flights because yes I could have flown SBN-ATL-BCN but the aircraft Delta uses on that route is an old x-LATAM bird that does not yet have premium economy and Delta wanted the usual insane amount of Delta points in business class). Also the flights I chose had a long history of being mostly on time reducing my anxiety a bit.

The other reason I was somewhat comfortable taking this risk was because if the worst thing were to happen there were a number of ports before the ship started it’s crossing allowing me to miss maybe a day or two onboard and catch up to the ship in another city. Sure not ideal but better than flying home and my annual travel insurance policy would have paid for most, if not all, of the cost to catch up with the ship.

So how did it go? The drive up to Chicago was eventful with a car crash happening only about a mile in front of us and we had seen the cars involved zooming past us moments before. We were in fact so close to the wreck that the rubber neckers had not yet had a chance to create a many hours long backup.

We departed the hotel, dropped off the car around the corner and took the tram to Delta Terminal 5 so that we would have just under 3 hours in the ORD Sky Club giving the luggage folks as much time as possible to get our stuff loaded onboard with the weather overcast but acceptable.

As you can see from the shots above in the post we chose not to donate $1900 to Delta to upgrade to first class on this short ORD-JFK flight but as a Platinum Medallion I cleared right at the 24 hour mark. Also all should know that Delta does do a great job of tracking your bags in the Fly Delta App and by the time we were seated we were notified they were loaded onboard. Phew – so far.

Then, it seemed, we had an issue from the cockpit. Ruh rho. Departure time came and went and even the ground folks were boarding the aircraft and complaining about what was wrong and the hold up? I think you can understand that now my stress level was starting to peak and the “oh no – here we go” feeling was washing over me. But then moments later they quickly closed the door and after about 5 minutes of tense waiting we pushed back and did arrive early to a sunny NY afternoon and headed off to the Centurion for lunch.

Having made it this far, along with our bags, I was starting to calm down but would not be 100% relaxed until two more things happened. First that we got notice our bags were onboard our last flight and second that we had taken off and made it to cruising altitude. Both of these events happened without issue and I don’t mind telling you I took and let out a deep breath of relief.

We used, as we often do due to unmatched reliability and service, Welcome Pickups and with our early landing our driver was WhatsApp’ing me that he would be ready as soon as we got our luggage. In BCN that can take a while (sometimes an hour or more) but not this time and we got ours quicker than any other arrival in Barcelona. Once we arrived we waited for less than two hours before we were allowed onboard the ship.

So we pulled it off with no major issues. Does this mean I would ever do this again?

HECK NO!!!

A cruise vacation is meant to be a time to unwind, relax and enjoy the adventure and flying in the day the ship departs is not the way to do that out of the gates. Also, even though we have been to Barcelona a number of times, we did not have any time to enjoy the city before we sailed.

Bottom line I in no way recommend arriving at your cruise port the day the ship departs. There are way too many things that can go wrong, including weather, that can result in you missing boarding. Just because I got away with this once because I had to should not make you think – yeah I can do this too! – René