First Time Cruising With Norwegian NCL – Embarkation Day and Boarding the Ship Part 2

• First Time Cruising With Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) – Part 1: Tips Before Booking
• First Time Cruising With Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) – Part 2: Boarding the Ship Embarkation Day <-This Post
• First Time Cruising With Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) – Part 3: Making Your Onboard Experience The Best <-Up Next
• First Time Cruising With Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) – Part 4: Leaving the Ship Disembarkation Day

The day is finally here. I will take for granted that you were not one of “those people” who flew in today the day of your cruise but instead flew in yesterday or many days before today to enjoy the city your NCL ship is about to sail from.

When you checked in after receiving the e-mail from NCL to do so you were assigned a boarding time. This time is more a guide than a hardened rule. If you want to board as soon as possible you can get to the port early. NCL boards Haven guests first and then top elites. Boarding normally begins between 10 to 11 AM (depending on the ships arrival at port). Even if this is your first cruise ever you should be able to be some of the first onboard if you get there early and are willing to sit and wait for general boarding to begin.

Being an early boarder your cabin will likely not be ready. NCL, on many of their ships, in fact closes the big doors leading to the cabins to prevent you from getting in the way of the crew doing their jobs i.e. rushing to get your cabin ready. So you will have to drag whatever carry-on luggage you have with you as there is no place to dump it.

There are advantages of being first onboard. If you have not been able to, as I talked about in part 1 of this series of posts, snag Vibe Beach club access or book your specialty nights – now is the time to do this ASAP. You can ask any crew where to go but normally it is near customer service. If you are an elite you need to consider signing up for the behind the scenes tour, dinner with the officers and the wine tasting with Cruise Next folks also near customer service.

Restaurants will all be open when you board. The main dining room will serve lunch on embarkation day and that is where we make a beeline as soon as we can (unless we are in the Haven or a suite naturally – then we go to the Haven restaurant or Cagney’s where suite guests get their lunch each day). Now you can start to relax and enjoy your vacation with white table cloths, outstanding food and service and maybe a glass of something with bubbles to celebrate your being on the ship!

By now your room may be ready and you can go dump your stuff. At this point what we do is this. We bring thank you cards for all those who we will be interacting with on a daily basis. We then get the name of our room steward (and or butler and concierge if in a suite or the Haven) and those who work on Vibe Beach club if we have booked this. Then we fill gift bags with goodies we brought in a carry-on and include a cash tip inside the personal card. We then hand all these out on day one! We have found not only is this fun but it leads to an amazing cruise experience when you go out of your way right away onboard.

The next thing we do is hand our room steward our “wants” list (again if NOT in a suite). We have preprinted this and do it on every cruise if not in a suite. We request the following:

• 4 of all the towels since service is only 1x a day
• 2 robes
• Extra hangers (there are never enough)

Your luggage may or may not be outside your door by the time your cabin is ready and even if it is, it is time to go explore the ship if you have never been on this ship that is. Many of the shops as well as the casino will be closed until you are at sea but you can still get the overview of the ship. If you are not in a balcony you may also want to use this time to find where you want to be for sail away as it is always fun, especially on day one, to be outside and experience this fun event from the beginning.

One of the last things you want to do before you depart, if you have not done this days ago, is download the NCL app for your phone. Now would be a good time to switch into airplane mode and link up with the ship’s wifi and make sure you can access your account onboard and check to see if you want to upgrade to unlimited wifi as they often have specials to entice you to join on day one. I STRONGLY suggest you buy an unlimited plan if you are going to have a lot of sea days as you can burn up the included package minutes very quickly otherwise.

The only other tip I have for you, for day one, is that we normally book a specialty for the first night’s dinner. It is such a nice way to make that day as amazing and stress free as possible plus there are rarely good shows you may miss if you linger and enjoy a specialty on day one.

Fellow NCL frequent floaters is there anything on this list I have missed that you do on embarkation day? If so let us all know! – René