So, I kind of dropped the ball last week... and this week. I was supposed to drop another blog post about our Princess Cruise Embarkation Day, and I didn't. What had happened was, I was suffering from PCD. Anyone who has been on a cruise understands the difficulties of Post Cruise Depression. It is a very serious condition that requires staring off into the distance with a glass full of rum, reminiscing about your, now over, cruise vacation. It takes real time and healing to get over it. Then, right when I thought I was good, I went and saw Avengers: Infinity War... I was a cocktail of human emotions for a few days... Mainly mourning, but it was a great movie!
Now that I have moved passed both issues, I can get back to important business! Embarkation Day! What a day it was too. As with most posts in this series, we will be comparing our experiences with Princess vs. Carnival. One of the biggest differences between the two companies was the boarding and embarkation process. I feel this is where Princess Cruises has a leg up on Carnival. We will cover that as we move along through the post!
If you followed our Instagram and Facebook, you will remember that we started our vacation with an overnight stay in Burlingame, California. Burlingame, for those that don't know, is a city just south of San Francisco. Like any cruise vacation before it, we decided to do a small lead off trip in the port city. Pretty much everything we did was highlighted in our social media posts. Check them out to see where we went and try them out for yourselves! Let me just say this though, Burlingame is a very underrated city in the Bay Area. We will definitely stay again when flying out of SFO.
As we drove to the port on Embarkation Day, we expected there to be a bottleneck of traffic by the Pier. A big kudos to the Port Authority and SFPD for keeping traffic flowing. We were shuffled in, and dropped off in front of the terminal very quickly. The only negative to the embarkation process was the Porter situation. Porters, for those that don't know, are individuals that collect your bags curbside and load them onto the cruise ship. Every Carnival Cruise we have been on, the porter ran up to the vehicle to take our bags the second we got out of the car. On this cruise, we had to try and find a porter. I was passed off to three different ones before I finally found one that could assist us. A lot of it can be attributed to the high number of passengers that needed assistance getting on the ship that day though.
When we finally got assistance, we were able to get into the terminal. After that, getting on board was a breeze. We arrived about 45 minutes earlier than our assigned boarding time and they still let us through. Check-in time was only about 5 minutes at the most. We waited about 10 more minutes until they called our group and we were allowed to board. Every other time we have cruise, we had a longer wait associated with the boarding time. I assumed that it would be a hectic day filled with traffic and waiting and there was none of that happening. It was all quick and easy. We breezed right on to the ship and were having lunch 30 minutes after we arrived to the port. That was easily the fastest that we have ever boarded a ship. Needless to say, we were quite impressed with how it all worked out.
Join us for our next post where we cover the ports of call and the ship experience!
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Until next time!
Safe Travels,
-Andre