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Disembarking at Southampton


lindy

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This is hard to say, when we did the Norwegian Fjords in June our ship (Explorer OTS) was in port a 7ish and we were sitting on the Royal Caribbean bus to take us to Gatwick at 8:15am.

I was reading that a few weeks after there was an issue in the port the night before and the ship got in late, 8:30-9am if I remember correctly.

Its generally quite good in the UK but you never know....

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Personally I'd book your trains for the afternoon so as to allow some wiggle room in case of arriving late, or delays in customs, or delays upon disembarkation, or delays in general.  

I normally plan with an assumption that I'm going to walk off the ship and into customs between 9 and 10am.  I can always leave earlier but my plan allows for several hours of delay.  Then I also assume it takes about an hour to get through customs, now at 11am.  This allows in case customs is crowded, they ask extra questions, you have extra duties to pay, etc.  Then I assume a half hour to an hour to get my bag.  Out of 3000 bags, 90% of them are going to be black with no easily identifying information on them, and one of those will be yours.  

Only then are you going to be getting out of the terminal.  And with the conservative estimates I've given (with plenty of wiggle room for delays), you'll be on your way to the trains at around noon.  You could be on your way as early as 8am, but that model is a little spooky to me because if anything goes wrong and you book those trains too tightly against that 8am mark, you may miss your travel home.  

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 8/23/2019 at 6:52 PM, Rob&Ana said:

This is hard to say, when we did the Norwegian Fjords in June our ship (Explorer OTS) was in port a 7ish and we were sitting on the Royal Caribbean bus to take us to Gatwick at 8:15am.

I was reading that a few weeks after there was an issue in the port the night before and the ship got in late, 8:30-9am if I remember correctly.

Its generally quite good in the UK but you never know....

Did you do regular disembarkation or self walk off

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Southampton was one of the fast and easiest ports in which to disembark.  It was very smooth.

One warning: We booked an RCCL excursion on disembarkation day that took us from Southampton to Stonehenge for a few hours and then on to the Heathrow.  We planned it that way and it was great for us so we didn't have to rush.  We were spending the night at Heathrow (lovely hotel and great French restaurant) and leaving on our overseas flight early the next morning. The DAY BEFORE disembarkation (while at sea) RCCL cancelled the excursion.  We were stranded with no plans on how to get from Southampton to London.  I had to scramble around making calls (with at-sea satellite charges) to arrange transportation.  Then we were stuck at Heathrow all day instead of having the planned excursion.  RCCL has cancelled many events on us at the last minute.  That was kinda the last straw.

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Southampton was one of the fast and easiest ports in which to disembark.  It was very smooth.

One warning: We booked an RCCL excursion on disembarkation day that took us from Southampton to Stonehenge for a few hours and then on to the Heathrow.  We planned it that way and it was great for us so we didn't have to rush.  We were spending the night at Heathrow (lovely hotel and great French restaurant) and leaving on our overseas flight early the next morning. The DAY BEFORE disembarkation (while at sea) RCCL cancelled the excursion.  We were stranded with no plans on how to get from Southampton to London.  I had to scramble around making calls (with at-sea satellite charges) to arrange transportation.  Then we were stuck at Heathrow all day instead of having the planned excursion.  RCCL has cancelled many events on us at the last minute.  That was kinda the last straw.

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Bummer, We have booked a post cruise tour to Stonehenge through International Friends in October. Only problem is the tour departs Southampton at 8:30

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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