Onboarding

For those not familiar with this term, this is the process of getting on the ship.  Depending on the cruise line and ship you are working with, this process will vary, but at the end of the day, it is just getting on the ship, with your luggage and getting access to your room.  Sounds simple right?  Not always :). 

My wife and I left out of Port 91 in Seattle.  There are a few ports you can cruise to Alaska out of, but the main two for Princess is Seattle and Vancouver.  I chose Seattle because I figured it would be a cheaper flight and I wouldn't have to worry about customs when I came in and left.  The flight to Seattle was pretty expensive in my view ($650 a piece) from DFW, but that can vary based on when you purchase it.

We elected to fly in the day before our cruise left.  We stayed at a Seattle hotel and took a Lyft to the port the next day.  One of my complaints was the lack of clarity from Princess on when we could show up to board.  My wife and I didn't show up to board until 1pm (for a 4pm port departure).  When we got onboard, other guests shared that they had been on the ship since 11am.  I could not find any documentation from Princess that this was possible.

We were able to print out our luggage tags and bring them with us to attach to our bags.  When you start to board at the port, you give them your bags and they will bring them to your room, eventually.  This process can take 3 or more hours.  They tell you to make sure you take out any medications, your passport/photo id because you will need those to board the ship.  What they didn't say was to take out your medallions.  On Princess the medallion is a little circular device that allows you go purchase items on the ship.  It is also used to unlock your room door.  It is also used to track your whereabouts on the ship.  For example, if you have your family on the cruise, they would all have medallions and you could use their app to see where on the ship they are at any given moment.  It was actually pretty handy and nice.  Because they didn't say to take your medallions out of your luggage prior to handing it over, we didn't.  This caused us to have issues for hours trying to get on the ship and then trying to get into our room.  This led us to the customer service desk on the ship which on the first day is very long.  Eventually we got all of that sorted out. 

The lessons we learned from cruising on this particular cruise line is to make sure you have your medallion with you and you don't put it in your luggage.  You can and should get the medallion before you leave on your cruise.  You can get it when you show up to port, but those lines are long.  I would say that anything you can do to avoid having to go to guest services on the ship on the first day, you should do that.  This includes buying drink packages, Wi-Fi packages, etc..  Some of these items can be purchase on the app or on the tv in your stateroom, but we ran into some difficulty with those and needed more information.  If you are a seasoned cruiser on Princess you would know how to avoid the pitfalls that we had.  If you are not, there should be a sign to remind guests to not include their medallions in their luggage.    

Onboarding Rating = 3 (on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the highest)