Disembarkation at Piraeus - timing?

[alpha58]

Hi all,

 

We will be on the Celebrity Equinox in June, and will finish our cruise at Piraeus Port on June 13 (Saturday). The ship is scheduled to dock at 6:00 am. We want to take a half day taxi tour before going to our hotel in Athens later that day. What would be a reasonable time to have our driver meet us? is 8:00 am too early/optimistic?

 

This is our first Med cruise. All other cruises, with Princess and Celebrity, have been out of Fort Lauderdale. I know the disembarkation process is based on those with early flights off first, etc. I don't recall any of them taking longer than about 3 hours, usually less.

 

Any help from experienced cruisers is welcome!

 

Val

[roothy123]

We disembarked at Piraeus on a cruise, but it was so long ago I don't remember much about it. We were also going to a hotel to stay over for a night, so the timing wasn't critical for us. I would think, however, that certainly by 8 you would be allowed off the ship. I've cruised on Celebrity twice before (although Summit, one of the smaller ships) and both times they offered a walk off the ship on your own type of option for disembarking, and I think you could get off pretty early doing that. However, I think you have to tote your own luggage off the ship and into the terminal if you do that.

 

I don't think you can go wrong with having someone pick you up at 8. You could probably get away with 7:30 if you wanted! When we request disembarkation times, we usually ask to disembark 15 minutes earlier than when we plan to meet anyone. That's because it usually takes a little while to find our luggage in the terminal or on the pier, and there is also sometimes a short passport check when you leave the terminal in European ports. I don't remember if that applies to Piraeus, but perhaps someone who has been there recently can give you more information. We've never waited more than 10 minutes in a line, however, so it's no big deal - at least for the cruise line we normally use (Oceania, a little bit smaller ships than Celebrity, so perhaps a little bit faster to disembark than Celebrity.)

[alpha58]

Thanks. I thought 8:00 would be ok. The self-disembarkation is an option. We only have 2 bags each, on wheels, so could probably do this if we had to.