Assigned arrival times at New Orleans pier?

[haply]

Hello

 

We are cruising the Dawn out of New Orleans. When I did my on-line check-in, it asked me to select an "arrival time at the pier" (i.e. 9:30-10:30, 10:30-11:30, etc). Is this something new or unique to Norwegian and/or New Orleans? How strict do they follow these times? Any information or advise? Thank you in advance.

[GORDONCHICK]

There is no way they could enforce those - it's a madhouse at any pier. When we boarded the Sun in May, there was no one checking for that, and I have no idea where they'd do that.

 

IME, NOLA always seems to be slowing in clearing people through customs re-entering the US. I don't know why this is. So boarding has usually been delayed a bit.

[Lydia B.]

One thing you might consider is to go early and drop your luggage off. Right off the pier just to the left, facing the water, is a really nice outlet shopping area.

It was fun to wander around and have a hurricane drink for breakfast! They also had and a Cafe Du Monde to get your beignets I love beignets but the lines for the original Café Monde we're so very long that we passed them up. So I was thrilled to find the little café inside the outlet shopping mall. After shopping we simply walked over with their documentation and got through the lines really very quickly. Enjoy your cruise I really enjoyed cruising out of New Orleans. Be aware that the time to actually get to the ocean was a lot longer than I had anticipated. We left the port around 4 o'clock and stayed out till was almost dark and still were not out to sea!

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[GORDONCHICK]

Ships leaving NOLA don't hit the gulf until after midnight.....

 

The ride down the Mississippi is awesome and very unique. It's one of the reasons we love sailing out of NOLA.

Edited October 26, 2015 by GORDONCHICK

[NLH Arizona]

Hello

 

We are cruising the Dawn out of New Orleans. When I did my on-line check-in, it asked me to select an "arrival time at the pier" (i.e. 9:30-10:30, 10:30-11:30, etc). Is this something new or unique to Norwegian and/or New Orleans? How strict do they follow these times? Any information or advise? Thank you in advance.

Not new, others have reported on other NCL cruises being asked for arrival times in ports other than New Orleans. I also remember Celebrity doing the same thing.

[momckb]

Hello

 

We are cruising the Dawn out of New Orleans. When I did my on-line check-in, it asked me to select an "arrival time at the pier" (i.e. 9:30-10:30, 10:30-11:30, etc). Is this something new or unique to Norwegian and/or New Orleans? How strict do they follow these times? Any information or advise? Thank you in advance.

 

I have been following these boards for quite a while and there have been quite a few discussions regarding this. In most cases, people note that the online check-in times are not followed.

 

After completing online check-in for my upcoming cruise, I realized that I had not seen a spot to choose a time. I called NCL Customer Service regarding another matter and asked about this. I was told that that is really only for those people who don't complete their check-in online as they take longer to process. I was assured that it would not be a problem for me to not have a time assigned as it did not matter for anyone who had already completed check-in online.

 

Now...after following these boards closely since Feb., I am also very aware that NCL Customer service is extremely unreliable when it comes to giving information and, if you ask 5 people the same question, chances are very high that you will receive 5 very different and conflicting answers. But, considering what I have read here on CC and, my conversation with NCL, I would be pretty comfortable just showing up whenever it worked for me as long as I had already completed online check-in.

[hawkeyetlse]

They don't make people choose an arrival time for every cruise, and for all I know, even for cruises where they do it, maybe they don't ask all the passengers to pick a time.

 

But what the phone rep told you makes absolutely no sense, because you pick an arrival time as part of your on-line check-in. People who don't complete their check in on-line would have no idea about this.