Travel Day. What is it and why is it so important?
A travel day is exactly what it sounds like…a day to travel to your cruise port. Unless you live within a couple hours of your cruise embarkation port, you will want to make sure you plan to arrive a day early whether you are driving or flying into town. The cruising community is full of horror stories of people missing their cruise due to delayed and cancelled flights, traffic jams or other last minute issues. It is easy to assume that you can easily get to your embarkation check in by 2pm if you schedule a flight that arrives into town at 10am, but that assumes that everything goes exactly according to plan. Your flight, or flights, have to take off and arrive on time, that your luggage doesn’t get lost, you can catch a cab, Uber or shuttle easily and your ride doesn’t break down or get caught up in a traffic jam of some sort. So much has to go right to make sure you don’t miss your cruise.
While coming into town a day early does mean paying for a hotel, the extra cost of a night’s stay definitely outweighs the money you will be out if you miss your cruise. It is also worth the peace of mind it provides. At least for me it is!
If you are flying into a foreign port, you may want to come in more than a day ahead of schedule. Not only does it provide you some added cushion to your schedule for those longer flights and possible layovers or dreaded cancelled flights, but it can provide you with time to explore the area you are departing from as well. I know we are planning to come in a couple days early prior to our cruise to Norway so we can explore Copenhagen before we set sail to Norway!
Cruising From The Ozarks 