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Sunday, February 03, 2008

Princess Cruises: No More Hassles Getting Off Ships

What's the worst part about vacationing on a cruise ship? You're not alone if you say the process of getting off the vessel on the last day of the voyage.

On many ships, the morning of "disembarkation," as they call it in Cruise Speak, is a hurry-up-and-wait nightmare where you have to rise far earlier than anyone would think reasonable, rush to get ready to leave the ship and then twiddle your thumbs for hours while you wait for an announcement on the public address system that says your color code to leave has been called.

Now Princess Cruises says that it'll banish the arcane system of blaring public announcements in favor of something more relaxed. In lieu of the wait-around-until-they-call-my-color rigmarole, the line says it will give each passenger an assigned time and place to assemble on the final morning of a cruise, eliminating the guesswork as to the actual time they'll be disembarking.

The new program, to be rolled out fleet wide, eliminates loudspeaker announcements entirely. Instead, passengers will get a letter in their cabin the day before the end of the cruise that outlines their designated time to meet in an assigned public room. There they will be met by a member of the ship's staff who will personally escort them to the gangway.

Princess says the revised system will let passengers plan their last morning on the ship better, since they'll know exactly when they'll need to be ready to get off. The line says it'll also eliminate passengers congregating in the ship's atrium near the gangway, a recurring problem on disembarkation days. It'll also result in less of an early-morning frenzy at breakfast.

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