West Coast Cruises

[KEH]

A couple of questions about boarding.

What time is the port open?

What is the best time to get to the port?

What time do they begin boarding?

How long does it take to get from the Disneyland Hotels area to the port?

Thanks for any information.

 

[challada]

1. early...but you can't board until around noon

2. we got there around 10:30 for the first wc cruise which was great...not huge lines, got early boarding group (4). Of course, no one at the counters knew how to do check in or what to do...but apparently, that did not improve over the course of the check in day!

3. see #1...we got on around 12:30

4. about 15 minutes w/no traffic from DL to port and vice versa. we did not hit traffic on either saturday.

 

[Vanvmom]

On July 2nd it took us about 30 minutes to get to the port from DL area (the hotel we stayed at told us the most direct - least amount of traffic - route to take to get to the port). We got there at about 10:30, boarded about 12:30 in boarding group 12. There is entertainment in port, registration for kids programs-even if you pre-register on-line, you still need to do the official registration, get your pager, kids get a wristband, plus there are official photo ops in port.

 

[pppiglet]

It's definately more than 15mins. We live 15mins north of DL and it took 25mins at least to get there in no traffic. So I would say 30-45mins with no traffic unless you're "speed racer"! (Challada...How fast were you going? I guess you were anxious for that cruise to begin! Hee Hee!)

 

[Shacky]

We were on the July 2nd cruise as well. Had a shuttle pick us up around 9:45am, got to the port around 10:25am and grabbed the Group 4 boarding passes as soon as we got a porter to take our luggage (fill out the luggage tags ahead of time). I thought we got lucky since we had to use the Non-US line and there was only one family in front of us instead of the winding Citizen line. My parents took the citizen line and manage to get checked in ahead of us. We found Donald taking pictures and went straight to that. We were going to try the face painting as well, but we found other things to do such as checking the kids in and keeping everyone together. Then Goofy showed up so we got in line again to take some more pictures. We got the pagers for the kids and the wristbands as well as the DSeaU Navigator and before we knew it, we were boarding around 12:30. Not sure how we were boarding at the same time as Group 12 but the ship was pretty empty when we got in.

One thing about the wristbands. My DD did not like wearing the wristband while washing up. We found out at the club that they can give you new ones so you don't have to keep the wristband on the kid the entire time, unless they tend to wander off.

So to answer the questions:

What time is the port open?

Probably as early as 8:00am since that's what time we started to get off. I looked around when trying to get the shuttle and saw people coming in.

What is the best time to get to the port?

Around 10:30am. They begin boarding close to noon and the groups are called pretty fast so you could arrive a little later and board at almost the same time.

How long does it take to get from the Disneyland Hotels area to the port?

By shuttle, around 30-40 minutes. Also take into account loading up the shuttle (we began loading at 9:39am) and unloading, and then finding a porter to take your luggage. Only then can you enter the port lobby and get your boarding pass.