Embarkation Day – Part two

We walked through the doors and entered a bland hallway.  We rounded a corner and were directed to a decorative buoy for a quick picture.  I don’t have that picture as we didn’t buy it ($25 CAN) and my eyes were shut.  We went up an escalator and then onto the glass walkway. 

Although it looks pretty and gave us a great view of the ship it was air conditioned poorly and very hot!  We waited in line and then finally got to the top where there was yet another security point where our ship cards were scanned and checked.   After passing through security we were finally on the ship in all of it’s magnificence.
We entered through the Grand Lobby on the 3rd floor with a glass surround elevator and two white staircases leading to the 2nd floor.
 
We wanted to check out our stateroom to see what we ended up with; an obstructed balcony or had we been upgraded to a deluxe balcony.



We had been upgraded to an unobstructed balcony and it was much larger than I had expected.  It was about 10 feet wide by 5 feet.














 Here’s the view from our balcony looking down towards the stern.  Our stateroom was 4144 so it was just about mid way down the ship. 
Both of the below pictures were taken from just outside our room.  One was taken facing the bow and one was taken facing the stern.  Hopefully I captured some of the idea of just how large the ship was.


 

      

Embarkation

 

My mom and I walked into the Brooklyn cruise terminal out of the sweltering heat of New York.  Surprisingly to me it looked very similar to an airport terminal.  Immediately inside the doors was a glassed off area to separate the security checked from non security checked.   The first security check was a quick glance at our passports and we were through.  The next check was the conveyor were all your belongings were x-rayed as you walked through the metal detector.  We flew through both with no problems and no line up at all. 

We were handed a laminated card with “62” printed in large print and shown to a chair.  There were about 20 other people sitting down in the row with us and as we sat another 40ish came and sat down as well.  In front of us was approx 30 windows each with a computer and camera which we assumed were for check in.

All of this took no more than 15 minutes.  It was now 10:15.  My mom and I weren’t completely sure what we were waiting for.  If we had to wait until our official embarkation time of 1200 or just until there were windows open.  We still had no idea what the number 62 was for. 

We chatted with one of the staff members who was directing people to chairs.  She told us that there were still people disembarking the ship and that’s what we were waiting for.

Another 15-20 minutes passed and staff members were buzzing around the computers.  Very quickly after that they started calling people to the windows.

Once a few of the windows started to open they all were opening and people were being checked in very quickly.  My mom and I were called to a window were she looked at our tickets that we had to print at home (no fancy tickets for us!), took a picture of each of us and registered a credit card to our account for on ship spending.  She then printed a card similar to a credit card/hotel key with our name on it for each of us.  My mom went to hand the girl our “62” but she said no and told us that was our boarding order. 

Hmmm…62 is that a good thing or a bad thing we wondered.  If we are number 62 of the 3,000 ish that are on the ship, then it’s really good!  But what if it means group 62 and all those people we got checked in with were all 62? That means there were a lot of people who were set to board before us.

After checking in at the window we were directed around a corner, to the waiting room.  This is how early we were, almost no one else waiting.

 

 

 

 

All of the chairs were pointed towards these doors.  The doors that would take us to the ship. 

 

 

There was a small group of very well dressed people sitting to the left of the doors.  We found out that they were attending a function aboard the ship that was only on today, they would be disembarking before we left.

 

While waiting we were people watching to pass the time.  I saw this gentleman approach.  Dressed in white from head to toe.  He disappeared through the doors to the elite Princess Grill lounge.  The Princess Grill is the highest class on the ship reserved for those paying the big bucks on the suites.

 

We waited…and waited…Finally at 12 a staff member yelled over the crowd and told us they were delayed and boarding would start at 12:30. 

Pretty close to 12:30 a staff member appeared in front of that roped off area with signs.  They unlocked the doors and the lady called for number 60 to board.  Woohoo!  That meant that it shouldn’t be too too long for us.  She called 60 again, no one responded.  So she moved to 61, about ten people moved towards the door.  This really wasn’t going to be a long wait at all. 

Perched on the edge of our seats we waited for her to call 62.  Once called we walked to her with 10 others, handed her our number and walked through the door.

The Drive

 

The sun slowly set as I drove farther and farther south away from Burks Falls.  I had originally planned to listen to an audiobook during the drive but I seemed to make a mistake putting it on my computer.  I forgot a whole CD.  So decided not to listen to it at all.  If you have never tried it, audiobooks make a long drive go by so quick.  I highly recommend it.

Canada’s Wonderland had wonderful fireworks to bid me adieu as we come up to it.  I’m not sure what the event was but it was pretty spectacular even if I didn’t get to see them too closely as I was driving.  Many cars were pulled over on the side of the highway to watch.  After looking it up, it was Snoopy’s 60th Birthday.

We got to the border at just about midnight.  The border crossing went amazingly smooth.  Even after the attendant asked where I was going and I replied “Scotland”.  He looked at me quizzically trying to figure out how entering the states helped me get there.  I had to quickly explain about the ship leaving from Brooklyn.  There wasn’t any problems with my luggage or having to show our boat tickets.  The only other question was how did we know our neighbour since his last name stood out as different to ours.

Around 2am I was quickly starting to get tired and even more so as everyone else in the vehicle was dozing soundly (like my parents neighbour), sleeping fitfully (my dad) or just resting (my mom), so no more conversation to help pass the time.  My Dad took over driving and I attempted to get some rest.  Not easy for me, especially in a F150 where the backseat doesn’t recline even an inch.

Throughout the night and more so as the sun rose I saw lots of wildlife along the side of the highway – multitudes of deer, weasels, wild turkeys.  I was surprised that we didn’t see any wildlife on the highways in Canada but almost as soon as we were across the border they were everywhere.

Despite planning the trip with Google we were really early. At 7am we decided to have a leisurely breakfast at Perkins in New York.  Perkins didn’t have the same menu as Sudbury which was disappointing.  I was looking forward to having strawberry cream filled waffles.  I had to settle for plain waffles with fruit on top.

Since we were so early we wondered what to do to pass the time.  We decided to go and find the cruise terminal then hang out nearby.  As we crossed a bridge into Brooklyn we got our first look at the Queen Mary 2. 

 

See if you can see it in the picture.   You can click on it to see it bigger if needed.  I’ll give you a hint.  It has a red funnel.

 

 

 

 

Here is our next glimpse of the mighty ship.

 

 

 

With such a big ocean liner I thought that the cruise terminal would be large and have a well marked route to it.  I thought it would have a grand sign at the entrance since the QM2 is toted as the Worlds most luxurious cruise ship.  Instead it was a small road with no signage along the route to guide you and this is what the entrance looked like.

Those are two security guards, at least that’s what  I assumed them to be.  Although they didn’t do anything other than a mild glance as we drove by.

This view of the QM2 starts to reveal just how big she actually is.

 

Notice the well known landmark?

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had chosen to have a “deluxe obstructed view balcony” stateroom when we ordered our tickets.  That meant that our room would be behind those lifeboats.

 

We drove around the loops at the terminal passing all of the passengers who had disembarked and were waiting for taxis.  Many of them had lots of luggage, not quite as much as I but enough.  That made me a lot less nervous about mine being too much.

We stopped and asked an employee where one would drop off their luggage and were directed to one end of the terminal.  There appeared to be only one employee working in that area and he was loading someone’s luggage into a giant black crate on wheels.  The crate must have been 6 feet x 8 feet x 4 feet in size.   After he was finished with their luggage he turned to us.  We warned him about the amount of luggage I had but he didn’t seem fazed at all.  He loaded it into a new black crate, my luggage alone seemed to fill it.  He then pushed the crate over to another employee and that was it.  It was 10am, 2 hours early for our boarding time.

My Mom and I said a goodbye to my Dad (and their neighbour) and they got back on the road.  I found out later that they truly did just turn around and head home.  They arrived at midnight.

It was very hot outside that day and my Mom and I headed inside the terminal to wait.  We thought that we would have to wait until our embarkation time before we could start the process of being checked in.  We were wrong.