Where Culture Meets Chaos

Although we are new to cruise travel, we are not new to queues and lines; nor are we new to occasional chaos. Throughout our cruise travel with Norwegian Cruise Line, we experienced the embarkation and debarkation routines in 7 ports of call. Most operated quite well with minimal to no queuing. Others, however, were difficult for our fellow passengers.

Arrival in Barcelona was delayed and whatever arrangements needed to be made by the Port of Barcelona was also delayed, so passengers were annoyed as their privately booked excursions saw start times come and go. We did not have an excursion booked for this port, so we were able to go-with-the-flow as people caught the port shuttle into town. Ninety minutes later we began our walk-about in town. Knowing we needed to catch the shuttle back to the cruise terminal, we planned to return to the station at 17:00 for the 19:00 ship call. Oy vey! The queue to catch the port shuttle was two blocks long and starting to wrap. Patiently, we waited and observed as time and time again people tried to cut the line. The attempts varied from a man who asked me some benign questions and started to position himself in front of me to groups of Asian folks clustering near the door of the bus completely ignoring the queue. Then, as our bus finally arrived for our turn, a verbal fight broke out in front of us between two middle-aged ladies from New Zealand and another country. A man in line was able to intervene as the port authority was trying to stop another person from cutting the queue to board the bus.

The end of our Cruise journey was Civitavecchia, Italy, a small port with another shuttle service and less staff than Barcelona. Arrival time was scheduled at 06:45 and we docked at 05:15. At 08:00, the ship began announcing that there were delays and to stop arriving on the 7th level for debarkation queueing. The lines for debarkation wrapped twice long through the ship on this deck. People needing wheelchair assistance were parked off to the side of the queue and mobile passengers were standing like cattle in the chute awaiting an unknown door location to let us off the boat. The more the minutes ticked, the larger the irritation rose. When elevators let new passengers off in the middle of the long queue, voices rose, fingers pointed, and the lines of cattle clustered tighter. Americans were the most vocal of the passengers. More groups of Asians clustered and attempted to cut lines with a quiet chaos. A woman we had seen giving excuses and trying to push into lines during the Barcelona chaos, repeated their actions during debarkation. They loudly exclaimed “I have to get to ___. I can’t wait.” Which then echoed off the minds of the 4,000 passengers in the same queue.

We finally completed the Norwegian Cruise debarkation and faced even more lines waiting for shuttles and taxis. Various people attempted to avoid the queue and were turned back by the port authority. A young American carefully watched the queue from the edge and then bypassed all of the lines and terminal authority to successfully aboard the shuttle bus. At this point citizens from all Nations were fed up. They were agitated at being late, they were worried about missing connections, and they were hating on everyone.

By maintaining our patience and being willing to pivot and adjust our plans if needed, we successfully arrived in our required destinations each time. We even arrived in the Civitavecchia train station with 8 minutes cushion before our train arrived. Overall, our lessons learned include the following:

• Do not cram too many required activities into your vacation plans

• Schedule a minimum of 60-90 minutes cushion time for debarkations

• Always pad your travel time (boat to bus to train to plane, etc.) with 30-90 minutes

• Have your identification, currency, tickets all together in one pocket ready to present

• Do not carry more luggage than you can manage on your own

• Prepare your electronics with quick communication apps if your plans change

And FINALLY, be prepared to pivot. Make your plans, but ALWAYS have back-up plans! Arrivederci!