Always fly the day before UNLESS

You love stress and risk and
you let the cruise line do the air and guaranty that if you miss the ship, at their expense they will get you to the next port and allow you to board.

This guaranty is not always available. I usually use miles as it seems you are doing so this doesn't work anyway.

If overseas, we go two days early to have time to recover from the flight and see the port city.

Lots of variables here. One that I haven't seen mentioned is, how early do you want to be on the ship? Boarding early can be great. We took a disney cruise and the kids were excited about the big water slide, so we did OLCI as soon as it opened to get an early boarding group, and they rode like 10 times before it got crowded. Sometimes those first couple of hours of having an uncrowded ship can be worth it. Had to go the night before.

The other ones that matter, I think, are where you're coming from, frequency of other flights, and your cruise's first stop. We are doing a cruise from CPH. If we were flying from the USA, I would go at least one day early, and probably more. Jet lag is rough on a port-intensive cruise. But we are going to Paris first. To me, having that last night in Paris and only packing once is worth the potential stress of a day-of flight. It's a short flight, and there are other scheduled flights. If we miss the ship, the first port is in continental Europe the next day, so we could get there if we had to. I generally need to buy trip insurance for cancel-for-work anyway, and my policy had a cheap add on for missed-cruise insurance (transport to next port plus meals) so long as we are booked on a non-charter commercial flight scheduled to arrive four hours in advance of cruise departure.

How late? My first response to avoid such a tour company, but you didn't post their name. If it had happened to me, I'd be blasting it on whatever site I could.
If you do not arrive somewhere you are supposed to be, that is your problem, and should not be a problem for 3 busloads of people.

Simple rule of thumb: if your flights are part of your cruise package, it's not necessary to get to the port of embarkation a day earlier because it's the cruise line's responsibility to get you on the ship. If you are organising your own flights, it's essential to get there a day earlier.

Booking the flights as part of the cruise package takes care of the issue of responsibility, but depending on how and when the cruise line can get you to the ship (such as by flying you to the next port of call), you might miss part of the cruise.

If you miss one day of a 2-week cruise, it might not be that big of a deal. If you miss two days of a 3-day cruise, it makes the whole trip kind of pointless. I maintain that if you actually want to experience the whole cruise from the beginning to the end, you'll still want to plan to arrive a day earlier (and hope for the best).

Actually you need to read the details, at least in the US, even if you book your flights through the cruiseline, most of the cruiselines have wiggle language in their policies which basically says "we'll try to help you but no guarantee, and we aren't liable if we can't".

Also, great if they help you catch up, but take a typical Caribbean itinerary out of the US. Day 1-Sail Date, Day 2-private island (no way to board the ship here), Day 3-sea day, Day 4-1st port stop where you can board the ship. So for an 8 day cruise (7 nights), it's halfway through your cruise before you've caught up.

People on a Carnival facebook page just posted about their issues getting to San Juan today. They left Columbus early this morning and were diverted to Huntsville instead of Atlanta. Now their new flight to San Juan arrives after their ship sails. They purchased the Carnival Vacation Protection plan, so they are covered, and Carnival is putting them up in the Hilton tonight in San Juan, providing meal vouchers and flying them to St Thomas tomorrow. They are keeping positive about it and are happy to be at least spending a night somewhere warm, but I would still have flown to San Juan yesterday if at all possible, even with purchasing the insurance.

I think it's preferable to arrive a day prior to cruising, however for short getaway cruises, I have arrived same-day many times. My biggest concern is the possibility of a weather-related airport closure, but (knock on wood), that has yet to be an issue.

As I said though, if it's possible to leave a day early, it does make things less stressful. I have an upcoming short cruise that we did opt to fly in a day early for, primarily because the airfare was significantly lower and the flight times better. Of course you have to factor in what you pay for a hotel room, but I'm always willing to pay a bit more if it means getting the flight times I want.

The closest I've ever come to missing a cruise my flights were scheduled for the day before. Because of delays, missed the connection in Chicago (which I found kinda annoying, last flight of the day for the plane, and there were 7 of us that were connecting, wouldn't have taken more than a 10 minute wait and we'd have all made it). Delays the next morning, plus some issues with traffic on the way to Galveston and a cab that wasn't showing up. Quite frankly, the only reason we made that cruise was the rental car shuttle driver that had come back from his last run and gave us a lift to the port well after the last scheduled trip. We were some of the last couple people boarding the ship.

After that experience, I'd never fly in with less than a day to spare.

We scheduled a flight a day early for our cruise tour in Alaska to sightsee some of Fairbanks. Long story - short, weather in the midwest delayed our flight from EWR to MSP and could not make the flight to Fairbanks. Spent the night in MWP and flew the next day, and made the entire cruise tour (was great by the way)

On our 30 day TA from FLL a few years ago, leaving on April 1, we didn't want to chance a late snowstorm, so we went down to Fla. 2 days ahead. Enjoyed that stay too.



DD

For many of the aforementioned reasons, we will generally seek to arrive day - or even two days - prior to cruise departure. That gives us a wider selection of flights, less crowded conditions, and we can deal with jet lags, delays (aircraft, baggage if appropriate, etc.) much more easily.

We've also seen a number of people who have not made the cruise because of delays - some of them arrived a day or two later, some arrived on time but we departed without their having baggage, etc.

December 2012 we did arrive the day of cruise departure - we flew SMF-LAX-JFK-SXM - and it was slightly nerve wracking given weather, possible mechanical problems (AA 767-223ERs are being replaced with A321s on LAX-JFK routes, and the 762s are aging badly with lots of mechanical issues). Delays or cancellations would have resulted in no further travel that day due to full lights to SXM. We made it with a few hours to spare, but I'd prefer to not do this in the future - and the farther the cruise begins, the less we will do this (our next cruises originate in BCN, KEF and ATH - we're arriving a couple of days early, particularly since some cruise companies have been offering two days pre- or post-cruise lodging as incentives).

(This relates to experience with perhaps 40 cruises / liveaboard dive trips).

Over at Cruisecritic - lots of discussions & stories about folks missing their embarkation due to flights & weather, and/or sailing for the duration without their checked luggage.

Cruise lines often will delay sailaway if there is a large group booked directly with their air partners - we're on a NCL Pride of America 7 nights cruise that delayed & waited for a busload of late arrivals for 2.5 hours.

With bad weather, ships have been known to sail early & pull out of ports just to be out of harm's way - 1 hour earlier (or more) than scheduled.

Here's another story - http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1984708

It's a short 2 nights repo (sitioning) to Bahamas on the Getaway to Nassau.

Postscript - CCL's Splendor sailed out of NYC on 2/5/14 for 8 nights to Bahamas, right on schedule - but even ground transport delays left some cruisers behind. http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showp...5&postcount=33

With the record number of airline cancellations, I always recommend to my clients to fly in the day before or 2 in some cases. If they insist on flying in the day of the cruise, I always recommend insurance as they need to hedge in case of all the issues out there.

I would recommend flying in at least one day prior for any cruise. This is not only due to the possibility of missing the ship. Most of the embarkation ports are excellent tourist destinations in their own right and usually worth at least a quick look-see. I live in a major cruise embarkation city and am always disappointed when I hear people go from airport to cruise terminal and back, without seeing any of the city!

I will join everyone else in recommending you fly in the day before the cruise. There is a thread over on cruisecritic right now about someone who had an early morning, non-stop 2 hour flight from Chicago to NY to board a cruise departing in the afternoon. The flight ended up getting diverted, then there were other delay issues, and he ended up missing the cruise.