The destination of our 10 day Norwegian Joy cruise from Miami, the port of Southampton is the…read morelargest cruise port in Western Europe, and our origination point of our European vacation in January 2024.
Because of a medical situation on our ship, we actually arrived into port around 9:30 pm on the previous night of what was the scheduled arrival time of early Sunday morning. This resulted in certain things like the casinos and the duty-free shops closing earlier, but we were still required to stay on the ship until the scheduled departure time on Sunday morning. There is no free wifi, but was able to get cell service from our ship.
Immigration is an important part of the process, and up to now, we've always experienced it after we depart the ship. But at Southampton, it is done onboard the ship itself. We were required to first go to the main dining room, where UK immigration officers would check passports and let you into the country. Because we needed to catch an early train to London, we didn't wanted to be one of the first ones off the ship. This meant taking care of our own luggage throughout, so before 6 am, we came to the dining room with our luggage. One consistent about cruise ports is that the end task of immigration seems to bring out the most grouchiness from the passengers and not the best use of time for ship employees, mainly because of the miscommunication. (Employees telling some guests the wrong times). I keep reminding myself that the employees who are manning this last task has one of the toughest jobs.
We got to the immigration officer by 6:55, and it was very quick. They were not electronically connected, so what they did was to visually check our passports against our faces, and then let us go. We got a sticker on our room cards to signify this. We then took our luggage to the departure area (one level down and other side of the ship), and was one of the first people to depart.
It takes a while to get through the port. They don't have escalators...instead using very long ramps to let people out. There were plenty of folks directing us, but it's a very long walk. Once you are outside the port, there is a series of taxis waiting, and we had no problem picking one up to get to our next destination.