On Riverboats what time is initial orientation meeting
Our plane arrives Amsterdam for our Spring river cruise. We are coming directly from a Douro cruise so earliest flight arrival possible is 3 p.m. on embarkation day. Usually what time is orientation discussion/welcome meeting? Slight concern we could miss it, but certainly should be fine for 7 p.m. dinner.
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As I have suggested before, it is helpful to describe the correct name and date of your tour. There are lots of trips out of Amsterdam and they do not ‘brief’ nor depart at the same time. I will say that arriving the ‘day of’ is a ‘push’ on rule number one. Always arrive a day before your tour, or don’t be surprised ot need to ‘catch up’ with it at a later port. You say your dinner is at seven, but ship departure is earlier than that … perhaps as early as five. Your final docs should have told you what the latest acceptable arrival in Amsterdam should be. Is your first meeting place indicated to be on the ship?
You raise fair points. We are veteran ocean and river cruisers and normally would never fly in the day of embarkation. However the ship remains in Amsterdam for the full day after embarkation of our "Holland and Belgium in Spring" itinerary, We are doing back to back with Villages and Vintages 8 day Tauck river cruise on the Douro which ends on the day our Amsterdam cruise embarks. Hopefully with a less than 3 hour non stop flight from Porto, we will be okay and being late to arrive would be a mere annoyance. Trip is not until next April, so no final docs to look at for now. We also have the option of a 5 a.m. non stop flight from Porto which arrives in AMS at 8:30 a.m., but the next non stop leaves at 11:30 a.m arriving AMS at 3:00 p.m. seems much more civilized
Just some basic information…
Embarkation is no earlier than 1600 so as to allow the crew to prepare the ship for the new arriving passengers.
Orientation meeting is at 1700 with dinner usually starting at 1800 - 1830 after the lounge reception and introductions of the crew. All other dinners usually start at 1800 unless you have a late excursion return or a special dinner. The nightly lounge entertainment starts at 2000.
We are early eaters and we also have a favorite table for two so we are usually in the dining room as soon as it opens.
Should you miss the orientation, be sure to check in with a tour director for pertinent information.
Enjoy!
I've seen the safety/orientation briefing start anywhere from 5pm to as late 6:30 but that was the Douro when we'd had a long day driving up from Lisbon. If the flight does arrive by 3pm you should be fine. Since you're coming from Portugal, you'll already be within the Schengen area so you just need to get your bags and then it's about a 30 min drive into Amsterdam. You might not have much time to change clothes between arrival and the start of the briefing. I'd dress in something I'd be comfortable going to it in without changing.
Of course your flight time could change. We’ve just had this happen for an upcoming river cruise. Our flight is now 10am instead of noon at the end of our tour. We were not sure if the boat spent the night in port before we were scheduled to disembark at 9am. Fortunately we have confirmed with the company this morning that we will be at the port the night before and the boat will organize an early taxi.