This Embarkation Day was Not Normal | Cruises from Philadelphia Right Now

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Look, I love to do stuff just to see what it's like. And I just did some stuff to see what it was like. I got to tell you about one of the wildest imbarcation days I've ever had. It kind of went the way I thought it would, but it's important for people to come after me to know exactly how it went. Yeah.

[00:00:18]Join me for the tale of the imbarcation day that wasn't uh quite like the others.

[00:00:30]Hey, hey. What's up everybody? Welcome to La Loca. I am your host Tony and I I got to tell you, cruising has returned to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for the first time in 15 years. Now, I knew that cruising was returning to Philadelphia for the first time in 15 years close to 18 months ago. Talked about it on my crew show and I said, "You know what would be great to do? Let's see what that's all about." Now, I didn't think it all the way through. A lot of times when they're doing things for the first time, it's not the smoothest thing, but I said, "Let's do this. Let's have a little bit of a LaOCA group cruise and see how many people we can bring together to cruise out of Philadelphia for the first time in 15 years." And that's what we did. We gathered up 170 of our bestest friends, the local fam, and we uh made our way to Philadelphia.

[00:01:17]Now, what we understood at the time 18 months ago is that Philadelphia would be building a brand new cruise terminal to accommodate the Norwegian Jewel, the first cruise ship to sell out of Philadelphia in 15 years. And uh it was the Philly port. That's what it was going to be called. Well, a few months ago, uh we got a letter saying that guess what, everybody? I got to put the fan on for this one because this was hot news.

[00:01:45]They said, "Guess what? The Philly port's not going to be ready. And instead, we're going to have to come up with an alternate way for you to get on the cruise ship. Now, I'm going to tell you exactly the things that happened to me on imbarcation day, and then I'll come around at the end and tell you how long this all took." The steps were outlined in an email. They said, "Look, we're going to have you show up at a hotel. We're going to check in your luggage. We're going to check you into the cruise. Then, we're going to put you on a bus. Then, we're going to take you over to the cruiseport. Then you're going to go through security and you're going to get on the cruise ship. And well, that's pretty much what happened to me. I stayed at the Club Quarter Hotel in the Writtenhouse area of Philadelphia. Highly recommend that hotel. Highly recommend that area. On the day of imbarcation about 9:30 in the morning, I jumped in an Uber with my wife, the lovely Jenny B, and we took an Uber to the Clarion Hotel at the airport in Philadelphia. Now, this was the meeting point for the check-in. It was crazy over there because everybody that was disembarking from the cruise ship was getting led off at the Clarion. Not everybody. If you had an airport transfer, I'm sure not in that bunch, but if you uh, you know, had to do other things, take an Uber, do any other kind of transportation, they were bringing you by bus to the Clarion. It was very organized in a chaotic kind of way.

[00:02:57]There were people directing traffic.

[00:02:58]There were Ubers dropping off. There were buses dropping off. There were Ubers picking up. There was a lot going on. But we got out of our Uber. They pointed us to a Pinsky truck where we were able to give a porter our luggage, our checked luggage. And then immediately we went into the hotel. We talked to an a Norwegian employee there and they told us where to check in. We snaked our way to a ballroom. We checked in. That happened very quickly. And then they said, "Look, uh, now what happens next is we give you a ticket for the bus." And so we received a ticket for the bus. We were bus number I and we took our ticket and they directed us to a ballroom and they told us to sit and hold tight until till they called bus I.

[00:03:40]And so we did that. We went and sat in a nice ballroom. They called bus eye. We got on the bus. We went to the cruiseport. We went through security and we got on the cruise ship. Uh those are the steps that you will go through if you're cruising out of Phillyport. I do want to tell you how long it took for us and how long it took for others. Uh but first I I want to show you this. Now, I'd like to take a moment to thank the sponsor of today's episode, My Heritage.

[00:04:03]Last year, Jenny B and I did one of the coolest things ever. We did a DNA test to understand where we come from in the world, and it's really enhanced our travel experience. Let me throw it back to when Jenny B got her results. Did the DNA test from My Heritage and now now the results are in. Let's Let's see what Jenny's results are.

[00:04:23]>> Oh, wow. Check this out.

[00:04:24]>> This is cool.

[00:04:26]Ashkenazi Jewish 69%.

[00:04:34]>> Wow. Portuguese 11.9%.

[00:04:41]10.7% Spanish Catalin. I don't even know what the last one is. Oh, I love that it shows you the globe.

[00:04:52]South and Central America or South Central America.

[00:04:58]And wow, that's some African.

[00:05:01]>> That's wild.

[00:05:03]>> Another cool feature from My Heritage is they have a DNA match. So after you've submitted your DNA, you can find out potentially whole new family members.

[00:05:12]>> How cool was that?

[00:05:13]>> It's pretty cool. Past Jenny B. My Heritage, they don't sell any of your genetic data. They've got a really nice website, really nice web app where you can track your results. You can get it for $19 if you scan the QR code that's on the screen or use the link in the description. Use my code loca19. You can get started with My Heritage for just 19 bucks. Mother's Day is coming up and My Heritage is pretty great Mother's Day gift. Thank you My Heritage for sponsoring today's episode. All right, so you know, sorry to tell animals eyeballing me. All right. So, you know the nuts and bolts of the um you know the nuts and bolts of the process. Let me give you some times.

[00:05:53]So, we left the Writtenhouse area of Philadelphia. I would say it's like 9:30, 9:45. We got to the Clarion Hotel at 10:30 and we, you know, went through the check-in process. We received our ticket for our bus probably by 10:45 and then we took a seat in the ballroom and we did not leave the ballroom until about uh 1:00 p.m. And so we sat there for a good I don't know 2 hours waiting for them to call our bus. Now fortunately for us, we had a seat and we were able to, you know, hang out there.

[00:06:27]This is the first time that they've tried this process. They they did a good job of keeping everybody updated, at least in our circumstance. They let us know that there were some people still dealing with getting off the cruise ship. There was some luggage that needed to make sure the the cruise ship had to be completely emptied out before they could bring the bus number one over there. And so finally close to 1:00 we boarded bus eye and we headed over to the terminal. 15minute you know drive over to the terminal. We got out we went through the security tent and we went right on board. All in all, we were on the cruise ship by 1:30 p.m. So, that's what, a 3-hour imbarcation. And certainly, if you've cruised recently, you know that a 3-hour imbarcation was u that's pretty long. But when we went to the cruise terminal, we kind of expected it to be long. And so, for us, I don't think it was that big of a deal. Now, what I understand is that shortly after we went through that process, others came and started going through that process. And then more and more people showed up to the hotel with nobody leaving. And then the process broke down a little bit. They ran out of letters for the buses. Needed to print out more letters. And then people would check in and they wouldn't get a bus assignment.

[00:07:34]I heard people say that, you know, they got there, they waited for a bus assignment. They never got a bus assignment. And then people that showed up after them were able to get on a bus before them. It was uh it was a little bit chaotic. our our group leader, our travel agent, Walter, he was on bus X and you know, I think he was like a four or five hour imbarcation. It was enough of a challenge that the cruise ship left 3 hours late. We were supposed to leave at 4:00. I think we finally got underway at 7:00 and it made us late to Bermuda.

[00:08:03]We're here in Bermuda today. So, we we arrived late in Bermuda because the whole schedule got thrown off because of the imbarcation. And look, I've talked to a lot of people that are on this cruise and I think most people approached this imbarcation process as this is going to be challenging. A lot of people heard what was laid out in the email and said this is going to be horrible. And I think it was better than maybe what many people expected. Some people had a really bad experience, but I do think that the this will get better over time. Again, this was the first time they've done something. There's definitely going to be some lessons learned, I would think. The only thing that really concerns me is I've met a lot of people that don't really cruise that jumped on this cruise that live in Philadelphia, live in the surrounding areas because this is a cool opportunity to do something like cruising. And I I'm afraid every one of these people I've talked to, I'm like, "Hey, this is completely abnormal. You can't judge your cruising experience by that imbarcation." Worried that that's going to be their one and only impression of cruising. So hopefully it doesn't turn out to be that. Like I said before, I can't think of an imbarcation that has taken that long before. 3 hours. Three hours may be the new record for me.

[00:09:10]>> Yeah, let me ask you that. What is the longest imbarcation you've ever had to deal with? Hopefully hopefully seeing this process will be helpful to those that will be cruising out of Philadelphia over the next few months until they get the permanent cruise terminal in place. Big thanks again to My Heritage for sponsoring today's episode. code. Hit the QR code that's on the screen to get yourself started for $19, which is really good. And yeah, like I said, Mother's Day is coming up, so get in on that. Please, if you've enjoyed this video, hit the like button, subscribe for more. This is Tony for Lolita Looking. Until next time, we'll see you on the Leo. Bye.