Day 2 Sept 5

We finally arrived at Gatwick Airport in London England. That was the longest flight that I have ever been on. About 9 hours. It was weird to have it feel like night, but to see the sunrise out the window. London is 7 hours ahead of SLC.

Gatwick Airport - London

After we landed I noticed a voicemail message on my phone. When I checked it I found out that my travel agency was notifying us that the cruise ship was delayed. Evidently they have bad weather and would be arriving in Southampton about 5 hours late.

This was not a good thing. It was 6:10am and they were now telling us that we couldn't board the ship until 5pm. We had arranged for shuttle transfers through Princess to get us from London to Southampton where we were to board the ship. Princess arranged to send us all to hotels to wait until they could shuttle us to Southampton.

Princess did not handle the situation very well. We were picked up at the airport and taken to the local Hilton hotel. Princess arranged for all of us to have the buffet breakfast there at the hotel. That was about all they arranged. We were left there in the hotel lobby and conference room to wait for the shuttle to leave at 3:15pm. They didn't offer lunch or any kind of snacks after the buffet breakfast. I think if the shuttle hadn't arrived when it did they would have had a mutiny on their hands. Several of the passengers were starting to get very upset. I wish they could have at least arranged for the shuttle to drive us around to see some sights or something. Everyone was suffering from lack of sleep and left to wait for hours. It was starting to get pretty ugly by the time the shuttles arrived. We spent a lot of our time in the lobby talking to a couple from Vancouver Canada. Ok so my mom talked while I dozed in my chair for an hour or two. What did I care, I figured the odds were that I wouldn't see these people again.

After a 2 hour drive to Southampton things only got worse. Princess was trying to get everyone to stay on the buses and unload them one at a time to allow them time to check passengers in. Something went wrong though and somehow all of the buses unloaded at the same time causing a major line up. It took almost 2 hours of waiting for us to finally board.

Everyone waiting to board the cruise ship

I did find it funny when the cruise staff insisted that each group pose for a picture upon boarding the ship. Everyone had been sitting around for hours and most were seriously suffering from lack of sleep. No one looked very nice, but they still insisted that every group's picture was taken.
We finally made it to our room just in time for the life jacket drill. The sirens started and everyone was required to get their life jackets and head to their designated location to sit through the safety procedure run down. Talk about boring. Maybe it was just that I had been up for over 30 hours.
After the drill we were heading back to our room and discovered that the Canadians from the hotel lobby were in the rooms next to ours. This was just the second of several run ins with this couple and their friends. I couldn't believe how small the cabins were. Actually they weren't really that bad but they did contain a lot of unnecessary furniture. It would have been nice to have the extra room to move in instead of 2 extra chairs. Oh well, we didn't spend much time in the cabin.