We're booked on the Century in a few weeks and booked our own airfare with Southwest (not one of their preferred airlines) so we are a little confused about when to attach our Celebrity luggage tags included with our documents.
The Celebrity website FAQ and brochures say:
*** Please remember, if you have made your air arrangements separately but have purchased transfers through Celebrity Cruises, affix your luggage tags (provided with your cruise documents) after you have arrived and claimed your luggage.
Per our cruise documents:
1- ** Guests who have purchased transfer vouchers:
Please attach the enclosed ship's bag tags & personal ID to bags before departing from home. You will be on an arrival manifest and a cruise line agent will meet your flight either at the arrival gate or in the Baggage Claim Area and will direct you to your transportation.
Psee,
I understand you are doing your own air, but did you purchase the transfers with the cruise line. In other words are you going to go to the pier yourself in a cab??
I you are using the lines transportation, then some rep from the cruise line will be at the gates to guide you to the busses and the luggage would then also get picked up and brought to the ship, therefore you'd need the ship luggage tags on them when you check-in at the airport. If you have to pick up your own luggage and bring yourself to the pier, then wait til you actually have your luggage and then put the ship tags on them. Hope this clears up some of the problem?? Have a great cruise :-)
Also don't forget to try and get extra tags from your TA. Place one on the INSIDE of your luggage as well as the outside. This helps the airline identify your luggage should the outside tag get torn off.
Jim/Robo
Thanks for the info folks. I did some more checking and seems the determining factor is whether the cruise line has been notified of your flight. Since we told our TA which flight we are on she notified Celebrity and they will handle the luggage from Southwestern (tags on before leaving home). If we had not notified Celebrity then we would have had to claim the luggage ourselves ( tags on after claiming our bags).
If the cruise line gets your luggage before you see it at your destination how do you know it really has arrived?
I put my tags on AFTER I get it from baggage carrousel in destination airport. That way I know it has arrived.
Vicki
If you're taking a taxi from the airport to the cruise pier, don't put the tags on until just before you get in the taxi.
If you've purchased airport-to-ship transfers from the cruise line (i.e., the ship's bus will take you to the pier) go ahead and put the tags on before you leave home. That way, the cruise line will schlep your luggage for you and get it to the bus (though I always feel better if I witness them doing that).
A good guideline is to NEVER take your eyes off your bags. One time Princess put us on a bus to the Barcelona airport that was hosted by a very minor port agent. She was of the mistaken belief that we were on a bus going to a charter flight, so she told us all of our bags would be sent directly to the plane. We had our tags on the bags so we took her at her word.
We went to our gate and started thinking about it (*we really should have known better) - it didn't make sense that we didn't check in our own bags, the airlines don't allow that. We went back out through customs and found our bags sitting smack dab in the middle of the airport unattended. We were so lucky that no one stole them.
When to attach luggage tags?
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