Parking was not included as part of the cruise fare and so we had to book parking separately from www.abparking.co.uk . We booked shuttle parking, which means you park within the dock area and a shuttle transports you and your luggage from the car park to the terminal. The terminal is about 3 minutes drive from the car park. Your luggage is carried in a trailer towed by the shuttle bus. The shuttle buses take about 10 people at a time.
Although a boarding time of 1345 was shown on our travel document, we arrived at the car park at 1130 and after 30 minutes we were having a meal in the Windjammer cafe. You are issued with a SeaPass card on production of your credit card. You use the SeaPass card for all payments on board, and to disembark / embark at ports. Once the document checks were completed we went through the xray scanner and then on to the ship. We were directed to the Windjammer cafe for meals. The Windjammer was jam packed. It seems that most people, like us, turned up earlier than the allocated boarding time. We were able to get a table within a couple of minutes of searching for one. No one seems to check whether you are boarding at the allocated time.
It is a magnificent ship and it was spotlessly clean. The staff were all polite and helpful.
Cabin 3318 was on deck 3 towardrs the rear half of the ship. It was comfortable and quiet. The window always seemed to have some condensation on the outside. You have to walk past about 10 cabins to get to the elevators and stairs. The main dining room was near the elevators. You cannot walk along the corridors past the cabins to the front of the ship. You have to go to deck 4 or deck 5 if you want to walk along the public areas to the from of the ship.