Do cruise ships always (or more often) dock on their port side?

Question

My wife and I are planning on going on a cruise and we would like to be on the side that looks out over the land when we pull into port. Is the "port" side more often the side facing this way? If it helps, we're going on Carnival, western Caribbean cruise.

Answer 1

What you need to do is find out what ports your going to and how it's parked.

Each port is different.

Sometimes we will have 4 boats side by side as the port has multiple docks.

The best way to figure is what I do....

We get a balcony room. I check the times that we come to and leave those ports.

I like to see land as we are pulling away and see the land/ island from our balcony.

If we are leaving at night, you don't see the land as it's dark...so the other side is better as we'll at least see the land comming into port.

The way I figure it is I see a map of how and which way the ship will be pulling in and see which side has more land. Google earth is also helpful for this.

Have a great cruise  :~)

Answer 2

port and starboard has nothing whatsoever to do with which side is facing the quay ... read ...

http://www.nmm.ac.uk/server/show/conWebD...

when I went on a cruise we docked at several different ports and each time it was different ... all ships can dock at either side ... sometimes the exit was on a lower level (up the side of the ship) and sometimes at a higher level, depending on the arrangements at the particular port we were in ... when you dock and you can start disembarking they will make an announcement as to where you should go

I wouldn't worry too much about which side of the ship you're on ... most ports you can get good views from either side of the ship, and a quay is not necessarily the most scenic thing to look at, often they're messy and utilitarian (when we docked in St Petersburg we were at a quay where they loaded metals and ore, so we had a very scenic view of coils of metal wire and ingots of something else, whereas when we docked at Tallinn there was a jetty at right angles to the mainland so neither side looked out over the land) ... sometimes looking out over the harbour is much nicer