My observation is that the ship's guideline is a good one. They have pretty tight turnaround times between getting the last passengers off and readying the ship for the next cruise, so when they give you a boarding time there's not much hedge in it. We took a cruise out of Baltimore last year. The boarding time was from 2:00 to 6:00. Our travel agent advised us not to show up at 2:00 on the dot, but for some reason, we did not heed that advice. When we pulled into the parking lot at 1:30, there were hundreds of others milling about. So we had to wait until the official boarding time and then there was more waiting while the staff organized everyone. Boarding turned into one long line after another--getting our boarding info, clearing security, etc. Had we waited until about 4:00 we could have waltzed right on (as our friends did) with no waiting.
