Legend of the Seas Pushes Back Barcelona Boarding Two Hours as Storm Hits Return
If you are booked on Legend of the Seas' October 4 Barcelona departure, do not head to the terminal before about 1:00 PM. Make sure your luggage tags are firmly attached and your online check-in forms are ready for inspection. Plan to be checked in by 6 p.m. and onboard by 6:30 p.m. Heavy rain is expected, and the email warns that early arrivals may be turned away with no seating and an uncomfortable wait outside.
My read is that this is a routine operational call, and it's the right one. Legend of the Seas is arriving in Barcelona into an extreme rainfall warning from Spain's State Meteorological Agency, with up to 7-8 inches possible over six hours and gusts of 90-120 km/h. A two-hour pushback is cheap compared with the alternative. The article notes that sudden weather changes can break mooring lines, and Virgin Voyages' Scarlet Lady drifted into three boats in Rhodes on September 30. Passengers lose a morning, but the 6:30 p.m. all-aboard time stays intact, which tells me the line is protecting the sailing itself. The ship's 5,610-guest capacity makes a terminal full of people waiting in a storm a real problem, so the no-early-arrival warning makes sense. The ironic twist is that the delay lands on an Icon-class ship, one of the largest afloat. In your shoes, I would arrive at 1:00 PM and not a minute sooner, with documents in hand, and I would watch whether the Palma de Mallorca call on October 5 holds.