Before you sail
Four jobs to do at home, while you still have a printer and a signal. They have an order, because two of them cannot be done until the first one is finished.
If you have not sorted the insurance yet, start there instead. It is the one that can stop you boarding, and you will want the policy to hand for the rest of this.
Job oneCheck in online
Check-in opens about three weeks before you sail and closes the day before. P&O email you when it opens, so there is nothing to watch for.
Have ready: your booking reference, the passport details for everybody in the cabin, and a payment card. The passport details have to be typed exactly as they are printed, middle names and all, because it is checked against the passport at the terminal.
You also pick your arrival time at the terminal during check-in. Everybody is given a slot rather than turning up when they like, and the popular ones go first, so it is worth doing on the day it opens rather than the week before you sail.
An adult on the booking has to do it for anyone under 18.
Job twoPrint your luggage labels
The labels only appear once check-in is finished, which is why this is job two and not job one. One per bag, tied on before you leave home.
Your cabin number is printed on the label and that is the whole trick: you hand the bags over outside the terminal and they arrive at your cabin door later in the day. A bag with no label goes nowhere until somebody works out whose it is.
Tie them on rather than sticking them on. A sticky label on a wet quayside comes off, and the label is the only thing joining you to the bag.
Job threeTravel insurance
P&O make travel insurance a condition of the booking rather than a suggestion. You can be refused boarding without it, at your own cost.
Their conditions ask for medical and repatriation cover of at least two million pounds, and that has to include being taken off the ship, by helicopter if it comes to that. It also has to cover any medical condition you already have. Bring the policy with you, printed or on your phone, because you can be asked to show it.
Check the wording in your own booking conditions rather than trusting that figure. It is P&O's number and they can change it, and this page is not their website.
I do not sell insurance and there is no link to one on this page.
Job fourPrint your boarding pass
The last thing check-in gives you. Print it, or have it on your phone with the screen brightness up.
Travelling with it: the boarding pass, everybody's passport, and the insurance policy. That is the pile that gets you up the gangway.
And one from me
Open Aboard Map once at home and it copies itself onto your phone: every deck, every cabin, every venue. After that it asks the internet for nothing, which matters from the moment the ship sails.
Put your sailing dates in while you are there. It works out which cruise you are on and lists your stops, and then it will save a street map of each port to your phone. That is the part worth doing at home, because ashore with your data switched off is exactly when you want a map and exactly when you cannot download one.
Free, made by a passenger, and it works with no signal.
What to do at each stop, or the deck plans for Iona and Arvia.