Characters were not meeting yet but there was a character or two on the stairs when you entered the lobby and welcomed onto the ship. Since there had been no guests the previous evening, we were told our rooms were ready. No photos were permitted until you went back outside. Security was fairly smooth, your items had to go through an x ray machine and once you were cleared, you could go straight onto the ship. There were Shutters Photographers there taking your family photo before we went upstairs. They checked our ID, given Boarding Group 6 and then we were told to go upstairs to security. The lines were quite short, we spoke to someone to check in quite quickly. Our PAT was scanned and we were directed inside. By the time we lined up at 11:30am, we could already enter the port.
Open boarding if you had not online checked in was 2pm. Open boarding if you had checked in online was 1pm. You could get in line 15 minutes prior to your PAT. There was several lines outside the port with signage. Once our bags were taken, we were able to line up. Even though Disney says you can't drop your bags off until 11am, you can actually drop your bags off from 9am. We arrived around 11am, as we knew we wanted to take some photos.
This might take me sometime to type up but I'll start with arriving at the Port.
