debarkation

[lmentzer]

I'm sure this has been addressed before but for the sake of time. How long can I expect it to take to debark in Ft. Lauderdale? Specifically the Westerdam arriving at 7:00 am. We'll be on the upper promenade deck in a veranda room, if that matters. Need a pretty close idea so we can book a flight. The airport isn't far, but I don 't want to miss the flight.

[sail7seas]

Debarkation times are assigned by on going travel plans...... time of guests' flights if they are flying.

 

In the recent past, we would automatically have responded that any flight after 12 noon was almost always safe to book though there have been times when a ship arrived late and people missed those flights but that is not that common.

 

However, in recent weeks, we have been reading that Port Everglades has been very slow about clearing guests through CBP Inspection and many people have been in line for 2 hours or more. Then we read someone else breezed through in a relatively short time.

 

The long and short of it is that none of us know in advance how long it will take you to process through the terminal and out to the street.

 

This is not anything HAL can do anything about. They have an excellent disembarkation process but it all depends upon U.S. CBP Officials and the amount of time you have to spend clearing.

 

I've read a little that this is happening in other ports and it isn't only Port Everglades.

[KirkNC]

As Sail discusses, it can be a bit of an unknown. We always sign up for self-disembarkation which means we are in the first group off the ship. Noon is the standard usually for the earliest time to book a flight.

[kenorus]

On the nieuw amsterdam last sunday we got off right at 7 if we had waiting to 715 we would have not been off the ship before 930. The ship did not totally clear till 1 with some other ships not clearing to after that. They were scanning and photographing some non canadians in our line which took a good 15 minutes. I will never wait for a colour even if we do not have a flight and yes it is not hals fault but what the women said who was directing the traffice flow said everything you read and here about is true! It is a mess especially if there is many ships in.

[djg541]

FLL port clearance can vary greatly. Sat and Sunday are the busiest day generally with more ships debarking/embarking in the same time period.

Even if enough customs persons are available....taxis,buses will be fewer and full and lines at FLL airport will be lengthy.Plan accordingly.

Noon is generally the earliest id book a flight out...but late ship arrivals can change that in a hurry.

In 2008 we did a cruise aboard the Statendam San Diego-FLL,due to high seas and a minor engine failure we arrived @ 11 am with a LOT of unhappy cruisers who booked early flights out.

That was an unusual delay, but it can happen. The oceans of the world dont have any schedules.

[Netta7]

We had self-disembark last Sunday on the NA. Self-disembark means you are willing and able to carry all of your luggage off with you. We left our cabin on Deck 4 at 7:05 and proceeded directly to the gangway. We were through the lines and in a taxi by 8:00. The customs line grew significantly while we were in line though. I would imagine anyone who joined the line once we were at the front would have to wait at least twice as long as we did.

 

We could see the computer systems were running very slow. Our first passport was scanned and then the machine processed for quite a while before the passport came up. The computers were working much slower than I have experienced at airports. I will note that last Sunday, March 31 was Easter and there were several ships in port.