Debarkation question - Off Carnival Dream

[Cruise077]

I am sailing on the Dream March 8 and am trying to better understand the disembarking process. There are 4 of us and we will be driving to the port, parking at Park N Cruise. Since we are driving and it’s a long drive home I will be anxious to get on the road as early as possible. So here is how I understand the disembarking process.

 

You have 2 options available to you:

 

a) Leave your luggage outside your room the night before and disembark when your defined group is called (assigned a color and number). You then have to pick up your luggage, go through customs and then off to the shuttles

 

b) Use self assist disembarking process, which basically means you handle your own luggage and are then able to disembark with the 1st group.

 

Regardless of which option I use, I believe we still need to be out of the cabin by the same time. So my questions for those who have been through this before:

 

1. Am I correct about my 2 options?

 

2. I’m assuming option b) will be the quickest way off the ship, am I correct?

 

3. Assuming I use option b), I’m trying to understand how long the whole process takes to get off the ship, get through customs, get the Park and Cruise Shuttle and arrive back at the car. I realize there are some variables but I’m just trying to understand is this an hour process, 2 hour, 4 hours or what.

 

Thanks for helping out.

[Athankfulheart]

With zone 2 off the Dream on 1/11/14, we basically never stopped walking except for the brief stop with the customs official. We were a group of 10 on the zone 2 sailing. We grabbed a porter to handle luggage and he took us to a special customs line however, there was no waiting at any of the lanes at this point. Same cruise 20 months prior we had much later tags ( didn't have fttf) and we waited for what seemed like an eternity on the pool deck and then shuffled off in a slow herd :(

 

If I was in a hurry and could more easily handle super early after a late night, then I would do self assist. I have heard talk of self assist becoming very popular and more crowded, but perhaps someone with experience will chime in on that.

[Lerin]

Actually self assist leaves first, before group 1. They are serious that you must be able to handle all your luggage.

 

If you don't do self assist, it varies which group you will be in. It's possible they will give you group 1, but you could also end up with group 25 which would be an hour or so later.

Yes, you can stay in your cabin longer if you get a later number.

 

 

The entire process varies. It could be 20 minutes it could be 2 hours.

You may want to read some recent Dream reviews which will give you an idea of what people have been experiencing.

[Cruisin' Chick]

I've found it is hard to predict, no matter which port, no matter how many ships in port with you. Our last three cruises have been in the same port, same cruise, and yet for one of those, the immigrations and customs process started nearly an hour late. The next cruise, it started on time and we were off by the time listed for our "color" group. On the first of those, there was just one other ship in port on that day, and the second time, two others (just wanted to point that out as many people feel that's the most important variable).

 

We don't bother with self-disembarkation, whether we're driving straight home from our home port, or we're in a different city (either we book an afternoon flight or we stick around post-cruise).

 

I would think the best thing is just to see what groups each of you get (you should know at least the day before as you should have your tags by then). You can stay later than your color group so whichever has the later time, go by that. Even without self-disembarkation, you should still be off by 9:30 or so, unless there's some customs/immigration officers going whole-hog with their job. I would rather take a more relaxing way of getting off, then lugging our stuff (which really isn't going to happen for us as we're going on longer cruises) and possible getting behind some group which shouldn't have attempted to lug their stuff.

[okgirl]

On Carnival the debarkation process USUALLY starts by 7am, even though the scheduled arrival time isn't until after 8am.

 

Having said that if you do self-assist then you will probably be off the ship around 8ish and it takes another 20 to 30 minutes to get through customs. If you grab a porter when you get to the luggage area you will get through customs quicker.

 

The whole process shouldn't take more than an hour or so.