When to book return flight after Mexican Rivera cruise

[bigeyeparrot]

Going on the Mexican Riviera cruise out of Los Angeles on Princess Sapphire the week of Thanksgiving. Cruiseline said the ship will be docked at 6am on return. Will a 12 noon flight out of LAX be possible? Anyone know how long it takes to get off the ship, go through customs etc.? I've been on 2 other cruise that makes priority for people with earlier flight departures to get off the ship first but not sure if Princess will do the same. Also given the ship will return on the Saturday after Thanksgiving I am guess we need to plan extra time for waiting in line at the airport. Any advise would be very much appreciated. Thanks!

[wrp96]

There is a similar thread on the Princess board. Everybody said it was unlikely you could make that early of a flight. Apparently, even on a good day, the traffic is bad between the port and LAX, plus LAX is an extremely busy airport with long lines for everything. When you add in traveling on Thanksgiving weekend, I wouldn't risk it. Normally, if you miss your flight you might be able to get onto a later flight, but flights are usually full or overbooked on Thanksgiving weeknd.

[DanJ]

We are doing the same cruise in January. When booking flights, I wanted to book the 1230 flight. TA talked me into booking the 145 flight. She said the later time is Princess' recommendation as well. If we happen to get there earlier, we will try to get on the earlier flight, so we at least don't have to try to get to our connection in Atlanta in 35 minutes.

[mii]

Also anothr concern about the noon flight. Every single time that I have been to the Mex. Rivera there is ALWAYS a hangup with immigration and customs. Especially immigration. The whole ship has to wait until a few people , who did not go through immigration like they are suppose to, go through immigration. I would go for the later flight, especially since you said that it is on thanksgiving weekend and just L.A. traffice in general.

 

Marilyn

[bigeyeparrot]

Thanks, the 12:30pm flight is cheaper by $200 compared to the 1:45pm flight but I guess I'd pay the higher price for peace of mind.

[DanJ]

Usually a cheaper flight indicates the airlines know it's not a good prospect for cruise passengers. If they saw a large amount of passengers coming from cruises, they'd have the earlier flight priced higher. Although, this theory might not be as strong in a place like LA, compared to Miami and Ft Lauderdale which have many more ships on a given weekend.

[nho9504]

Thanks, the 12:30pm flight is cheaper by $200 compared to the 1:45pm flight but I guess I'd pay the higher price for peace of mind.

 

The 2 variables in your case are :

 

1) Thanksgiving time frame

 

2) Unpredictable of immigration/custom clearance for this particular itinerary.

 

We did the exact itinerary with Princess on Diamond, last December. Ship docked around 7:00am. We got off around 8:30am with the 2nd or 3rd group of passengers. Made it to LAX around 9:45am using Super Shuttle. There was a bad accident on the opposite direction of the Freeway, so the gawking on our side of the freeway delayed traffic a bit, otherwise it should not take 1hr and 15min as it was a Saturday morning.

 

Make sure you go to Purser Desk on the 2nd last day of the cruise the latest, to show them your air flight schedule and asked for priority disembarkation. Otherwise you would disembark by Decks - starting from the highest deck - it could mean 2 hours difference between Aloha and Emerald.

[DanJ]

I can only hope things work that well for us in January. There's a 1050am flight I would really like to get on, which would get us back 4 hours earlier. Not holding my breath though LOL