Bar Harbor Immigration?

[Carol & Jim]

Anyone know if you have to go through customs/immigration when you dock in Bar Harbor and it's the first US port after Canadian ports? Our itinerary is New York, Halifax, St. Johns then Bar Harbor. And Bar Harbor is a tender port so what is the procedure? Thanks.

[1025cruise]

I believe that yes, you will be processed by Immigration. It is my understanding that the officers come out to the ship and do it onboard, prior to allowing people to tender.

[Trekker954]

I would imagine CBP is clearing the ship but individuals will not be expected to meet with the officers unless they target certain individuals. But the process of CBP coming on board and clearing the ship/etc likely does delay the tenders from leaving.

 

i've read on other threads that making a 10 am private excursion can be risky due to the tender process and you have to line up extremely early to hope to be on an early tender.

[Jolie_Cruiser]

Here is how border control functioned on my Canada N/E cruises:

 

If you are coming from the US: about 2 nights before getting to your first Canadian port, you will get a declaration card to be filled out in your stateroom. This filled card is checked by Canadian customs agents. Select passengers are called for an individual interview before getting off at the first Canadian port. In my case it was Halifax.

 

If you are coming from Canada: everybody has to pass an individual inspection with USA border agents who come on board in Bar Harbor. There is one line for American passengers and one line for all the others. The line for American passengers goes fast. The other line well it depends...

 

I would not book a private excursion at 10:00 AM with tendering in Bar Harbor. On my ships, passengers who had booked excursions with HAL got priority for tendering.

Edited September 15, 2015 by Jolie_Cruiser

[SandyAtSea]

We were in Bar Harbor last week on NCL (1st port after Canada) and it was a MESS. EVERYONE, including US citizens, had to go through Immigration. The issue wasn’t on Immigration’s side, it was on NCL’s side, although they tried to blame it in Immigration. They had no procedure in place to ensure people on excursions went through the line first and everyone was crowded into one restaurant trying to get their immigration sticker for their key cards so they could get tender tickets and go ashore. Our tour (lighthouse cruise) was canceled because we were still waiting for a tender an hour later when the tour boat left the dock. NCL had a shorex rep on the dock waiting for us and they told him they just would not hold it. I am sure NCL management gets a ton of letters about their process (or lack thereof.) The shorex guy told us they just got hammered, one of his bosses didn’t even want to go perform whatever function she was supposed to do that night because she was afraid of the backlash. You would think they had never done these Canada / NE cruises before. NCL tried to blame the delay on Immigration but the fact is Immigration took about 2 seconds once you managed to wade through the mass of passengers in the restaurant trying to get their key card swiped. There was absolutely no rhyme or reason to how they handled it. What was so bad was they called different decks and different time excursions to get their cards swiped and go through Immigration but they didn’t bother to check if you actually HAD an excursion at that time before they let you through, so there were people without any excursions that managed to push ahead of everyone and therefore NCL couldn’t get us ashore fast enough to make our excursion. We were in a suite and could have been on the first tender but we were on an NCL excursion and the shorex desk told us we HAD to meet in the theater after immigration to go with our group. (One of the reasons we purchased an excursion was we had heard the people without excursions often couldn’t get ashore until almost noon as all the excursions went on the first tenders. HOPEFULLY you are going up there on another cruise line that maybe has their procedure down a little better! (Rest of the cruise was awesome.)

[Ohio_Bob]

We were on the Gem the week of 9/19. Customs in Bar Harbor was painless. US citizens are called by deck. There was a bit of a line, but once we were called we had our blue sticker in about 5 minutes. The CBP guy just looked at our passport. Non-US citizens had to meet in Stardust. I don't know what their process was like. Nothing to it.

Edited October 4, 2015 by Ohio_Bob

[Keith1010]

Yes, they will come on board the ship.

 

Very easy process.

 

Keith

[Floridanamaw]

We had to do this on our Dawn cruise a few weeks ago. If people would listen and obey what they were saying it wouldn't be too bad. We had a 8:15 meet time for our excursion. We got up at 6:15 that morning to make sure we had plenty of time. People that had an early excursion meet time were assigned an early immigration time. Once immigration was on board and got set up it all went quickly. We were on the first tender into Bar Harbor. We had people trying to cut in line and we all just sent them to the end of the line!