post cruise flight

[Skibunny]

I am looking into booking a flight post cruise from the Mex. Riviera the day the ship docks (1/12/06). Can anyone tell me the absolute EARLIEST I could fly out of Los Angeles, back to the east coast? I know there are no guarantees, but is 11am a conceiveable time for an outbound flight, if the ship docks at 7am?

[Lisa63]

11:00 would be very tight. While the ship docks at 7:00, it will still be a couple of hours until the ship is cleared and passengers allowed to disembark. Then, if your experience is anything like ours, going through immigration could take another hour. We had a 12:15 flight out of LAX, and even with early disembarkation tags we didn't make it to the airport until about 11:15. Thankfully, we lucked out with short security lines. :)

[miami]

NCL advised us not to schedule a flight earlier than 3:30. We did do the express disembarkation and were at LGA around 11 but I think I would schedule a later flight. We were able to change to an earlier flight at the airport without any penalties.

[karfest]

We've done 2 Mexican Riv cruises. For the first one I booked our flight for 12:45. We were docked by 7am but immigration did not clear the ship until 10am to even START disembarking. I had a driver waiting, he drove like a madman, not much traffic, security moved quickly and we made our flight by 8 minutes. Not a fun way to end the cruise. MANY other people missed their flights.

 

The second one we were docked by 7 and the express people were off the ship by 7:30. (carry your own luggage) We were off by 9 and at LAX in plenty of time for a 1pm flight.

 

Moral of the story...never book before noon unless you have a good back-up plan. It's just too stressful.