Earliest flight out of FLL after cruise

[bobk57]

My wife and I originally had a flight out of FLL at 11:55am, which was perfect The airline has changed the departure time to 10:30am. We will have luggage to check in. Does anyone know the earliest time Princess recommends for a departure flight, the day you disembark?

[wheezedr]

You will get lots of plus/minus responses to this, so I will only answer with a single actual time. Dec 20 last year caught a Virgin 10:10 flight with lots of time to spare. Specifics were that we self disembarked off the Royal Princess at a few minutes after 7, caught a quick cab and were at the airport by 7:40. We checked a piece of luggage and with short lines were through security shortly after 8:00.(had TSA pre). Whether this would always work I cannot say, but even I was shocked by how smoothly and quickly it all played out. The key is self disembarking. It gets you off before crowds form at lots of choke points. It also helped that we were a weekday with only 1 or 2 other ships in port.

Good luck.

[Pam in CA]

Some will tell you, "No problem." Princess recommends after 11:30am. A 10:30am flight is too early to be able to use EZ Check so you'll have to check in and print your boarding passes the night before disembarkation.

 

It's doable but I tend to be conservative based on too many disembarkations that were delayed so I'd change my flight.

[CruiserBruce]

I would think Princess' recommendation would be 11:30 or later.

 

However, as commonly discussed on the Florida Departures board, here:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=495

 

10:30 is quite doable, if you can carry off your bags, and grab a cab, which is cheaper than Princess' transportation.

[Kenosha Cruiser]

I have disembarked many time and made 9:30 and 10:30 AM flights out of Ft. Lauderdale. The nice thing now at least with the Royal and Regal Princess ships, they start letting you do early walk off with your luggage shortly after 6:00 AM. We do the walk off with our luggage unless we have a later flight. You can request first disembarkation where you pick up your luggage in the cruise terminal shortly after 7:00 AM and still have plenty of time to get to the airport. Catch a cab, it only takes 15 or 20 minutes to arrive at the airport. I'm sure more people will give you advice on this thread.

 

Cheers - Ken & Darlene

[easyboy]

You may not have enough cushion for unexpected delays.

My DS had a 10:50am flight on SW out of FLL last month. Doing self disembark and taking an Uber, they were checking-in at SW counter by 8:30am. The ship arrived and cleared as scheduled. But they were stressed since the day before worrying about their flight. Me and my DW had a late afternoon flight.

It is not however an assurance that your ship's arrival performance will be like ours.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

[Colo Cruiser]

My wife and I originally had a flight out of FLL at 11:55am, which was perfect The airline has changed the departure time to 10:30am. We will have luggage to check in. Does anyone know the earliest time Princess recommends for a departure flight, the day you disembark?

 

We have made 9:30 and 10:30 flights in the past.

If you do this sign up for the first walk off group at approx 6:30-7:30 carrying your own luggage off and get a cab or Uber.

The airport is 15 minutes away.

[coolcruiser777]

4 1/2 hours after the ship's arrival time for domestic flights, according to Princess itself.

[ggprincess2004]

If you can do the walk off self-disembarkation (manage all your own bags), you can make it. By doing walk off and taking a cab, you will beat the cruise line crowds, and there is curbside check-in for luggage at FLL. Hopefully you have the TSA pre-Check or

GOES which will give you into the "fast lane" to clear security. But, if you are not comfortable or capable of self-disembarkation, then make the airline give you a later flight.

[Cruise Raider]

I made it to FLL by 8:20 AM before .... and ended up waiting a few hours for my flight. Such a long boring wait at the airport!!

But now for my tale of caution: On my latest cruise that sailed back into Port Everglades, my flight was at 11:15 AM. I was not able to use the Luggage Valet / EZ Check system so had to collect my own luggage instead of having it delivered right onto the plane and picking it up at my final destination. So, that was the price I was willing to pay but what happened in the morning convinced me to never book a flight prior to the recommended earliest flight time. There was an slight disaster at the port (maybe a small oil spill or something like that) so our ship was not allowed to dock at it's scheduled pier. We got a bit nervous when we were still sitting on the ship waiting to disembark at 9:30 AM and we were in one of the first groups to disembark. Well, we made it to the airport with absolutely NO time to spare. We got to the gate after checking our luggage and boarded immediately .... no waiting time at all. If our flight had been at 10:30 AM, we'd have missed it and would have had nobody but ourselves to blame as we were told that was prior to the recommended time set by the cruiseline. To be on the safe side, now I wouldn't book any flight prior to the earliest flight time for which I can use the EZ check / Luggage Valet program.

[Lucky TGO]

You may be fine booking 10:30 am flights out of FLL. I just won't take that chance. I always try to book AFTER 11:30 a.m. Just to be safe. Good luck.

Tony

[bobk57]

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions.

[Thrak]

Remember that if you do the walk off self-disembarkation you must be able to handle all of your luggage on your own when disembarking. If you have too much luggage or it is too unwieldy you won't be able to manage it and you will likely miss the flight. If you have a bunch of luggage and won't be able to manage it by yourselves without causing problems for others you not be able to do that sort of disembarkation.

[flamomo]

If your cruise happens to end in FLL after a transatlantic cruise, getting off and getting thru Customs and Immigration can take quite a bit longer. On one of these, we stood in line with our luggage (there is no EZCheck after a T/A) in the terminal for over 2 hours because of there being too few immigration agents. We had booked a Princess transfer, but because of the protracted wait in the terminal, blew off the transfer and took a cab. TSA screening lines were interminable in FLL and we barely made our noon-ish flights.

 

I would never book a flight that is scheduled to depart FLL before noon.

[JoAnneNYI]

Did you try calling the airline and tell them you need an 11:30am flight or later due to cruise docking requirements? We did that once and they fixed it no problem. If you do call have a flight in mind to suggest before you call. Regardless if that is your best choice I would not worry about it. If you have a smartphone download this app. The line for people that had it was significantly shorter (like 3 ahead of us vs 100!). Be sure to look for the signage....was confusing and we stood in line longer than need be.

https://mobilepassport.us/

[PescadoAmarillo]

We did 10 B2B cruises out of Port Everglades one year followed by 12 B2B cruises the next year. This gave me a lot of opportunities to observe what mishaps might and do happen during a routine disembarkation in a routine port. 9 times out of ten, if you can handle your own luggage and do self-disembarkation, you could be at Fort Lauderdale airport as early as 8-8:30am, depending on which disembarkation group you get assigned to (not everyone can be the first off the ship). But so many things can happen, like difficulties setting up a gangway that worked great just yesterday to problems with the ship's electronics that scan people off the ship to immigration issues caused by lots of ships in port to construction around the port slowing traffic and necessitating disembarkation to slow. There are a lot of variables that have to come together to get people off the ship on a timely basis.

 

 

And then there's what happened to us one year when we were actually disembarking the ship the day after Princess Cays and our airline had moved our noon-ish flight to 11:11am which I thought we could make. Well, the ship had difficulty with tendering after the Princess Cays stop due to weather, we were on the island until after 6pm, the ship was hours late departing and didn't arrive in Port Everglades until after 10am the next morning. We were among the first to disembark at 10:35am and made our flight only because of the efforts of a crazy taxi driver and diligent sky caps.

 

And then there's the time the ship couldn't get a tender lifted after the Princess Cays stop and we were delayed a bit and didn't arrive in Port Everglades until after 8am.

 

Things can and do happen. Princess suggests 11:30am and on rare occasions even that can be missed. I would opt for a later flight.

[capriccio]

Should you opt for an early (or earlier than recommended) flight make sure you have a Plan B. When is the next flight? How likely is it to have seats (on a weekend in the high season - winter - it may not be very likely)? Will you incur additional costs? If so, how much? etc., etc.

[janetz]

I have disembarked many time and made 9:30 and 10:30 AM flights out of Ft. Lauderdale. The nice thing now at least with the Royal and Regal Princess ships, they start letting you do early walk off with your luggage shortly after 6:00 AM. We do the walk off with our luggage unless we have a later flight. You can request first disembarkation where you pick up your luggage in the cruise terminal shortly after 7:00 AM and still have plenty of time to get to the airport. Catch a cab, it only takes 15 or 20 minutes to arrive at the airport. I'm sure more people will give you advice on this thread.

 

Cheers - Ken & Darlene

 

Hi Ken

I noticed you have not been on the roll call. Miss your posts.:)

[Todd320]

We had 6 disembarkations this season off the Royal in FLL and we caught Delta flights between 7:30am and 8:15am every time. Walk off A is a must for super early departures.

 

Off course any flight before noon could be missed if there are problems.

[Colo Cruiser]

We had 6 disembarkations this season off the Royal in FLL and we caught Delta flights between 7:30am and 8:15am every time. Walk off A is a must for super early departures.

 

Off course any flight before noon could be missed if there are problems.

 

 

Any flight after noon could be missed with problems too. :o