Immigration at Port Everglades Terminal 25

[TeeRick]

17 hours ago, Host Anne said:

Disembarked Equinox at 8:45 this morning at Pier 25.  When you came down the escalator into the terminal, there was a sign on the left for PASSPORT HOLDERS and a sign on the right that said BIRTH CERTIFICATES.  All passport holders went to the left where you walked up to the facial recognition screens.  They took  your photo, the screen showed a green check mark and they  said you were good to go.  No one looked at our passport and we were on our way.  There were no separate lines for those with foreign passport.  Everyone went to the same lines with screens if  you were a passport holder.

 

We were off the ship, picked up luggage, went through the passport control  and at the curb waiting for my husband to bring the car around within 20 minutes, max!

 

That was our experience this morning! 

Thank you Anne.  Good information.  

[Mark_T]

18 hours ago, ipeeinthepool said:

 

This seems to be the process whenever we (US citizens) visit other countries.  I'm surprised that giving US citizens priority isn't the standard process.

 

Not really true these days.

 

If you fly into London Heathrow for example, you'll use the same ePassport gates as UK and EU citizens.

 

Also there is a difference between having faster systems for your own citizens, and giving them priority...

 

It may take longer to process non-US citizens but that shouldn't mean it is OK to jump US citizens to the head of the queue, just have a separate queue.

 

In any event it sounds like this was a system failure rather than a plan so hopefully it will not be repeated.

[Jim_Iain]

1 hour ago, Mark_T said:

 

Not really true these days.

 

If you fly into London Heathrow for example, you'll use the same ePassport gates as UK and EU citizens.

 

Also there is a difference between having faster systems for your own citizens, and giving them priority...

 

It may take longer to process non-US citizens but that shouldn't mean it is OK to jump US citizens to the head of the queue, just have a separate queue.

 

In any event it sounds like this was a system failure rather than a plan so hopefully it will not be repeated.

That may be the intent but last year we experienced the opposite.   We arrived and were directed to a Non-UK Non-EC area.   When we arrived at the clearance area there were about 600 people on line and 2 agents.    They eventually brought on a couple more agents but it took us over 2 hours to clear immigration.    I was able to contact our driver and he waited for us.  

 

Off to the side of our area they had an express lane for UK /  EC passport holders that zipped through electronically.

[Mark_T]

5 minutes ago, Jim_Iain said:

That may be the intent but last year we experienced the opposite.   We arrived and were directed to a Non-UK Non-EC area.   When we arrived at the clearance area there were about 600 people on line and 2 agents.    They eventually brought on a couple more agents but it took us over 2 hours to clear immigration.    I was able to contact our driver and he waited for us.  

 

Off to the side of our area they had an express lane for UK /  EC passport holders that zipped through electronically.

The addition of US passport holders to the ePassport gates is relatively recent so you wouldn’t have seen it last year.

 

There has been a gap of a couple of years between the end of the older iris scanning system that US residents were able to register for, and the full availability of the ePassport gates.

 

So you will fair much better on your next trip...

[ipeeinthepool]

42 minutes ago, Jim_Iain said:

That may be the intent but last year we experienced the opposite.   We arrived and were directed to a Non-UK Non-EC area.   When we arrived at the clearance area there were about 600 people on line and 2 agents.    They eventually brought on a couple more agents but it took us over 2 hours to clear immigration.    I was able to contact our driver and he waited for us.  

 

Off to the side of our area they had an express lane for UK /  EC passport holders that zipped through electronically.

This was also our experience last May.

[Mark_T]

45 minutes ago, ipeeinthepool said:

This was also our experience last May.

Try is again and you too will be in the express lane with all the UK/EC passport holders... 🙂

[gordiej]

On 12/1/2019 at 1:48 PM, Mark_T said:

Try is again and you too will be in the express lane with all the UK/EC passport holders... 🙂

Yes, I believe the egates became active For US citizens (and a number of others) in late May or early June. 

we disembarked Equinox ~2 weeks ago, our group number was estimated at 8:35am but called maybe 5-10m early. Didn’t even see a global entry line, zipped through the facial recognition lanes, found our bags and were curbside pronto!