San Diego Disembark Time

[The-Inside-Cabin]

San Diego disembarks are unpredictable and generally more of a function of CBP staffing then anything else.   Impossible to predict.  It could be a nightmare last week and smooth the next.   

 

I talked to a friend who was on the first 2 cruises B2B.   Had to get off twice.   The first time took over an hour - second time only 20 minutes....

 

Of course - YMMV.....but i would take the later flight

[DAllenTCY]

I stand corrected on the July 2009 crime; however, CBP was not involved in any way with it that I can see.

 

 

David

 

 

 

 

 

[Megamixer]

Maybe someone getting off the ship today will come back and comment?  Hopefully it's gotten better.  We did the air thru HAL and have 11:35 flights on Nov 21.

[Csfleury]

We disembarked the Koningsdam on October 24th and it was a very long wait in line.  When we finally got to the customs agent he looked at our passports and took our picture.  He did not chat with us and we were on our way in less than a minute. Perhaps because we are Canadians??? Although I did notice some agents having what appeared to be lengthy chats with some passengers while we were waiting in line.

[DesertDogs]

 

We disembarked on Sunday, Oct 31st and it was a disaster!! We were in the Pinnacle Suite so our letter said we could just walk off anytime after 0745. We proceeded to the gangway at about 0810 to find a very long line of passengers carrying off their own bags. The problem was the customs agents were set up in  the ship instead of in the terminal since we were docked on the other side of the terminal. There was a Disney Ship in port also. I don't know why the got our dock. 

 

After waiting for 30 minutes one of the HAL employees came and escorted us to customs. He took our photo and uploaded something on his phone. It took a few minutes. They started with only 4 agents and finally added 4 more. It was by far the worst part of the entire cruise.

[farjar]

On 10/28/2021 at 10:52 PM, zgscl said:

You all have just convinced me to change to the 3 PM flight from the 11 AM. I think a relaxed breakfast in the pinnacle, late disembarkation and an afternoon in the Sky Club will be a much better way to end my vacation than getting up extremely early and standing in a massive line to try and rush to the airport and risk scrambling to reschedule my flight. 

 

Has anyone done the San Diego Highlights tour? Would love to do the zoo but flight schedules just don't work as I would have to delay until after 6 so I will have to try for that on my next sailing in March. 

We were on the Koningsdam Mexican Cruise that just docked on Oct. 31.  Two days before returning to San Diego one of the four engines went out.  The Captain announced he would have to reduce speed and our arrival would be delayed from 7:00am to 9:30am.  Several passengers were very concerned because they had early flights.  Fortunately the engine was repaired and we made our 7:00am time.  As others have mentioned debarkation was incredibly slow so I think you were very wise to reschedule your flight to a later time just in case there is more engine trouble.

[The-Inside-Cabin]

On 10/27/2021 at 12:14 PM, Deep68 said:

We will be on the Koningsdam Christmas cruise which disembarks on December 26th. Was wondering if anyone had recent information on how long the disembarkation process is taking with COVID checks etc. Trying to figure out what time flight I should book.

 

Thanks 

The Norwegian Jewell will also be turning around with 2500 passengers on the 26th of December in San Diego.   Will be crowded and most likely slow... Things can be slow with one ship -with 2 ships -plan on a slow disembark.

[BigMattT]

We disembarked 10/31. We were the first luggage tags to be called (Pink 2), and we were off and had our bags, waiting for our parking shuttle at 8:33am.

 

There were 5 CBP agents there at that time, moving relatively quickly. Not overly talky, but their new “take a photo” system isn’t ultra fast.

 

HAL crew members were doing well organizing the line of people weaving from the bottom of the stairs at deck 1 midship around the hallway and back to the excursion atrium area where customs was staged.
 

While things were busy and a little congested, they weren’t disorganized nor did it come to a stop at any time.

 

Since this was our first trip on HAL, I’m curious what is the “normal”? We didn’t wait more than 15 minutes… which is pretty normal from our experiences on other lines.

[DAllenTCY]

I believe that the NCL Jewel has changed its schedule, and will not return to San Diego until April.

 

David

[Megamixer]

On 11/2/2021 at 9:07 AM, matthewthompson87 said:

We disembarked 10/31. We were the first luggage tags to be called (Pink 2), and we were off and had our bags, waiting for our parking shuttle at 8:33am.

 

There were 5 CBP agents there at that time, moving relatively quickly. Not overly talky, but their new “take a photo” system isn’t ultra fast.

 

HAL crew members were doing well organizing the line of people weaving from the bottom of the stairs at deck 1 midship around the hallway and back to the excursion atrium area where customs was staged.
 

While things were busy and a little congested, they weren’t disorganized nor did it come to a stop at any time.

 

Since this was our first trip on HAL, I’m curious what is the “normal”? We didn’t wait more than 15 minutes… which is pretty normal from our experiences on other lines.

 

[Megamixer]

Thank you for coming back and updating the disembarking information after that first cruise.  We booked the "sea and air" thru HAL and have an 11:35 flight that morning.  I was starting to worry about making it.  

 

I don't think there is a "normal" for any cruise line.  I have found it depends more on the port, the cruise, the ship and the day.  Some of my worst disembarking was at the Port of New Orleans coming back from Royal Caribbean cruise.  Passengers paid no attention to their assigned time and just crowded into the line, cutting in front of people and pushing.  I'll be happy the day all airports and cruise lines have the luggage direct program like in Seattle and Miami.

[zgscl]

Can anyone confirm if HAL currently offers luggage direct in San Diego? 

[Megamixer]

The last time I cruised out of San Diego (2019) they did not offer it.

[zgscl]

2 hours ago, Megamixer said:

The last time I cruised out of San Diego (2019) they did not offer it.

That is a shame. I will report back next week  I really wish every port/airline/cruise line offered it. It makes disembarkation so much easier 

[jhsocal]

Seem to recall there were some relatively long waits to disembark in San Diego long before the pandemic.

[zgscl]

1 hour ago, jhsocal said:

Seem to recall there were some relatively long waits to disembark in San Diego long before the pandemic.

The worst disembarkation we ever had was in San Diego in 2011 after a Panama Canal cruise (not really HAL's fault but it still sticks very clearly in my memory). The actual disembarkation was less the issue, but we had purchased the HAL transportation to the airport to make life easy. Unfortunately we got through customs and what not right after a waive of buses filled and we were the first on the next bus and ended up waiting at least half an hour for the bus to fill (I think it was closer to an hour but the years may have distorted our memory). We were traveling with an elderly relative who was supposed to fly American to a small town in central Illinois while we were on Southwest to SF. As it turns out our relative's connecting flight in Chicago cancelled and there would be no way for her to get to her town for 2-3 days. Of course she did not have a cell phone so I ran to the American counter which was in a different terminal and tried to talk the agent into calling the gate and telling her to not board her flight while our travel agent was on the phone with AA trying to rebook her out of SF while my mom was trying to get her onto an oversold flight on Southwest. We finally got her back from AA and the flight rebooked (her luggage could not be retrieved and went to Chicago). We were only able to get her on our Southwest flight because the earlier flight was delayed to within 5 minutes of our flight and a nice woman was willing to trade seats with us and a very kind but frazzled gate agent got us all switched. Not entirely sure how we got all of that together in the 1 and a half hours after arriving at the airport but we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the wonderful airport team with both airlines. 

[Cap'nWoody]

As a postscript, we got off Koningsdam yesterday after the 7 day California Coast Cruise in San Diego.  He decided to do walk off since we had only 3 pieces of small luggage.  Walk off was called at 0730.  There were maybe 20 people in line ahead of us.  Customs waved us through and we never stopped walking from the time we left the gangway until we hit the van taking us to the airport.  It was by far the smoothest debarkation I had ever experienced.

Edited November 8, 2021 by Cap'nWoody

[waASPCrusier]

1 hour ago, Cap'nWoody said:

As a postscript, we got off Koningsdam yesterday after the 7 day California Coast Cruise in San Diego.  He decided to do walk off since we had only 3 pieces of small luggage.  Walk off was called at 0730.  There were maybe 20 people in line ahead of us.  Customs waved us through and we never stopped walking from the time we left the gangway until we hit the van taking us to the airport.  It was by far the smoothest debarkation I had ever experienced.

That is great to hear, what deck did you do the walk off on ?

[Cap'nWoody]

31 minutes ago, waASPCrusier said:

That is great to hear, what deck did you do the walk off on ?

The gangway was located on Deck 2.  We were on the north side of the pier.

[waASPCrusier]

38 minutes ago, Cap'nWoody said:

The gangway was located on Deck 2.  We were on the north side of the pier.

Thank you

[zgscl]

4 hours ago, Cap'nWoody said:

As a postscript, we got off Koningsdam yesterday after the 7 day California Coast Cruise in San Diego.  He decided to do walk off since we had only 3 pieces of small luggage.  Walk off was called at 0730.  There were maybe 20 people in line ahead of us.  Customs waved us through and we never stopped walking from the time we left the gangway until we hit the van taking us to the airport.  It was by far the smoothest debarkation I had ever experienced.

Thanks for sharing this. Fantastic news, hopefully they keep this up! 

[SLC1954]

Just off the Koningsdam on November 7th, since we went to Ensenada as our first stop our customs inspection was in San Francisco, all the other stops were US ports. There was no customs when we got off the ship in San Diego.  The customs answer is relative to the specific itinerary and can vary.

During the customs inspection in San Francisco they announced that 7 passengers were not off the ship and it delayed letting us back on until they were “found” it took an xtra 30 minutes to account for the stragglers. 

[Cap'nWoody]

31 minutes ago, SLC1954 said:

Just off the Koningsdam on November 7th, since we went to Ensenada as our first stop our customs inspection was in San Francisco, all the other stops were US ports. There was no customs when we got off the ship in San Diego.  The customs answer is relative to the specific itinerary and can vary.

During the customs inspection in San Francisco they announced that 7 passengers were not off the ship and it delayed letting us back on until they were “found” it took an xtra 30 minutes to account for the stragglers. 

Actually that was an immigration inspection in SF to make sure there were no extra bodies entering the US.  On the 7th in San Diego, there was no immigration inspection since all of our subsequent ports were US.  There were Customs officers in the building and I think they may have been inspecting for contraband food, plants, animals and various drugs.  However, we were waived through without stopping for any inspections.

[DAllenTCY]

I did not see any US Customs agents yesterday either in the terminal or in their offices yesterday.

 

Perhaps you mistook uniformed port security or Harbor Police sniffing dog handler?

 

 

 

David

Edited November 8, 2021 by DAllenTCY

[sfocruiser]

Just a bump on this thread for any recent Koningsdam disembarkation experiences.