What is the Earliest Departing Flight I Should Take?

[tonyfall1]

Doing a 7 day cruise on the Meraviglia from Port Canaveral. It says it arrives to debark at 7am.  I'm flying in and out of MCO. What is the earliest flight out you would risk? I assume I would never make a 10:30 am flight? What about around noon?

[Georgia_Peaches]

20 minutes ago, tonyfall1 said:

Doing a 7 day cruise on the Meraviglia from Port Canaveral. It says it arrives to debark at 7am.  I'm flying in and out of MCO. What is the earliest flight out you would risk? I assume I would never make a 10:30 am flight? What about around noon?

Depends on how you get of the ship and frankly, your category. If you do self assist walk off you can get off the ship pretty quickly assuming there are no unexpected delays. If you’re in YC you skip the lines to exit. It’s about a 40 minute ride from port to MCO. For me, a comfortable flight time would be noon or later. 

[styles27]

A lot depends on your itinerary as well. 
 

 

The first leg of our b2b a few weeks ago took hours to disembark (on 01/09) because we had visited Colombia.

We were told immigration was being extra thorough.

Also facial recognition wasn’t working in Miami so they kept stopping the disembarkation process.

The ship didn’t clear til early afternoon (1:00-1:15 ish) We were the first back on at around 1:30-1:45 then they started boarding YC guests etc. 

 

It wasted most of our day. 

 

Lots of tempers and passengers complaining they were missing their flights etc. Nobody moves faster for that especially immigration officers. 

 

We always err on the side of caution and book an afternoon flight. 

[mackfam]

We had a 11:15 am flight from MCO in November. I was nervous about making it and had booked a private shuttle but everything went very smoothly and we were at the airport by 9am. We were in YC so did get to skip some of the lines getting off the ship.

[dexddd]

Our experience on weekends the biggest issue is airport lines at security at MCO.

[Morgsmom]

A LOT of things can happen in the morning from coming to port late, not clearing customs, medical issues, etc.  Also, the route to MCO can get clogged up - if there's an accident you can be done for.   Not reason to try to risk a 10:30 flight if there is one at noon.  As others have said the weekend TSA lines at MCO can be easily over an hour to get through.

[mowogo]

Remember that there are usually multiple ships turning over so in addition to your ship, there are more.  And then you add the families that visited Disney/Universal/SeaWorld to the mix and you see how quickly crowds can overwhelm, especially since Orlando is a confusing airport for those unfamiliar with it. Doing self debark on the Divina with a GoPort shuttle to MCO I was able to pick up a rental car at 10am from Orlando Airport.  Technically 11am would be doable, but risky because it requires everything to go right.