Boarding time?

[Laminator]

53 minutes ago, HAL4NOW said:

We boarded the Koningsdam last Monday, May 1st, at Canada Place. It took us well over three hours of waiting in various lines before being able to board. US Customs was part of the problem, but they cannot take all of the blame for the mess.

We were dropped off at the cruise port by a shuttle from our hotel. Even though we have departed from Canada Place previously, nothing resembled the previous procedures.

We say lines that said "Holland America" and "Princess" and "Norwegian" but there was no differentiation between any of the cruise lines. Everyone was being funneled through the same queue. Since we still had our luggage with us and wanted to drop that off before getting in line, we asked two different port personnel (uniforms and name-tag badges identified them) where we should drop off the luggage and then what the procedure was after that. One of them just said she didn't know and walked away. The other one said we had to go downstairs to drop off our luggage and then go upstairs to check in and then come back down to the level we were on to go through customs. When we asked how we should get downstairs, he pointed us to an elevator that had hundreds of people waiting in line to get a ride up or down.

We found a different way down to drop off our luggage, only to see even more lines of people. We walked past all of them and found a HAL porter that was taking luggage (ours already had tags we printed out at home) and he took our luggage. Then we tried to figure out how to get up to the check-in level. We had to walk outside because the escalator was being monitored for only a couple people to go up at a time and there were hundreds of people in line at the escalator. The elevator lines had lengthened since we had seen them a few minutes earlier. We walked outside and found some stairs that got us up to the next level. At the Convention Center we asked a security guard to point us to the line for check-in and he pointed out a line. When we got to that line, we realized that what we thought was the back of the line was just a corner where the line turned and went a few hundred more people in a different direction. At this point, passengers from all three cruise lines were mixed in the same line. About a hour later, Princess personnel and Norwegian personnel began going up and down the line and pulling their passengers out to go into different lines. 

When we finally got into the first large room for HAL check-in, we saw a sea of people weaving back and forth through the queue. Holland America was not processing people with any level of efficiency. After another hour, we had made it through that mess and then we were sent back to the US Customs downstairs and mixed with all three cruise lines passengers to get through yet another hour plus of back and forth through the queue. 

One lady did a face plant when she fainted from dehydration, others were looking extremely weary. The port can take some responsibility for the length of the process; Holland America did not do much to speed up any portion of the process, and US Customs was a joke. 

The good news is that apparently, earlier in the process it was going much faster and smoother. Our table mates were first time cruisers, and they did not have a problem getting on-board. They were able to enjoy a few hours of peace and quiet on the ship while many of the passengers were walking around the concrete waiting for the next corner to turn to go back to the other end of the room, only to turn and do it again.

Those that want to blame people for not showing up at the correct check-in time or to say that enforcing check-in times would have helped this process are delusional. 

I would be willing to bet that you don't have alot of expertise in crowd control. The best way for me to explain this would be on 294 which runs outside of Chicago. Speed limit is 55. In the morning during rush you better be going 70. The State Police pretty much just hide. If they make a traffic stop it will wind up backing up traffic for miles. Traffic will remain backed up long after the traffic stop is over. Once that initial back up starts you are pretty much screwed. That is exactly what is occurring here. Once the overflow starts things just get worse. Of course there will still be issues but they will not be as bad if pax would abide by their check in times. 

[JanDom]

I also have a question about the check in times :

 

We will leave Amsterdam on the Rotterdam in two weeks and are assigned in group J 2:00 pm - so pretty late - but also have booked orange Club with priority check in …

 

From other cruise lines we know „priority check in“ as we can go on board when ever we want.

 

From HaL we now got the check in time ?!?

 

Can we check in when we arrive at the terminal (around 1pm) or to we have to wait until group J and then have a separate line ?

 

We will stay near Amsterdam and our plan was to leave the hotel at 11:00 am (check out time, after a nice breakfast) then drive to the airport (half an our drive), park the car at the airport (cheapest way to leave the car somewhere in Amsterdam 😵‍💫) and then took the next train to the Harbour….

 

thanks and greets from Germany