Free-style disembarking???

[rgtkkb]

As a first time cruiser, I am wondering how much time is needed to disembark. If the ship is scheduled to dock at 7:00 am in Seattle, would it be OK for me to schedule a 12:30 flight?

Kathleen

[johnql]

As a first time cruiser, I am wondering how much time is needed to disembark. If the ship is scheduled to dock at 7:00 am in Seattle, would it be OK for me to schedule a 12:30 flight?

Kathleen

It typically takes a couple hours for all passengers to disembark. The problem, however, isn't the amount of time to disembark. The problem is the unpredictability of many other factors that could delay you - the ship arriving back in port on schedule, clearing customs without a delay, all passengers settling their onboard accounts, all non-Americans clearing immigration in a timely fashion - those are probably the most common problems.

 

If all goes well, you shouldn't have any problem catching a 12:30 flight, especially if you're willing to take advantage of Express Disembarkation.

[AndrewM]

When did you take your cruises? Is this experience unusual or have other CC members experienced it?

 

On both of our Dawn cruises we were told we could stay in our cabins until we disembarked but on both of our cruises we were asked to leave our cabins before we disembarked and join the long faces in the lounges. I heard somebody screaming about this in Dazzles a few weeks ago. Next time I'm going to be bold like Brad. I wonder if it has anything to do with us being perpetual inside cabiners.

[wibeachbum]

I was concerned about booking an early flight but it turned out not to be a problem for us. Everything went very quickly and smoothly. We were on the Jewel and scheduled to dock in Miami at 8 a.m. I booked a 12:40 p.m. flight out of Ft. Lauderdale.

 

We actually docked at about 5 a.m. and at 7:05 a.m. express debarkationn people were being call to debark. They would close the express debarkation ramp at 8 a.m. We waited until about 7:35 to leave our room because we knew that our town car driver would not be there until 8:30. It was a little bit of a problem getting an elevator because they were filling up fast because everyone had luggage with them. We were off well before 8 a.m. though. Sailed through customs. They would not let us stand around in the terminal building. They made us go outside and wait for our driver.

 

Got to FLL and security was a zoo so we were glad we had extra time.

 

We would have made it in plenty of time even if we wouldn't have used express debarkation.