5/19 SLOW Empress Disembark in Norfolk. Why?

[LuvBNatC]

Was anyone who was on the Empress 5/12 sailing have any idea why it took so long to get everyone off the ship?

 

Has this happened to anyone else who has sailed out of Norfolk since the new terminal opened?

 

We had yellow tags (the last color they called), and sat around from 7:45 when we finished breakfast until almost 10:30, waiting to get off. And we left a big a crowd waiting behind us. I believe the ship was cleared by Customs well before 8.

 

There were only 1,561 passengers. Nearly 3 hours to disembark seemed beyond ridiculous, even though many seemed to be first-time cruisers who'd never done the drill before.

 

Was it Customs? Was it lack of enough ground transportation to handle the crowd on the sidewalk? Luggage being mis-sorted on the pier?

 

My father's suitcase was parked in the wrong section, so it took us an extra 15-20 minutes to find it. We didn't get on the shuttle to the Cedar Grove parking lot until 10:45.

 

Then we hit terrible traffic on I-64 West that seemed to have no reason either.

 

For the time it took to get off the ship and home to Richmond, I could have practically flown back from a much larger ship in Miami.

 

Any insight would be appreciated. Sad to say, if killing an extra half-day in Norfolk at the end of cruises is the norm, it makes more sense to fly to ports where there's a choice of ships/destinations.

[dixieva]

I got off the Empress on 5/12. We arrived on time but they had a problem with the ramp to disembark. We were the first group off and it was 8:30 when we got off. I don't know how long it took to get the rest of the passengers off.

[LuvBNatC]

The ramp...interesting. Never thought of that.

 

I was on the 5/12 sailing that disembarked on 5/19.

[Gypsywych]

My husband and I disembarked on 05/05.... and we were in Suffolk eating breakfast by 10:30(and we'd stopped to fill up the gas tank). No problems whatsoever. I was truly impressed by the smooth transition, since that was the first cruise out of the new terminal.

[Janet524]

We were among the first to disembark the ship on 5/19. It appeared that the hold up was in the customs processing, although I don't know exactly why. Our luggage was all together in the appropriate spot - no problem there. As for the traffic on I-64 for "no reason"...There was a serious accident on I-64 west of Jefferson Avenue. We were fortunte enough to have spotted the tie up and exited I-64 before getting snarled in it. As for flying to port cities -- NOTHING is more inconvenient or has greater potential for screw-ups these days than flying! Give me a port to drive to any time.

[LuvBNatC]

Thanks for sharing your experience, Cruise Elf. So it seems that Norfolk IS capable of getting passengers off the ship quickly. Whatever the screw-up was must have been particular to the 5/12 sailing. That's good to know, for Norfolk's sake.

 

Janet, I agree with you that flying posing its own horrendous set of problems. However, until Norfolk is able to offer a broader range of ships and destinations, now that I've tried it, I think I'll go back to flying in elsewhere a day early to sample other ships. I was more impressed with Empress than any ship I've been on since the Norway, but its days in the U.S. are, unfortunately, numbered. I've done the Carnival Victory out of Norfolk as well, which is the only other option at the moment. Lovely ship, but the overall product wasn't quite what I wanted.

 

We didn't reach I-64 until about 11:15 and saw no signs of an accident anywhere, so maybe we did hit the tail end of that backup. My father theorized that it was an everyday occurrence, caused simply by the road merging into fewer travel lanes in 2 places. We also wondered if the Jamestown celebration had anything to do with it.

 

We drove from Richmond to Norfolk on 460 to avoid 64 and Jamestown and hit NO traffic all the way. Should have done it in reverse. Hindsight's great, isn't it? ;)