Disembark Rome / Early Flight?

[DAL745]

Disembarking in Rome and wondering how much time to allow before my flight. The Caribbean cruises have always been easy... disembarkation was relatively quick and airports close by... But have never disembarked in Rome. Planning on keeping our luggage with us for early "walk off". I understand the airport is a good 50+ minutes from the port in Rome?? The ship is scheduled to arrive at 5am... customs, immigration, etc?? Anyone have any experience with this?

 

RCCL Navigator Of The Seas July 2008

[tomko2]

Allow yourself lots of time. Although the ship may be in dock at 5:00am you probably won't get off right away. The airport is a good 50 minutes plus from the Port and traffic can turn that into 1 1/2hrs. Security requirements at FCO indicate you need to be there 2 hours in advance. Luggage handling is a big problem at FCO so you would have a better chance of your luggage going with you if you are there in good time.

 

Also, do you plan to pre-arrange transportation? If so, your driver may encounter traffic problems enroute to pick you up. We had a great limo service the whole time (6 days in Rome etc) but a document was missing when he came to pick us up at the Port and it held him up almost an hour.

From what we saw there were limited number of other taxis/limos available for people to use. Most people pre-arrange their transportation. We had a 9:00 pick-up set but didn't get underway until 10:00; it took an hour and a quarter to get to Rome (we were staying there for a few more days so no panic). We watched one group of fifteen people start to go into panic mode because their limo/van was stuck in traffic; we overheard them talking to the driver and begging him to hurry up because they had an 11:45 flight and needed to get to the airport at 9:45. Their van showed up at 9:20.

 

The "terminal" at the port was relatively straight forward; luggage was placed by tag colour. No problem with customs/immigration.

 

A noon or beyond flight should be no problem.

 

Kathy:)

[ladybug97]

Great previous reply and I am in agreement with it all! We had a 10:45 am flight on our trip back and made it with no problems at all. We were off of the ship at 6:15 and because it was still early, not too much traffic to worry about but it still was a 45 min. ride to the airport. It's a VERY busy airport and with the other thousands of people from your ship...it'll be even more congested. :o

[joan24]

Is there any way that you could spend the night in Rome ? The airport can be a madhouse. We flew out of there late October and arrived 3 hours early for a 10:00 a.m. flight. We had no problems, but I could see that any less than 2 hours for a morning flight could be a problem. We were told that the ride to the airport from the center of Rome would be 50 minutes but we left at 6:30 a.m. and there was no traffic and it took us 30 minutes. There are lots of car services available from the port to the airport, just book early.

Joan