Post Cruise Excursion - Luggage??

[bouhunter]

My brother-in-law is joining us on his first cruise, on Independence:)

 

His flight home doesn't leave until 6:30 PM, so he asked us to sign him up for the Everglades Airboat Excursion. The question is, I assume they load the people and thier luggage on a bus and do the tour, then drop them off at FLL with their luggage? We thought about luggage valet but it looks like that might not be an option based on a recent thread.

 

Thanks!

[cb at sea]

Yes, he AND his luggage will go on the excursion! No worries!

[somanyquestions]

We did this excursion - it's great, yes they load you and your luggage on to the coach

[bouhunter]

Thanks!

 

I assume he'll pick up his luggage like everyone else and go thru customs, and they'll provide info on when and where to meet the bus outside?

 

He's travelled a lot, but this cruisin' stuff will be new to him. We won't be with him at this stage as we're renting a car and heading to Key West to spend a few more days away from the snow:D

[wrp96]

When you do a post cruise excursion, here is what happens at least at Port Everglades:

 

Everyone in the excursion is assigned the same group for debarkation.

 

You meet in the theater with your excursion ticket for debarkation.

 

When your color is called, you exit the ship, go through immigration, pick up your bags in the warehouse, and drag them past customs.

 

Once outside customs, you'll take your bags to the tour bus. Your bags are loaded onto the bus for you. You go and enjoy your excursion, and then when the excursion is over, you are dropped off at the airport.

 

When we did the Everglades excursion we were back at FLL before 1pm. FLL usually will not allow you to check in earlier than 4 hours before your flight (some airlines its 2-3 hours before your flight). IF luggage valet is available on your cruise, I recommend taking advantage of it even with the post cruise excursion because with a 6:30 flight, he still may have to wait around before being allowed to check in for his flights. By using the luggage valet, he would still have the time and the ease to go away from the airport for a few hours before his flight.

 

Oh and enjoy Key West!

[ILoveScotland]

As others have said, he'll get off the ship, go through all the check points, etc. and take his luggage to the excursion bus.

 

At the end of the excursion he'll be taken to the airport.

 

An easy way to have one last day of sightseeing and get to the airport.

[kel24]

I don't know about this particular excursion... However, we did a post-cruise excursion in San Juan where the description said luggage would travel with you on the bus to the excursion and then on to the airport. What really happened is that our luggage was loaded into a delivery-type truck and driven to the airport separately from us. We were told it would be at a luggage dropoff outside the American Airlines doors to the airport. It was- but I was pretty upset. All of our bags were just sitting outside the airport. There was a man "guarding" them but there must have been hundreds of bags there. Anyone could have snuck by and taken one. Also, when we did pick up our bags we did not need ID of any kind so how do they know people were not stealing bags?? We all just walked over and grabbed our bags. I did not like this set up again, and would check on the details of the luggage before I do another post cruise excursion.