What time to expect debarkation in Galveston?

[tigervixxxen]

Just curious what the average time one can expect to debark the ship in Galveston? I've cruised several times before and have always been off the ship by around 9am but have never cruised out of Galveston before. Any info would be helpful.

[Cuizer2]

For some reason Galveston can be hit or miss. Sometimes things run smoothly and sometime things do not. I know of at least two cruises where people were still disembarking after noon. The people that were supposed to embark on that day had too wait for all the prior passengers to clear the ship, and they were none to happy about the delays.

 

For the cruise I was on the reason for the delay was that there were a lot (30% to 50%) of non-US citizens. Non-US citizens take longer to process. I don't know the reason for the delay on the other cruise. It might have been weather related, preventing the ship from docking on time.

[Nannersmom]

I don't know why we had the problem (not that many non-US citizens) but it took us almost 2 hours to get through customs on 2/6/10 (we had a high number tag). My husband stated because of that we would never sail out of Galveston again...on another note...embarkment in this port too (took over an hour and had to stand in 3 lines!! - wait actually 4 if you count the line to actually get on the ship).Also we had to wait to embark because they were still off loading at this was around noon on 2/2/10. My family members that did self-assist deembarkment had no issues at all...straight off the ship, through customs and on the way to their car within 20 mins. My daughter and her family members who had a low number tag (1!!!) said it took them almost an hour.

[cardinalfan]

We were on the Christmas cruise that left out of Galveston. We were at the pier by 10am and no one boarded before 2pm. People were still getting off right up until 2:00.

[Host Kat]

Please remember there are two cruise terminals and two cruise lines in Galveston at this time.

 

Please state if your post concerns Terminal #1 for Carnival or Terminal #2 for RCI.

Kat

[CGBCruiser]

We've sailed out of both terminals in Galveston and had no more trouble than we did in Florida. Of course, we did drive ourselves and parked, but disembarkation was not bad at all. The worst part is getting behind non-US citizens in the customs line. It takes much longer to process them than US citizens.