Immigration in St. Thomas, how long does it take?

[islandreaming]

Hi Everyone, I'm taking my first cruise on June 11th on the Glory. We supposedly dock in St. Thomas at 10. I know we have to go through immigration. I was wondering what time would be the right time to book an excursion? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

[weswas]

If you book through Carvinal you will make whatever time the excurision starts without a problem. If your booking on your own I would do something from 11 on. We have been to St Thomas at least a half dozen times and always arrive earlier than scheduled and have NEVER had a problem with immagration clearing us. Here is a tip that we do...We ALWAYS do a shore excursion with carnival if we have never been to an island but if we have and we see a trip we like we book the very first one. Why??? So this way we have the rest of the day to come back to the ship eat and then shop or sight see at our leisure. Then we are never nervous about getting back to the ship by sailing time. If we do a late trip with carnival it is harder to shop or walk the island becasue you have to reboard get your stuff and get back off and you loose time that way. Only our way of traveling but it works for us and we get to see more of an island that way.

[richfret]

It is certainly a mess to get off the ship in St. Thomas. We were on the Valor a couple of weeks ago. We booked a 10 am excursion (not Carnival) and we finally got off the ship about 10:45 am after about an hour and a half wait. I thought the line would go from one end of the ship to the other. Well, yes it did but that was only for the first deck. Then it did the same thing on the next deck down. The line moves fairly quickly but moving 3,000 people single file off two gang planks takes awhile. It doesn't help either that they are taking pictures as you get off. We took the Godfrey tour and he is aware of the situation. He has 9, 10 and 11 am tours so there should be no problem if you are late.

 

Just be aware of the situation and take your time since it won't make any difference if you get up set.