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Carnival Computer System causing boarding delays

Tyhunt

By Tyhunt,
in Carnival Cruise Lines

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bellebaby

bellebaby

Posted
Posted
Hey all just got a call from by brother in law in Galveston and he said they can't yet board the ship due to the computer system being down.:mad: Hope its fixed by tomorrow when we board:confused:

 

Is the issue systemwide or isolated to Galveston?

 

Let us know if you hear anything more.

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Tyhunt

Tyhunt

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My neighbors are boarding magic today and they got an alert call this morning saying boarding was delayed due to some sort of issue with travel to Belize.

 

That sounds right as we had this happen on the liberty I think. When they returned from the trip to Belize US customs did a full inspection.

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Sparky2

Sparky2

Posted
Posted
This happened to us last Sept. on Liberty, if our flights had not been delayed , we would have missed them.

 

You have me worried now. We'll be on Liberty in January. Belize is in the 2nd leg of our B2B. We have a sea day, then Cozumel, Belize, Isla Roatan, and Grand Cayman, sea day, and back to Miami. Our flight was moved up from 12 to 11:30.

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DebJ14

DebJ14

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You have me worried now. We'll be on Liberty in January. Belize is in the 2nd leg of our B2B. We have a sea day, then Cozumel, Belize, Isla Roatan, and Grand Cayman, sea day, and back to Miami. Our flight was moved up from 12 to 11:30.

 

Good luck making the flight. You will have to do self-assist. The note we got in our cabins yesterday said that because we went to Belize there would be a full inspection and if you had a flight before 1:30pm to please see Guest Services. According to the list #2-7 was not getting off until 10am and the latest numbers around 1:30pm.

 

It took us 30 minutes to clear Customs and Immigration. They took the Platinum and Diamond and FTTF #1 luggage tags midway through self-assist at around 8:00am.

 

The CBP officer in our line wasn't scanning the passports. She was typing in the names and then scrolling to find the correct passport and comparing the data. She seemed to have 2 speeds - slow and stop. The line next to us was using the scanner and they were moving much faster, but all the lines were backed up.

 

When we arrived at the pier at 11:30am people were still getting off the ship from the previous cruise. We were processed quickly and in our room within 10 minutes of arriving at the pier. DS had FTTF and got there at 10:30 and was one of the first onboard, but his cabin was not ready.

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DebJ14

DebJ14

Posted
Posted
Heard about this, curious as to what happened. I left that ship in perfect working order at 7:30 this morning!

 

 

Meredith

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I wouldn't exactly say the ship was in perfect working order. We had AC issues, lousy service in the MDR every night, Guest Services was a total joke. They should change the name back to the Purser's office then the guests wouldn't expect SERVICE.

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aggieastrosfan

aggieastrosfan

Posted
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I wouldn't exactly say the ship was in perfect working order. We had AC issues, lousy service in the MDR every night, Guest Services was a total joke. They should change the name back to the Purser's office then the guests wouldn't expect SERVICE.

 

Sorry you had a bad experience. Ours wasn't perfect (someone will be hearing about the laser tag fiasco on Saturday), our MDR service with the wait team we requested in YTD every night was wonderful, our cabin steward was one of the best we've ever had, and while we did have an AC issue Saturday, a call to Guest Services fixed it in under 15 minutes. Any issue we did have was dealt with quickly.

 

But as far as this thread is concerned, the ship had no computer issues when we left that we know of.

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KatieCharlotte

KatieCharlotte

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We loved everything about our Magic cruise...except debarkation. We were also returning from Belize and debarkation was extremely delayed, which also meant passengers on the next cruise had to wait a couple extra hours to board.

 

My main complaint with Carnival was really just the lack of information or lack of anticipation of a problem, considering this was not an isolated occurrence in Galveston. Carnival did not tell anyone that there was a delay or the reason for it. People missed flights. We heard that people with priority debarkation were left waiting a long time without info.

 

We decided not to self-disembark since we had kids and a low debark number, having no idea there were delays. We left the ship when our number was called, grabbed our bags, and waited in an almost two-hour customs line. I don't believe the highest numbers had been called when we finally made it out, based on all the luggage still sitting there.

 

There were lots of rumors -- a medical emergency, security found someone smuggling out drugs, etc. The customs agent said it was because we went to Belize. However, we also noticed that he was very slow entering information and seemed to want to chat with people in line. Then, he let us leave without collecting our customs form. Based on our observations and what other people reported, it also appeared that they started the morning with very few customs agents and slowly added more.

 

My conclusion was that going to Belize always/usually/sometimes requires the customs agents to manually enter all passport and birth certificate information (and maybe more, but I don't know enough about customs inspections and didn't observe anything else), there were not enough customs agents assigned that Sunday morning to address this extra responsibility, and there is no incentive for customs agents to be efficient and process people as quickly as possible.

 

I'm not sure Carnival's on-the-ground employees had any more information or control than we did. I heard the assistant cruise director begging to be allowed to call a few more numbers, as people were getting antsy waiting, but clearly she couldn't because the customs area was clogged with the endless line. However, after this happened once or twice, Carnival needs to address the problem or, at the very least, provide information about the delay.

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aggieastrosfan

aggieastrosfan

Posted
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Wow, Katie, that sounds like a mess. :(

 

We got off the ship with priority self-assist at about 7:20. At the time they had 3 customs agents, and a 4th "secret" one for porters. While we were in line for one agent, a 4th came online, so we jumped over there and were first with her.

 

Having just done this same itinerary in May, this was the longest we've ever been with the agent. She swiped an then scanned our three passports. The scan took about 10-15 seconds each. Still, we were lucky and back in our car by 7:45.

 

 

Meredith

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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