Immigration at Port Everglades

[karli_ratte]

This is a question for all non-US citizens. I'm trying to figure out how long the immigration procedure onboard Celebrity Equinox will take upon returning from our Carribbean cruise. We did it once on Royal and it was the worst possible experience. Unorganized, crowded, no chance for breakfast and it took hours to get off the ship in Key West.

We don't have to catch a flight, but we are picking somebody up from Miami Airport to join us on our remaining holiday and we are trying to plan our travelling according to circumstances. Thanks in advance :-)

[goneclear]

I Think it depends which pier / Terminal your ship will be docking at. We did an Allure cruise and the disembarkation was the smoothest I have ever experienced and yet it is the largest ship.

We recently did a 5 day Liberty and it was chaos. The US has done away with the white immigration forms and you only need to fill in a customs form at most airports and ports.

On our Liberty cruise we were given the old white immigration forms to fill out when we entered the terminal. I asked I thought they did away with them.

The immigration officer was very nice and he said the reason was that particular terminal the Liberty was using did not have computers so they were unable to scan your passport and therefor needed the hard copy.

Of course people having to now fill out these lengthy forms slows the whole process.

[karli_ratte]

Thanks for your reply! I guess we'll just wait and see. We have no time pressure, so we'll go with the flow :-)

[sddsddean]

We came in on the Oasis in May and it wasn't too bad. We had a tour booked through RCI, so were one of the first off at about 0745 and I think we were on the coach about 0820. After picking up luggage the queue moved fairly well. On the Infinity in 2012 it was similar. Our only bad one was coming from a transatlantic on the Independence in 2010 when there were only 2 immigration officers for all the non US passengers. We were held on the ship for almost 2 hours and when they let people off all the tag numbers went out of the window! There was just a mad rush to get off and get flights etc... and that was after queueing for immigration for another hour or more. We had a 1230 flight out of FLL and made it with about 30 mins to spare when we should have had loads of time, but I think this was because the ship was coming in from a TA.

If it suits you, I would get off earlier (maybe not first) rather than hanging it out until last. We did a b2b on the Oasis and on the first cruise the ship wasn't cleared until about 1100.

 

Simon

[karli_ratte]

So it's a bit hit and miss. Well, that's ok :-) we'll try to get off the ship early as suggested and try to get some shopping and a nice lunch in before heading to Miami Airport to pick up my father in law.