Anthem and Cape Liberty

[Slidell_Cruiser]

The Anthem is a Great Ship, we have sailed all the Riyal Caribbean classes and she was the best by far in all aspects especially the service and the food were a cut above our normal RC experience, we are Diamond Plus cruisers.

 

Cape Liberty

We landed in Bayonne in September on the Serenade from Copenhagen, then the Anthem from Southamton on Nov 4. Two arrivals, one was bad the other was off the charts in NEGATIVE wow.

 

The departure simply put was a DISASTER. passengers waited for more than an hour pasted their schedule departure time, 2 to 3 hours in the Customs line, then the taxi line. The total NEGATIVE after a TransAtlantic crossing on a great ship.

 

I enjoy cruising and very rarely compliant, but......

 

STAY AWAY FROM CAPE LIBERTY...

 

Royal Caribbean, you guys must fix this or the Anthem will be half empty.

 

One Cruisers Opine

 

Phil

[cruisenfever]

The Anthem is a Great Ship, we have sailed all the Riyal Caribbean classes and she was the best by far in all aspects especially the service and the food were a cut above our normal RC experience, we are Diamond Plus cruisers.

 

Cape Liberty

We landed in Bayonne in September on the Serenade from Copenhagen, then the Anthem from Southamton on Nov 4. Two arrivals, one was bad the other was off the charts in NEGATIVE wow.

 

The departure simply put was a DISASTER. passengers waited for more than an hour pasted their schedule departure time, 2 to 3 hours in the Customs line, then the taxi line. The total NEGATIVE after a TransAtlantic crossing on a great ship.

 

I enjoy cruising and very rarely compliant, but......

 

STAY AWAY FROM CAPE LIBERTY...

 

Royal Caribbean, you guys must fix this or the Anthem will be half empty.

 

One Cruisers Opine

 

Phil

Debarkation for a ship returning from overseas is controlled by the port authorities and not RCI.

 

When a ship returns to the US from sailing overseas, there is a mandatory USGA inspection of the entire ship and then all crew must go through Customs & Immigration along with all pax. This can slow up the debarkation process. This would have been the case on both of your cruises. This is Anthem's first appearance here in US waters, so there could have been a number of things that held up debarkation which is out of the control of RCI.

 

We've sailed out of and disembarked Port Liberty on Quantum, Liberty and just recently Serenade and never had a problem. Our embarkation on Serenade, which was the day you disembarked from your TA, went quite smoothly and we were on board by 11:30AM even though we were told by email that boarding would not commence until 1PM.

Edited November 5, 2015 by cruisenfever

[Lady Hudson]

Debarkation for a ship returning from overseas is controlled by the port authorities and not RCI.

 

When a ship returns to the US from sailing overseas, there is a mandatory USGA inspection of the entire ship and then all crew must go through Customs & Immigration along with all pax. This can slow up the debarkation process. This would have been the case on both of your cruises. This is Anthem's first appearance here in US waters, so there could have been a number of things that held up debarkation which is out of the control of RCI.

 

We've sailed out of and disembarked Port Liberty on Quantum, Liberty and just recently Serenade and never had a problem. Our embarkation on Serenade, which was the day you disembarked from your TA, went quite smoothly and we were on board by 11:30AM even though we were told by email that boarding would not commence until 1PM.

 

I have to agree with Patti about Cape Liberty. I have now disembarked 3 times from the new port. Just a bit of a wait time trying to get a porter for my luggage. Never any major problems.

Edited November 5, 2015 by Lady Hudson

[DPurcell58]

we were off the Quantum and home in 45 minutes last April.

[Slidell_Cruiser]

Thanks for the reply and I'm glad you guys had a great experience.

 

Maybe if I was in an ewrky departure group, our experience would be positive, unfortunately ours were not.

 

My wife and I now have over 6 hours of queues in Customs and taxi lines after finishing off in Cape Liberty on two cruises.

 

My experience.

[OfTheSeasCruiser]

Thanks for the reply and I'm glad you guys had a great experience.

 

Maybe if I was in an ewrky departure group, our experience would be positive, unfortunately ours were not.

 

My wife and I now have over 6 hours of queues in Customs and taxi lines after finishing off in Cape Liberty on two cruises.

 

My experience.

 

Again, that is because they were Transatlantic cruises. This will most likely not be the norm once Anthem begins her regular cruises from NJ.

[The Big Booper]

It's always bad getting off a TA from Europe. We had these issues at Miami and Port Everglades.

 

Patti explained it all and she knows more then the rest of us.

[conandrob240]

I might also suspect the fact that a terrorist bomb just likely downed a civilian passenger jet means heightened security coming into one of the most targeted cities in the world.

[Dall]

I've been reading a blog someone is doing who just did the transatlantic on the Anthem. His debark time was 7:00 a.m. Said by the time they got off the ship, found their luggage, went through customs and outside the terminal it took half an hour. Must have slowed down considerably after he got off.

Edited November 6, 2015 by Dall

[Turtles06]

I've been reading a blog someone is doing who just did the transatlantic on the Anthem. His debark time was 7:00 a.m. Said by the time they got off the ship, found their luggage, went through customs and outside the terminal it took half an hour. Must have slowed down considerably after he got off.

 

I was also on the TA. We had a disembark time of 8AM. Things seemed to be running smoothly from about 6:30-7:30, and then CBP closed the lines and no one could get off the ship. There wasn't another disembark number called for more than two hours, at a point when everyone should have been off the ship yet many thousands were still aboard.

 

Once off the ship, there was one single immigration line (unless you knew enough to use a porter), which snaked back and forth a zillion times.

 

It was absolutely horrible, and totally the fault of understaffing of the CBP desks as well as a stupidly inefficient system that had no separate lines for returning US citizens. (Once we finally reached an agent, it took less than a minute for him to scan our US passports, eyeball us, and welcome us back to the US.)

 

This situation is not unique to Cape Liberty. It could be prevented by better staffing and a more efficient set up, as well as the use of Global Entry at cruise ports. But all of that takes money and brains, which seem to be in limited supply.

 

I am always embarrassed for our country by a disembarkation like this.

[conandrob240]

My husband needs to go to work on our disembark day so I'll be sure to schedule an early time of 7am or so. Hopefully we won't have issues. So, porters use a different line from everyone else?

[Turtles06]

My husband needs to go to work on our disembark day so I'll be sure to schedule an early time of 7am or so. Hopefully we won't have issues. So, porters use a different line from everyone else?

 

Because you won't be on a TA, things should be operating a bit more smoothly, but yes, if you are in a time crunch, I would definitely get off as early as you can. (And we should have known better ourselves.)

 

Yup, in some cruise terminals, Cape Liberty being one (Manhattan is another), the porters get to take you to a different and generally much shorter immigration line. Well worth the money you should tip them.

[Mar56]

Because you won't be on a TA, things should be operating a bit more smoothly, but yes, if you are in a time crunch, I would definitely get off as early as you can. (And we should have known better ourselves.)

 

Yup, in some cruise terminals, Cape Liberty being one (Manhattan is another), the porters get to take you to a different and generally much shorter immigration line. Well worth the money you should tip them.

 

Will this work if you are non US citizen? We are Canadians

[conandrob240]

Because you won't be on a TA, things should be operating a bit more smoothly, but yes, if you are in a time crunch, I would definitely get off as early as you can. (And we should have known better ourselves.)

 

Yup, in some cruise terminals, Cape Liberty being one (Manhattan is another), the porters get to take you to a different and generally much shorter immigration line. Well worth the money you should tip them.

 

Good tip. We only live about 30 minutes away and he can be a little late so as long as we are out of there by 8:30 or so, we're good

[Turtles06]

Will this work if you are non US citizen? We are Canadians

 

Since the initial lines were not divided by US-citizens and non-US citizens, I think it would work. In fact, there were British citizens ahead of us in the porter line. (Once you got to the head of that line, a roving agent directed you to a specific CBP desk.) So I'd flag down a porter, and just check with him/her. But it would have worked on Wednesday.

[BlueSkiesTX]

In everyone's experience, if we self-disembark Anthem and use a porter, what is the average time it would take to move through customs/get the heck out of there? It's the June 2nd, 9 day sailing.

 

On our last sailing on Liberty in Galveston, disembarkation was a nightmare. We had a high number and didn't use the porters because we had easy luggage. We were fools! I would have gladly paid the porters to get us through that cattle call. Different port, different ship...but, I have learned my lesson.

[CruisingChick]

We have sailed out of Cape Liberty 14 times, starting back in 2007. I only remember one disaster and that was on Celebrity Silhouette. It took forever for us to get off the ship, don't know if it was a customs back log, or cruise ship back log.

 

In any event we just sailed on Liberty in October 22 - November 1 and we were off the ship at 8:30 AM and in our card driving home at 8:55 AM.