Disembarkation - Is it always so awful?

[marktwothousand]

Sounds pretty typical to me. If you have to make a flight, then you should leave your luggage out overnight for terminal pick-up. It does take a little pre-organization to pack for the morning, but it’s worth the stress not having to carry a heavy bag.

 

And, If you’re worried about being on time to pick up your bags, don’t be, they will still be in the terminal for you waiting if you’re a little late getting off.

 

The only time I use self-assist is if I do NOT have a flight to make. I usually get off the ship by 9:30 and the self assist crowds are usually long gone by then. 

[ChiefMateJRK]

1 hour ago, Greenpea2 said:

Then again, I have never done self-assist. Sounds like that doesn't work too well!

Isn't the only difference how much luggage you have with you?  I have one free wheeling suitcase and a backpack.  It really doesn't make any difference, except perhaps how much space I need on the elevator.  Sometimes, a suitcase buffer is a good thing!

[bigrednole]

11 hours ago, bbstx said:

Self-Assist started at 7 a.m. IIRC.  NCL suggested that you arrive at 7:30, which is exactly what we did.  The only reason we “self-assisted” was because we had a 6 hour drive ahead of us.  Six hours is that awkward time that is too short to fly, but makes for a long-ish drive home.  

Thank you. We did self-assist on CCL and it was extremely efficient. 7AM or 7:30AM is no issue for us. We just had our flights moved up 15 minutes. It leaves at 10:45AM. As long as we can get off by 8:30-9:00AM we should be ok. We have TSA Pre-check.

[ontheweb]

Our story of the worst disembarkation ever (not on NCL). It was a Western Caribbean cruise starting and ending in Fort Lauderdale. And then there was a hurricane. Instead of the Sunday of Labor Day Weekend, we were getting to the port 2 days later. (2 free days of cruising was nice!)

 

Everyone who had a flight naturally now needed to take the earliest time to disembark in order to get to the airport and make new arrangements. So pretty much everyone changed to the first color tag for getting off the ship. The lounge was full. And then they called the next color, and the lounge got to the point where it was so crowded that you could not breathe! Finally, there was an announcement, and we all hoped that it was the process would begin. Instead, it was now is the last time you can buy pictures. And when disembarkation finally started, it was very slow as there were IIRC 6 ships in port and not enough immigration officials.

 

And the airport was of course another terrible experience. We got standby, and luckily made the next flight. As we saw the numbers called, we saw that at worst we would be the first on the following flight. We did while on the line for Delta hear people who got not get flights until the next day scream at the service representatives as if they were the cause of their problem.

 

 

[MoCruiseFan]

19 hours ago, SeaShark said:

 

No, not at all.

 

The whole point of self assist is that NCL recognizes that people are in a big hurry and don't want to wait. So those people will willingly drag their own luggage all over the ship just to get off first. The more people who take off their own luggage, the less NCL employees have to spend time gathering it up and staging it, and the less NCL has to pay dock workers to take it from the ship to the terminal. 

 

It does NOTHING to speed up the process.

 

 

Quite a few ASSumptions in your retort.  Taking self assist does not mean someone wants to be first off the ship any more than any other passengers, it merely means they do not want to deal with the hassle of tracking down their luggage lined up in rows in a warehouse after they do get off the ship.  We do self assist all the time, we go take enjoy a leisurely breakfast, and wait for the cattle call to process.  Once those who want to fight to be first off the ship have gone their merry way, we proceed easily through the process.  The process is indeed sped up by not having to deal with the luggage issue.  We breeze right past the hoard looking for the last piece of luggage and breeze through customs.  BTW we do not drag our luggage anywhere.  It is left in our cabin until we proceed to debark.  Another ASSumption that fails.

[SeaShark]

32 minutes ago, MoCruiseFan said:

 

 

Quite a few ASSumptions in your retort.  Taking self assist does not mean someone wants to be first off the ship any more than any other passengers, it merely means they do not want to deal with the hassle of tracking down their luggage lined up in rows in a warehouse after they do get off the ship.  We do self assist all the time, we go take enjoy a leisurely breakfast, and wait for the cattle call to process.  Once those who want to fight to be first off the ship have gone their merry way, we proceed easily through the process.  The process is indeed sped up by not having to deal with the luggage issue.  We breeze right past the hoard looking for the last piece of luggage and breeze through customs.  BTW we do not drag our luggage anywhere.  It is left in our cabin until we proceed to debark.  Another ASSumption that fails.

 

Cute, but try being truthful.

 

If you "do self assist all the time", then you can't comment on the luggage tag process, because you don't experience it. And what makes you think finding your luggage is a hassle? Is that what you assume?

 

How can you "breeze right past the hoard looking for the last piece of luggage", given that the self assist all leave BEFORE those who will be part of the assumed hoard?

 

 

BTW...read before you post. Things like "we go take enjoy a" will get you a Ron White mention.

 

[davencl]

1 hour ago, MoCruiseFan said:

 

 

Quite a few ASSumptions in your retort.  Taking self assist does not mean someone wants to be first off the ship any more than any other passengers, it merely means they do not want to deal with the hassle of tracking down their luggage lined up in rows in a warehouse after they do get off the ship.  We do self assist all the time, we go take enjoy a leisurely breakfast, and wait for the cattle call to process.  Once those who want to fight to be first off the ship have gone their merry way, we proceed easily through the process.  The process is indeed sped up by not having to deal with the luggage issue.  We breeze right past the hoard looking for the last piece of luggage and breeze through customs.  BTW we do not drag our luggage anywhere.  It is left in our cabin until we proceed to debark.  Another ASSumption that fails.

Your experience matches ours.  Yes it's great to walk pass the hoards of people waiting to just get into the luggage area.  Never mind looking for luggage.   We were off in 20 minutes max...

[KeithJenner]

We use self assist all the time and have rarely had a problem.

 

In my experience, there are two types of disembarkation. In US ports it is all out always a mess, caused by the queues to get through immigration, which usually back all the way through the ship.

 

In Europe you just walk off when you are ready. I have cruised many times in Europe and have never seen a queue on disembarkation day. Maybe there is one very early due to people who have been waiting for disembarkation to start, but as there is no immigration there is nothing to back up. I am talking about cruises that start and finish in Europe, I know it is different for transatlantic, for example.

 

Basically, the queues originate in the port. If there aren't any there then there are no queues onboard. I do think that NCL could probably do a better job when there are queues though.

 

We do self assist despite rarely being in a rush. We do it so we don't have to put our bags out the night before. Much easier to keep all your stuff with you.

[mrshorsy]

20 hours ago, bbstx said:

Self-Assist started at 7 a.m. IIRC.  NCL suggested that you arrive at 7:30, which is exactly what we did.  The only reason we “self-assisted” was because we had a 6 hour drive ahead of us.  Six hours is that awkward time that is too short to fly, but makes for a long-ish drive home.  

 

That was sort of my feeling too.  It is simply a way for NCL to skimp on services

Six hours would have me on a plane in a heart beat! I think thats maybe the difference between uk and us roads !!

[mrshorsy]

Covid Tests willing we sail on the Gem next week.

We have 4 days in New York at the end of the cruise so I intend to sit and have breakfast and a few glasses of Bucks Fizz until they kick us off !!!

[mrbucky]

On 3/25/2022 at 10:40 AM, wolft927 said:

I will say one of the reasons I try to get a Haven Suite is for this reason. Meet in the Haven Lounge at 7:30, concierge takes you down crew elevator and you are off the ship in 5 minutes. 

On a recent cruise we were in the Haven.  The entire Haven lounge was full of passengers.  We were led out in groups as the behind the scene elevator would only handle about twelve at a time.  After several trips, our turn came.  Unfortunately the announcement came that the next category was released.  As we got to the deck to disembark, there was a sea of people in front of us.  It would have been quicker to not utilize the Haven escort.

[The Traveling Man]

Whenever possible, we try either to get a late afternoon flight home or to spend an extra night in the departure city.  We enjoy a late breakfast, go back to our room to finish packing, wait for the crowds to thin out, then exit the ship among the last group disembarking.  It's much less stressful than fighting the crowds.  On a couple of occasions, of course, we needed to get home sooner or we weren't able to book a late flight, so we had to join the crowd and make our way through the "ship's tour" line around O'Sheehan's, the atrium, etc., walk the gangplank, then wait again before terminal personnel would let us pass through customs.  The worst wait we ever had was exiting the Breakaway in NYC.  It was almost two hours from the time we left our stateroom until we were on the street and able to hail a cab.  Usually, though, it's a breeze when we time it to avoid the crowds.

[AtlantaCruiser72]

The bottleneck ALWAYS starts and ends with CBP staffing - often times at busy ports they have very few agents on duty before 8am, because, well they can get away with it or agents show up late, or call out sick..... the list goes on.  And even when they have more than 3-4 agents on hand some choose to move as slow as dried mortar in processing people, because well again, they can get away with it.  Once CBP backs up they stop letting passengers off the ship and into the terminal, so then the on-ship lines start piling up and whammo you have a disembarkation nightmare.  Can happen on any cruise line, any ship, any port, any time.  This why I always book a mid-day flight, relax over breakfast then head out after the early crush of passengers regardless of whether picking up bags in terminal or carrying them off.

[KeithJenner]

13 minutes ago, AtlantaCruiser72 said:

Can happen on any cruise line, any ship, any port, any time.

Things can obviously happen at any port (terrorist threats etc), but you can be very confident that it isn't going to happen at lots of ports.

[RocketMan275]

3 hours ago, mrbucky said:

On a recent cruise we were in the Haven.  The entire Haven lounge was full of passengers.  We were led out in groups as the behind the scene elevator would only handle about twelve at a time.  After several trips, our turn came.  Unfortunately the announcement came that the next category was released.  As we got to the deck to disembark, there was a sea of people in front of us.  It would have been quicker to not utilize the Haven escort.

We were also in the Haven and our departure was smooth as silk.  We did self-debark so we had all our luggage with us.  We parked across the street from the terminal.  From the time we left the Haven until we had four people and their luggage in the car was less than 20 minutes.