Digital Debarkation- have you experienced it yet? Details, please

[Moonarino]

On 4/19/2024 at 6:25 AM, FredZiffle said:

Well, they won't be unloading our bags because we carry them with us.

Yes you can still do that. AFAIK, every ship still has that option. On our cruise 2 weeks ago the self-carry pax went first, earliest, starting at 7:30. They started calling the zones at 8-ish.

[Petey-Me]

We just disembarked on the Valor out of New Orleans (May 9, 2024) and everything went really quick. We choose to carry off our own luggage and choose a time slot of 8:40-9:00am. We went down to eat breakfast and returned back to our cabin around 8am to wait it out. Make sure you stay on airplane mode and on the carnival hub app to get any notifications! My husband didn't; he was checking his emails, and around 8:15am I got a notification to make our way down to the lobby/gangway. My husband didn't believe me until his connected back to the app and read the notification. We exited the room with our luggage to the middle set of elevators to the 3rd floor, which put us at the LIncoln Dining Room and not the lobby. When we noticed this, a kind women informed us that we can just go thru the dining room to the lobby, which we did. We exited the dining room and were about 8 cruisers from the exit door/check out podium. The line moved really quick and we were on our way to the gangway into the terminal. Once in the terminal the line never stopped and we breezed thru custom, even with our birth certificates. After customs, we proceeded to the parking garage. We exited the parking garage around 8:45am. So I took around 30mins from exiting the room to exiting the garage. 

[FredZiffle]

3 hours ago, Petey-Me said:

We just disembarked on the Valor out of New Orleans (May 9, 2024) and everything went really quick. We choose to carry off our own luggage and choose a time slot of 8:40-9:00am. We went down to eat breakfast and returned back to our cabin around 8am to wait it out. Make sure you stay on airplane mode and on the carnival hub app to get any notifications! My husband didn't; he was checking his emails, and around 8:15am I got a notification to make our way down to the lobby/gangway. My husband didn't believe me until his connected back to the app and read the notification. We exited the room with our luggage to the middle set of elevators to the 3rd floor, which put us at the LIncoln Dining Room and not the lobby. When we noticed this, a kind women informed us that we can just go thru the dining room to the lobby, which we did. We exited the dining room and were about 8 cruisers from the exit door/check out podium. The line moved really quick and we were on our way to the gangway into the terminal. Once in the terminal the line never stopped and we breezed thru custom, even with our birth certificates. After customs, we proceeded to the parking garage. We exited the parking garage around 8:45am. So I took around 30mins from exiting the room to exiting the garage. 

Well, we're now two days away from our cruise, and I still haven't heard from anyone who DIDN"T select a debarkation time and just walked off with their luggage when they happened to be ready.  On every ship we've been on in the past, this was no problem.  I'm hoping the same holds true with Carnival.

[DukeASUGirl]

On 4/25/2024 at 3:50 PM, Moonarino said:

Yes you can still do that. AFAIK, every ship still has that option. On our cruise 2 weeks ago the self-carry pax went first, earliest, starting at 7:30. They started calling the zones at 8-ish.

What if you want to self-carry, but don't want to go at 7:30 am? Can you express disembark at whatever time you prefer?

[jemrtt]

We chose express debarkation on our 4-day Radiance cruise. (I added screen shots below.) On day two, we choose the last time slot available, which was 9:20-9:40 am.
The ship was cleared, the Cruise director began calling for ALL guests carrying all their own luggage to leave at 6:49 am! 😳 We really did not want to join to the lines so early, so we had breakfast in the stateroom.
The CD called for luggage tags 1-10 at 8:00 am, and at 8:25 he called luggage tags 11-20. By this point we left the room and waited in public areas on deck five. There were very few people waiting with us.

 

At 9:05 he made the “last and final call” for all guests. At that time we took a slow stroll, down to deck three. It was one of the most chill debarkations we ever experienced. However, with that said, he never once called a group letter. We were assigned group N as you can see in the screenshots. 🤭

 

If you are looking at the timestamps, it did not take me that long to make a selection. 😁 I was actually taking my time to get the screen shots and type my notes, so that I could report back here in this thread. 

 

 

[FredZiffle]

We did self-debarkation today on the Sunshine.  We signed up for a specific time since they said if you didn't, you'd be assigned the last time slot, and we knew we wanted to get off a bit earlier than that.  Turns out, it did not matter at all.  No one checked, no one cared.  You get in line and walk off just like every other cruise line, so don't stress about it.

[kew1031]

back from our May 4th Jubilee cruise. We selected our debarkation time on the Hub the second or third day. Checked two bags, selected 9:30-10:00 debarkation time. Our luggage tags were delivered by our room steward Friday about 6pm. He told us to have our bags outside the door by 10pm.

Saturday morning, we packed up the rest of our stuff and headed down to Deck 8 forward shortly before 8:30am. Debarkation went very smoothly; they were using two gangways, forward and mid, to get us off the ship faster. We were sent to the forward gangway and were down to the luggage pickup area very quickly. We only waited for a porter for maybe a minute. Using a porter to get you out of the terminal and to your shuttle pickup spot is absolutely the best way to get out of there fast. He took the bags we were carrying, hustled to our luggage zone, picked up those bags and took us through the passport line, out through the crowds on the walkway, and to the shuttle pickup area. I think we were in our car by 10:45 or so. Fastest, easiest debark I can recall. The drive back to Dallas was, thankfully, uneventful. (unlike the drive down. different story for a different post!)

[jsglow]

On 5/9/2024 at 9:30 PM, DukeASUGirl said:

What if you want to self-carry, but don't want to go at 7:30 am? Can you express disembark at whatever time you prefer?

Yes. You can still select any 20 minute slot you want; early, middle or late.

[Mike45LC]

Too much fuss over this!

 

We did "Digitial Disbarkation" in Long Beach a couple of weeks ago.  It is NOTHING.

 

We do not self-abuse.  (I know that is not what Carnival calls it, when a passenger wants to struggle with his/her own baggage -- what a way to end a vacation!)  We have our luggage delivered pierside and then have a porter take the baggage to wherever I am going to load it into my transportation.

 

Instead of going to a stand filled with colored and numbered luggage tags, and taking whichever color/number you want, we did it on the Hub.  Then, someone (cabin steward, probably) left the appropriate baggage tags outside our door.  So instead of grabbing the tags myself, the tags were seamlessly left by my door.

 

No biggie.  Nothing to get excited about.  

 

Actually, there were tags left three different times, different numbers each time.  I used the lowest number, and when I was ready to leave, I simply said "suite priority" and was waved through.  I did not have a plane to catch, so I took my own sweet time.

 

[CookieShip]

Experienced this for the first time on my recent Venezia cruise and didn't know about it beforehand. Towards the end the cruise, the app will begin bugging you to select a debarkation window/method. The nag doesn't seem to stop even after you make your selection though. You can choose it for everyone in your party (like when you check in for dining), which might not be the best option if your cabins are not close together. 

My parents were cruising with us but were on a different deck. I wasn't sure if they would deliver all to me or split the tags between our cabins. I was stressing as I saw some folks getting tags in their mailboxes earlier (likely the priorities, but I didn't know at the time). I eventually received our tags, they were all delivered to my room and I needed to deliver the set to my parents. The tags did not come until about 6PM on the last evening. 

Not expecting all this, I wasn't exactly sure how things were going to go the morning of. Without the announcements of the different #, I couldn't tell exactly when our # would be called. The app had an estimated time, but no idea if it was updated/accurate. My parents (non English speakers/readers) kept asking when we could go, not understanding we had to wait for the app to tell us. I also had to keep checking the app as I wasn't sure if it was going to give a real notification (like how dining the notifications don't always notify right away/delayed a while).

 

Think my parents badgering just made it all more stressful, but I think things ultimately went fine. If it were just my fiancé and I, we would of both been chill about it since we had booked a rather late train. We had plenty of time, getting off the ship faster did nothing for us as we would just need to wait at the Amtrak station.