NCL transfer

[PugM0m]

I have a question I hope someone can help with. Our September cruise ends in NY. We purchased BOGO airfare thru NCL, we are flying out of Newark(EWR). Can anyone who has ever done the BOGO/transfer, tell me how the transfer times work? I am assuming they probably only have one transfer from the port to each airport,  how early they do the transfers?

thank you for any help.

[BirdTravels]

15 minutes ago, PugM0m said:

I have a question I hope someone can help with. Our September cruise ends in NY. We purchased BOGO airfare thru NCL, we are flying out of Newark(EWR). Can anyone who has ever done the BOGO/transfer, tell me how the transfer times work? I am assuming they probably only have one transfer from the port to each airport,  how early they do the transfers?

thank you for any help.

They will run dozens of buses to each of the airports. As each bus fills, it leaves for the airport. Each bus holds about 50ish people and there are 4500 passengers on your ship (granted that most will be finding their own way out of the port). 

[PugM0m]

1 minute ago, BirdTravels said:

They will run dozens of buses to each of the airports. As each bus fills, it leaves for the airport. Each bus holds about 50ish people and there are 4500 passengers on your ship (granted that most will be finding their own way out of the port). 

So is it a free for all and everyone just gets off at will and tries squeeze onto a bus going to their airport, or do they give you disembarkation times depending on when your flight leaves? I am trying to decide if we are going to be spending a few hours at the airport or 5-6 hours hanging out. Thank you for the information. This is our first NCL cruise and on all of our past RCCL cruises I have arranged our transport privately. 

[Asawi]

You will get luggage tags indicating your debark time, followed by transfer. Usually there has been 2 times, depending on flight departure (early or late)
As @BirdTravels says there will be lots of buses. Hopefully there will be someone pointing you the correct bus when you exit the terminal.

[Asawi]

3 minutes ago, PugM0m said:

So is it a free for all and everyone just gets off at will and tries squeeze onto a bus going to their airport, or do they give you disembarkation times depending on when your flight leaves? 

I have only debarked in NY once, but when I did they did check the luggage tag color when filling up the bus(es). I think both to make sure you got the right airport and to make sure those with the early time actually got seats on the early buses and not have those seats taken up by people that had time to wait.

[debenson0723]

I have only done an NCL transer once but it went very smooth. As mentioned above, you will get luggage tags indicating what time to get off, you follow the instructions for disembarkation and there will be a bus waiting. You didn't mention what time your flight was but you will probably be to the airport around 10-11am depending on traffic. 

[brer111]

We have done the transfer from ship to airport many times. As BirdTravels stated, they have many buses waiting to take people to the airport. That being said they usually assign tags for early busses for earlier flights and other tags for busses for the later flights. This helps to keep the busses going smoothly.  

[PugM0m]

Thank you everyone, this is exactly the information I needed. 😄 Our flight leaves at 1:10pm and I was trying to figure out how long we would be waiting in the airport. If we arrive sometime between 10-11 that will be the normal 2ish hour wait, so not bad.

[julig22]

34 minutes ago, BirdTravels said:

They will run dozens of buses to each of the airports. As each bus fills, it leaves for the airport. Each bus holds about 50ish people and there are 4500 passengers on your ship (granted that most will be finding their own way out of the port). 

Dozens of busses -not always! When I disembarked in NY, they cancelled the post-cruise excursion to the airport for lack of interest. When I tried to book the bus transfer, I was told there wasn't one, also for lack of interest. GM got involved and they eventually found a bus - for all 2 of us!

But this was right before Christmas, not long after the restart. Majority of the passengers were apparently local or planning to spend Christmas in NY.