Time Required To Disembark??

[sevenseassailor]

I am trying to schedule flight Ft Lauderdale to DFW next year after the 2010 world cruise on Yoyager. Ship is docking at 6am. Am I safe to book 11:10 flight. FLL airport is close by and I am taking taxi. Normally, how fast do they get you off the Regent ships. We don't have any recent experience with Regent.

[Donaldm]

I would think that you will have no problem catching your 11:10 am flight from FLL. If you are concerned, ask the tour desk to put you in an early disembarkation group. They are very accomodating.

[Travelcat2]

I agree! On your disembarkation paperwork you can indicate the time of your flight. Regent will insure that you are off the ship in plenty of time to get there.

[Wendy The Wanderer]

You'll almost certainly be fine, although I know that Regent won't book a flight before about noon in FLL, I believe.

 

The only thing that would concern me is the fact that you will presumably have a fair whack of luggage. And of course, just because they dock at 6 a.m. does not mean that passengers will actually be cleared to debark at that time.

 

The thing that slows you down at FLL, in my experience, is the security lines--they can be very long and slow.

[DebbieH103]

The official and safer advice is noon. I have been more comfortable with 11:30 than I was 10:50, and last time when 10:50 was the choice, we picked 2:25. We could have made the 10:50, but there were not seats left. We enjoy a lovely breakfast after vacating our cabin and would never want to miss that. I agree that you ought to be alright, but there have been one or two cases I have read of here on CC where people were not cleared so early as usual.

[sevenseassailor]

Thanks Wendy. I knew you would chime in and I appreciate everyone's comments. I have faith and have held (not booked) the 11:10 flight. Have until Monday to change my mind. Next flight is 1:30pm. I think Regent will help us make the flight. Not sure how the luggage will work though. We will have the 270 lbs shipped free by Regent back to Dallas plus our luggage we will check with airline. I assume we have to take ALL of it thru Customs then it will be divided up as to Regent shipping and our airline checked stuff. Uncharted waters here!!

[dfb]

Yeah, the key here is you're arriving back in Ft. Lauderdale at the end of the WC! Our experience is that disembarkation takes a whole lot longer than a regular cruise or even the Circle South America cruise. First of all customs clearance is a nightmare. They know that nearly everyone on that ship has been onboard and out of the USA for 4 months or so and has more than $800 to declare. They want to go over each person's list with a fine tooth comb, even if you just want to declare thousands and pay the fees! Then after the agree to let you pay your fees and the amount, you have to go stand in an even longer line with only one employee, compared to the 4-6 taking declarations, to pay. No one can get off the ship until everyone has presented themselves to the US officials in the theater. (You know what that means, someone always sleeps in, thinking this does not apply to them.) Then, we had some kind of US inspections because it was the first time the ship had touched US soil in months and no one could leave until the inspectors cleared us. On our WC, the first passengers did not disembark until 9:30am. We had actually docked the previous night at about 10pm due to a medical emergency. Then, if you are shipping luggage home, the way it worked that year was that you had to go out and identify it with the rest of your luggage, get porters to take it to the luggage shipping truck and you had to accompany it and sign off on its delivery to the truck before you could take the rest of your luggage and leave the port. So, I don't think it is feasible to think that you can make an 11:10am flight. In our example of past experience above, if you got off the ship at 9:30am and didn't have a long wait or problems identifying, collecting and moving your luggage and no wait to check it in with the luggage shipping truck, you'd still be really pushing it to get to the airport and through security in time.

Debbie

[sevenseassailor]

Thanks Debbie, I think I will take your advice and go for the 1:30p flight just to be safe. Glad I had just "held" earlier flight so can change it now.

Rick