Disembarking was a nightmare, and caused us to miss our flight...a 10:00 flight with docking that morning at 5, and it usually only takes us an hour or so after that time to haul our own stuff and get to the airport 20 minutes away. This time was the worst disembarkation we have ever had. We have sailed with RCCL14 times prior to this.
Embarkation
5 out of 5
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
3 out of 5
The food was good, not great. Nothing to write home about. The Windjammer was predictable, but good. Main dining seems more limited than usual and the fish dishes were generally overdone.
Onboard Activities
3 out of 5
Entertainment
4 out of 5
Service and Staff
5 out of 5
Most excellent folks working for Royal!
Ship Quality
4 out of 5
Cabin / Stateroom
5 out of 5
Limited view from balcony, but not sold that way. We loved it because we had wet Scuba gear at each port and a place to dry it. Room itself was larger than regular balcony room, so the trade off was to our favor.
Zero Stars! Royal needs to figure this step out and perhaps separate the people Needing to get off to catch a flight from those just wanting off early. Disembarking from this cruise took well over an hour. This meant standing with all our stuff waiting for customs to clear the ship. We were one of the first in line before the designated time for self departure.
2 weeks earlier, it took less than 1 hour from ship cabin to airport gate. I was freaking out after waking up at 8. Made it through security by 9:30 for an 11:00am flight. Royal has embark/debark down to minutes. I feel bad but RC says do not book flights before 11am for a reason. TSA says plan to arrive 2 hours for domestic travel during peak travel periods.
We cruise out of Lauderdale very frequently. We were on the Carnival Magic last month and it took almost 3 hours to get off the ship. The issue 5 was that there were only 2 customs agents working and they couldn't handle the volume of passangers, so they kept contacting the shops crew to hold up on letting people off. Eventually more agents came in and the mess was resolved.
i would rather wait 8 hours than go through nightmare of missed flight
some hotels will store luggage for the day so you can go out and enjoy the
sights.
That flight it way to early. What if customs didnt approve your dock time or something out of your control. Earliest I've booked a flight is 4pm usually wait until next day. Hopefully yours all worked out.
I might add that I do not know why some want to hurry off ship and race to airport at end. We have breakfast and take our time deboarding and then have a casual lunch at airport before flight. Its vacation, why hurry?
Sounds like there must’ve been an issue with customs. We were on adventure of the seas last month and left our cabin at 6:30 AM with our bags and we’re through customs with no wait and at the airport by 7 AM. We were even able to change our 12:45 PM flight to a 10:00 AM flight and still had over a 90 minute wait at the gate.
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