There are two ways to insure you get off in enough time; “Early-off tags” for your luggage or “Self-Disembarkation”.
“Early-off tags”
The normal disembarkation procedure is to set your luggage outside of your cabin before Midnight, the night before you get off the ship. You will have been given a certain color luggage tag for your “color group” on the ship. In the morning, after the ship has been cleared by US Customs, they start calling color groups one by one. When your group is called, you proceed to the gangway, off the ship and into a big warehouse-like room to find your luggage, arranged by color group. After you have found your luggage you proceed off through Customs and you are on your way.
Early off tags allow you to be in the first color group off the ship after it has been cleared for disembarkation. You will gather in a predetermined area of the ship and once it has been cleared you will be in the first color group off. You get these tags by visiting the Pursers Desk sometime before the last day. If you are going to go this way I suggest dropping by the Pursers desk sometime early in the cruise. The Pursers desk is centrally located in the lobby of the ship. You will pass by many times just in the course of going from place to place within the ship. I suggest stopping by whenever you happen to be in the area and there is no line. To qualify for early off tags your flight must leave before 1PM so you surely do qualify.
“Self-Disembarkation”
This is the easiest and simplest way. If you can carry all your luggage off the ship yourself, as soon as they announce that the ship has been cleared for disembarkation, off you go. This saves you time in two ways. You get to leave before the first color group; you are the first off the ship. You also don’t have to wade through the warehouse full of luggage, hunting for yours. Check with the Pursers Desk on this too, a phone call will do, because if they have a lot of people wanting to do this they may set them up in “waves” to avoid congestion at the gangway. This is the way we do it every time. I recommend this way if you can do it but with baby in tow that might not be possible. Think about it though because it really is the best way to do it. Very painless. In fact, you can gather in an area just short of the gangway and wait for them to say its ok to leave and be off even earlier,
I mention that only because your timing is tight. The ship gets back at 7am but on a normal day they won’t start letting people off the ship until 8 or 830am. If Customs, the Coast Guard or Immigration hold the ship for a full inspection, you might not get off until Noon. That rarely happens but it does happen so it’s wise to check your airlines flight schedule to see when later flights in the day are in case you miss yours. Armed with complete flight information you can call your airline from the ship, explain your situation and arrange to be on a later flight out if needed. It probably won’t be. You’ll probably get off and get to the airport in plenty of time but you’re wise to be thinking about this now. You can maximize your chances of getting from the ship to the departure gate for your flight on time by doing a few things will help:
Check-in and print boarding information/cards for your flights the night before. You can do this online in the ships Internet Café. It’s a good idea to do this as far ahead as the airline will let you because sometimes (often enough to mention) the unattended printer in the Internet Café is either out of paper or having stubborn technology issues.
If you are setting out your luggage the night before to be claimed on the morning of disembarkation, grab a porter when you get to the warehouse to help you with your luggage. They will help you find it and expedite leaving the terminal as there is a special line for guests with porters handling their luggage that is way shorter. You just have to identify your luggage, point it out the the porter and they will take it from there. Tip $1-$2 per bag.
Take a cab to the airport. You do NOT want to take the cruise line transfers, they are way too slow and could blow the whole plan
Check your luggage at curbside with a generous tip, say $20. I’ve never lost luggage and I think that is why.
Bring liquids with you. When you leave your cabin, regardless of which way you go, bring bottled water. You may not have a chance to stop for some until you are in the departure lounge at the airport.
Variables you can’t control so don’t worry about it:
What time you actually walk off the ship. There is just so much you can do. Customs ultimately decides when the process begins
Traffic between the pier and the airport. Finding a cab is easy, there will be a whole line of them waiting after you claim your luggage and make it out of the terminal.
If you get caught in a traffic jam that’s going to make you miss your flight just be glad you thought ahead and have back-up flight information so you can talk to the airline intelligently about what your options are.
