We are planning to disembark the cruise by taking our own luggage to try and save time and get off as early as possible. The itinerary for our cruise calls out debarkation time to be 7:30 am. Is this fairly accurate? We are hiring Happy Limo to take us from Port Canaveral to Pop Century in the hopes it’s a little faster than the Disney transportation, but I am unsure what time to tell them to pick us up. I originally asked for them to be there at 7:45 am, but now I am thinking that is too early for us to clear customs and am thinking of pushing the pickup back to 8 or 8:15. We are just trying to maximize our park time after the cruise. Thanks for any advice any of you can give!
I have this same question and it looks like no one responded originally. We will have small children so are hoping to have the porters take our luggage the night before. What time can we expect to have our luggage back in the morning after we disembark?
Cannot speak to DCL specifically, but I know that with cruise ships in general, the time guests are allowed to begin disembarkation depends largely upon when the ship clears customs. This usually happens on time, but any delays in the port can delay that time.
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I can’t speak to an exact time, but here was our experience a few weeks ago-
We did not have everything packed by 10:30 the night before for the porters to pick up, so we handled our own luggage the next morning, which was fine and really no hassle. If you want breakfast, the Cabanas buffet was open (we were on the Dream), but you also had the option of going to your last rotational restaurant as well where you got to see your servers one last time. If you had the early dinner seating, your assigned breakfast time was 6:45 AM; the later dinner seating had breakfast at 8:00 AM. We were not in a huge rush to leave the ship and wanted to sleep in a bit, so this was fine for us (we had late dinners too).
You also had to be out of your stateroom by 8:00, so we just took our bags with us to the Royal Palace, left them by the host stand as others had done, and went to our table. We were probably finished by 8:45 or so, retrieved our bags, and then joined the line to disembark. We first cleared the ship checkpoint and then joined the customs line. It was down there, in the terminal “basement,” where we would have retrieved our bags, had we sent them with the porters the night before. This was also the longest line and wait, but there were two queues and they moved pretty quickly given the number of people in them. Customs was a breeze- just had to show our passports and confirm we weren’t returning with any contraband, and we were on our way.
I’d estimate that we were in our car by 10:00 and at AKL for our Sana’a reservation by 11:00. This was our first cruise ever, so I don’t know if the folks who ate breakfast at 6:45 would have had the same elapsed time as we did, just shifted an hour and a half earlier, or not. I’m sure those who didn’t eat at all made it through much quicker. We weren’t in any hurry to have our vacation end so having a leisurely meal was great!
Here is the debarkation procedure info sheet that was left in our room on our last night-
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This is great info and the photo especially is why Liners rule!
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I saved a bunch of stuff and keep starting posts in my head, but need to find the time to actually write one! When end of school year stuff calms down, I will.
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Thanks! This is very helpful! I am going on the Dream in 78 days and this is very helpful! I have been so tempted to change our early dining to late- I believe I could do this , but then I change my mind again.
We booked fairly late, so the later seating was our only option. (I suppose we could have tried to switch once onboard, but we decided to keep it.) We were initially hesitant, but we figured if the kids got hungry, there were plenty of snack options to tide them over. We saw the show each night, had a little time afterwards to shop or do a Midship Detective adventure, and then headed to dinner. It worked out well- and once we saw we didn’t have to be ready to leave by 6:45 AM, we were definitely glad to have the later seating! We’d do it again!
What’s your cruise itinerary/how many nights? We only did three (since it was our first ever, we weren’t sure how everyone would do), and it was too short!
We are doing a 4 night. I did a 7 night on RCL last year on the Anthem and I am looking forward to comparing the two ships, especially since the Anthem does have broadway style entertainment.
Edited to add: we had late dining on the Anthem and we found that by the time we finished eating on some nights we were too tired to spend much time on adult night time activities. I know early dining is usually more families with children but I think I will keep it.
Yeah, we weren’t too concerned with adult-only activities this time around, especially since our days were so jam packed anyway. I’m curious about RCL as well!
We loved RCL! I am definitely a person that needs a ship with posts of activities and the iFly and escape room were two activities I loved.
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