With our early arrival at Ft. Lauderdale last night, we had a quiet and smooth night’s sleep tied up to the pier. We were the only ship in port when we arrived last night at around 11:30 PM, but by morning, there were 6 additional ships berthed at the port. We were not sure if this would impact our departure, but were to find out later just how many people were trying to get home from their respective ships.
I was up at about 6:30 AM and went to get some coffee and a light snack before waking up Stephanie. Stephanie was still feeling the effects of her head cold this morning, but seemed to be a little better. We had to gather up the last of our belongings and be out of the room sometime near 8:00 AM, which was the time requested in our disembarkation instructions. They want everyone out of the rooms so that the cabin stewards could prepare the cabins for the next cruise leaving later in the afternoon. The Ruby Princess will be doing 4/5 Day Caribbean Cruises for the next few months.
We went up to the buffet for some breakfast, and as is typical for disembarkation day, it was already really crowded. After we finished our last meal for this cruise, we headed to the upper decks to look at all of the ships in port. Apparently, there have been some pier improvements since the last time we sailed out of Ft. Lauderdale, there seemed to be more spaces for ships than we had ever seen before. There were two Celebrity ships in port, one Canaveral ship, another Princess ship, the Crown Princess, the Westendam from Holland America, and the giant Royal Caribbean Oasis of the Seas. That is a lot of folks to disembark, all within the same 3-4 hour period.
Trying to comply with the request to vacate the cabins near 8:00 AM, we headed back to gather up the last of our gear, and pack it into the one remaining carry on suitcase we still had in our possession. Somehow, on every trip, even though we had fully packed the checked bags to their 50 pound limit, we still seemed to have more “stuff” than when we started. The carry-on was now bulging at the seams, even though it had not been that full when we started this trip. Of course, we were not wearing our heavier Keene shoes, going for the comfort of running shoes for the journey home, so there was some of the weight gain in the checked baggage. Also, we were taking home two small bottles of Limoncello, with some additional space and weight due to the glass bottles.
However, we persevered and got everything packed, knowing that once we got off of the ship, we would need to transfer all of the toiletries to the larger suitcases for airport TSA security compliance.
Our scheduled disembarkation time was 9:40 AM, and our flight departure time from the Ft. Lauderdale Airport was 2:10 PM, plenty of time to make it to the airport without being in a rush.
We headed to find a spot to wait, and ended up in the Explorer’s lounge since it was almost empty. We did not realize that this was also a holding area, but for disembarkation time slots later than the time when we arrived there. We stayed for a while, and the ships staff started making announcements that they were running behind schedule with the entire disembarkation. Initially, it was about 20 minutes, then 30, then 40, then about 50 minutes of delay. We had a copy of all of the departure times for the various ticket colors that passengers had been assigned, ours was Brown 3, scheduled to be leaving from the Michelangelo Dining Room at 9:40 AM.
Since we were not really in the proper holding area, we headed to the Michelangelo Dining Room, just in time to see a large group being called for departure, and when comparing the actual time to their scheduled time, that time slot was about 40 minutes later than scheduled. We went in and sat down, realizing that the word for today would be PATIENCE. We met another couple while sitting in the room, and found out that they had purchased 4 bottles of duty free liquor from the ship. We were discussing the Custom’s limits, and I think I made them nervous, they were under the impression that as long as they were under their $800.00 per person allotment for total purchases, they were fine with their four bottles of booze. However, the rule is one liter of alcohol per person, and they were not going to be able to hide anything, it was in a white Princess liquor box to carry off. Hope they made it without incident……
Stephanie I discussed the disembarkation process, now realizing that we should just always do the early walk-off option in the morning, it usually goes quickly, and we were starting to get concerned about our time frame to get to our flight. It was my belief that the delays were being caused by the larger than normal number of non-US passengers having to go through immigration and customs. There were a lot of passengers from outside the US on this cruise since it was a transatlantic cruise that departed from Europe, not the typical Caribbean Cruise with mostly US passengers.
When our Brown 3 color was finally called, we headed off of the ship for the last time, and went into the terminal to collect our large suitcases that we had put out for collection last night They were in the designated “Brown” section inside the building, and after finding them, we headed to go through Customs and Immigration. We had a bit of a wait in line for immigration, but it was moving right along. The same could not be said for the very, very long non-US citizen immigration line, it was creeping along, and this certainly proved my hypothesis, there were a lot of non-US passengers to process, and there were not that many lines open for them to use.
It took us about 20 minutes to get to the Customs Officer, and after a couple of questions about liquor, and what appeared to be a quick check on his computer screen to check our names for on board purchase records from the ship, we were through without incident.
We headed outside to make the changes to our bags, and perform one more weigh in once everything was inside. My suitcase weight was 50.3 pounds, and Stephanie’s suitcase weighed in at about 49.5 pounds, close enough. If we did run into an issue, we could move a couple of items around to get them to both meet the weight requirement once they were on the airline scales.
We headed off to catch a taxi, and proceeded to go around the corner of a building to the taxi area where we found another long line to wait in for our taxi to the airport. The line for the taxis was being fed from two directions, one side was for the Celebrity ship passengers getting off at the dock adjacent to ours, and one side was for the Princess ship passengers. There seemed to be a lot of chaos even though there was police officer keeping the taxis moving, and not letting them park for long periods. There were buses going by, cars from passengers dropping off luggage for the next cruises, shuttle buses from the hotels picking up and dropping off passengers, it was a mess. Earlier in the morning we watched some of the walk off passengers departing, and there were no lines for taxis, and certainly not the chaos we were seeing now at about 11:30 AM.
After another 20 minute wait, we finally got into a taxi for the ride to the airport. It took us about 15 minutes, and we were dropped off at the Delta flight departure terminal.
Heading inside to get our boarding passes, we got in line for a Kiosk, and needed either the confirmation number, credit card used for ticket purchase, or passport scan to find the reservation. Luckily, Stephanie had her credit card, it was one we were not using much, so I did not have mine readily available. We paid our first ever $25.00 per bag luggage fee for each of the two checked bags, and up onto the scales they went. Both read 51 pounds, but the lady processing the luggage tags did not say anything about excessive weight, so we did not make any adjustments.
Once that was complete, we headed to the TSA security line, and had another lesson using our favorite word for the day, PATIENCE. There was a mob of people flying out on Delta from all of the ships in port today, and there were not many security screening machines. Another 20-30 minutes of waiting, getting half undressed for processing through the metal detectors, “no belts, no shoes, nothing in your pockets, no drinks…..” and we were through that line. By now, it was about 12:30 PM, so what we thought would be plenty of time, even possibly an early arrival at the airport to see if we could fly standby on an earlier flight to Atlanta, turned out to be just slightly early for arriving at the gate for our normal flight.
We were able to gate check our carry on bag since the flight was full, so at least we were not going to have to fight for extra overhead bin space on any of the flights, it was checked through to our final destination in South Carolina.
We were delayed departing about 40 minuted due to some weather issued in Atlanta that had delayed the inbound flight, which was the same plane being used for our return flight to Atlanta. We grabbed some lunch, and while we were in line, ran into Barb and Mike. Their flight to Halifax was delayed a little also, so they were still there waiting, and we got to chat with them a few minutes before they headed to their gate. They were going home to some heavy snow, which was then supposed to turn into rain/freezing rain, hard to think about when it was about 83 degrees in Ft. Lauderdale. We wished them well, and for safe travels home.
We boarded our plane in another bout of chaos, the girl at the gate seemed to have gotten flustered, they were trying to get the plane turned around in a hurry for our flight so they would minimize the delays to passengers with tight connections in Atlanta. First, we were just going to board form the back of the plane to the front, she indicated this was “different”, although it seemed the same to us, normal Zone boarding. Then there was an issue with first class not being ready so they would be delayed in boarding, not first on as is the norm. They she made a vague announcement about boarding from the back of the plane, only to come back on the loud speaker and inform passengers that rows in the 20’s were not on the back of the plane, but she had not announced any specific rows for boarding. Then she said only first class, so everyone was mumbling about the confusing instructions. Finally, another attendant announces specific rows, and since we were near the back of the plane, we were able to board. Part of the issue was the number of Europeans on the flight, they do not typically board flights in any order in Europe, no zones or row, just first come first served, so they were all crowding around the gate, not realizing the boarding here would be either by zones and/or rows.
We were able to acquire enough overhead bin space for our two remaining bags, and sat down to enjoy the flight, with our headsets in hand, and TV screens in the seat backs. We had the window and middle seats. The third passenger for our row’s aisle seat showed up, obviously having been on a cruise. She was older, and quite large, large enough to require a seat belt extension, which she was unable to figure out how to use, even though she had asked for it. After all that had gone on today so far, I had planned on having an adult beverage on the plane and we had refilled our mini bottles for the trip home, placing them in our quart size liquids bag. However, I realized this was not going to happen, it was going to be too hard to use the restroom on this flight, which would require our large seatmate to get up to let me out, and she had had difficulty just getting down into the seat, not so much due to overall size, she just trouble standing and sitting due to her weight.
We took off about 50 minutes later overall, and the flight was scheduled to be 1 hour and 29 minutes to Atlanta. For some reason, they did not even start beverage service for a long while, it was not turbulent, they just seemed slow. However, since they started at the front of the economy section, they were only about 1/3 of the way towards us when we ran into some turbulence, and the captain told the flight attendants to stop any service and sit down. That put an end to any thought of having a beverage, they never were able to complete the beverage service on this flight.
When we finally landed in Atlanta, we were on the end gate of Terminal B. Apparently there were 23 passengers on the plane needing to make a connection to Salt Lake City in about 10 minutes, and their plane was at a gate in Terminal E, about as far as you can be apart in the Atlanta Airport. The airline was apparently holding the flight for that many passengers, so we were asked to remain seated to try and let them out first, which did not work well since they were spread out all over our flight. We did wait since we still had over an hour of remaining layover time, even though we were late arriving on this flight. We had to go to the opposite end of the D terminal for our connecting flight, so we had quite a walk ourselves.
Once we got to the gate for the connecting flight, we were told we were waiting on the crew to arrive and that boarding would be delayed. Then they changed our gate, but it was only a short walk to the new location, where we once again waited for the flight crew to arrive. We were flying on a small regional jet, so I had to gate check my camera bag, and Stephanie’s backpack just barely fit in the overhead bin. We felt sorry for the man in front of us, he had the window, but then another extremely large man came to sit in the aisle seat next to him. This large man also required a seat belt extension, and needed the flight attendant to help him put his bags in the overhead bins. The seats are already small on the regional planes, and it did not look comfortable for the window seat passenger, he did not get his entitled allotment of space. Luckily, the flight was short, and we actually left on time and arrived on time.
We collected our luggage at baggage claim, happy that it had all made it safely, although our luggage was some of the last to come out onto the belt, and we were getting nervous after our troubles on the flight to Barcelona. We made a call to mom who was waiting in the car holding area, and we went outside to get picked up.
We were glad to finally be home, it seemed like the total travel today was longer than the flight overseas was at the beginning of the trip.
It was another good vacation, but we were ready to sleep in our own bed, and have a little more space.