Early departure on HAL?

[kay1864]

Does HAL offer this option? Any idea what the guidelines are? I know on RCL, coming into San Juan PR at 7a, with a 10a plane ticket, we got early departure. We were off the boat by 730, went through customs, and with a 20 minute cab ride we made the plane easily.

But PR is US soil. With our cruise coming into Vancouver at 7a, we're still faced with customs at the Vancouver pier, an hour trip to the airport, plus the requirement to be in the airport customs line an hour before departure time (and that's after standing in the ticket line to check our bags and documentation). :eek:

Any idea what the cutoff is to qualify for early departure? 4 hours? 5 hours?

[swalm22]

The best you can do is apply on board at the reception, explane your situation.

[fann1sh]

If you're U.S. citizens, you may qualify for U.S. Direct. This involves taking the ship's own airport transfer:

http://www.portmetrovancouver.com/about/cruiseandtourism/usdirectprocess.aspx

There have been glitches this summer, and the Alaska Ports of Call board have threads about this. As of when posting this, no one has yet responded to this thread:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1012018 (http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1012018&highlight=direct)

Another option would be to self disembark (carry your own bags rather than putting them outside your door the last night). My first cruise from Vancouver is in a few weeks, so have never done this at this port.

[Loves to dance]

Does HAL offer this option? Any idea what the guidelines are? I know on RCL, coming into San Juan PR at 7a, with a 10a plane ticket, we got early departure. We were off the boat by 730, went through customs, and with a 20 minute cab ride we made the plane easily.

But PR is US soil. With our cruise coming into Vancouver at 7a, we're still faced with customs at the Vancouver pier, an hour trip to the airport, plus the requirement to be in the airport customs line an hour before departure time (and that's after standing in the ticket line to check our bags and documentation). :eek:

Any idea what the cutoff is to qualify for early departure? 4 hours? 5 hours?

We went through Vancouver on June 14th and I will warn you that security at the Vancouver airport is a complete zoo! It took us over 2 hours to go through check in, immigration, and security that day. The bulk of that time was spent in a security line. One of the big problems was that they did not have enough of the gray bins- only 6 or so bins for each line. Of course that meant that people repeatedly had to wait for empty bins to be brought back to the beginning of the table, so they could get their belongings ready to go through the x-ray machine. This definitely slowed things down. In addition, there was an orange alert, which meant that the process was slowed down yet more. It was a reminder that you just can't predict what will slow you down, particularly if you are going through an airport that is new to you...

[PatsyAnne]

When I read the title of this thread, my mind immediately went to the steamer trunks in "Joe Versus the Volcano" but, of course, it would cost too much to get the trunks on the airplane. Trish
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