Optimum time to arrive at Pier

[SueOverend]

We will be sailing on our first HAL cruise on the Westerdam later in the year and are wondering what is the ideal time to arrive at the Terminal to minimise the wait time. We are booked in an S Suite. We have to return a car to Hertz and then get their transport to the pier. We are from England and have never sailed out of Fort Lauderdale before and would just like some advice.

Thanks to you all.

Sue

[Charliesmom]

Generally, if you arrive about 1:00 pm, most of the early crush is over. However, if there have been problems with immigration clearing the ship from the previous cruise or if the previous cruise has been late arriving because of weather, this won't work.

As an S Suite passenger, once you get through the security line you will be in a separate line for suites, which last year when we were on the Westerdam, was right near the end of the security line.

Roberta

[nansi]

We just finished a Rotterdam cruise and arrived at 1pm....we didn't want to arrive earlier because we were told the state rooms wouldn't be ready much before that time and we didn't feel like lugging our carry-on stuff all over the ship while waiting. 1pm was perfect....no lines at all and our stateroom was ready.
Nancy

[SueOverend]

Thanks everybody. We might just try and hang on until 1.00 pm. Difficult to gauge though as we have to return our car to Hertz and am not sure how long it will take and how long we will have to wait for them to transport us to the Pier.
Sue

[Greenwhite]

We just got back from the 3/12 cruise on the Oosterdam. Due to our hotel checkout time we went to the ship shortly after noon. It was a mess and a zoo. I would strongly suggest that you wait until after 1:00 at the very earliest. We thought we would try to wait until about 2:00 next time. It looked to us as though the rush was all done by then--and in addition your cabin will be ready.

[cheric]

We recently returned from a cruise out of Norfolk. We dropped our luggage off at the ship around 1:00. By the time we parked and got back to the pier it was around 1:30 and there were no lines at all. We went straight to our stateroom and our luggage was there when we got there.