British passport us immigration FOS

Hi all - it will be our first cruise ex port canaveral to Caribbean in September. We are British passport holders so how does immigration work for us when we get off the ship at the end of the cruise? Obviously we will be flying in couple of days before so will go trough us immigration at the airport but what happens when we get off the ship? Read lots of confusing reports on the web and some shocking posts about people getting off at 7am and being in a line for two hours??!! Can anyone shed some light for a non-us passport holder??! Thanks

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First, because you do land on an American Airport, and you are British, you do need an ESTA travel authorization. I'm living in the Netherlands, so I do need it to. You can find more here: http://www.cbp.gov/travel/international-visitors/esta

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Hi all - it will be our first cruise ex port canaveral to Caribbean in September. We are British passport holders so how does immigration work for us when we get off the ship at the end of the cruise? Obviously we will be flying in couple of days before so will go trough us immigration at the airport but what happens when we get off the ship? Read lots of confusing reports on the web and some shocking posts about people getting off at 7am and being in a line for two hours??!! Can anyone shed some light for a non-us passport holder??! Thanks

 

 

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You will have to go through Immigration again upon returning to the US. This can be on debarkation day, or earlier if you hit a US port before the debarkation port.

How Immigration for non-US passportholders is conducted can vary from ship to ship.

I´ve had the procedure onboard, before the ship was cleared and all non-US passportholders had to rreport to Immigration before anyone was allowed off and I had it happen in the terminal Building.

My worst case was an Arrival into San Diego some years ago where we had to Report to Immigration onboard at 4:00am - no kidding!!!!

The best experiences have been when a cruiseline had paid for Immigration officers to sail with us and the Immigration process was done during the last sea day onboard. (Wasn´t RCI though).

Hi all - it will be our first cruise ex port canaveral to Caribbean in September. We are British passport holders so how does immigration work for us when we get off the ship at the end of the cruise? Obviously we will be flying in couple of days before so will go trough us immigration at the airport but what happens when we get off the ship? Read lots of confusing reports on the web and some shocking posts about people getting off at 7am and being in a line for two hours??!! Can anyone shed some light for a non-us passport holder??! Thanks

 

 

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The two hour Q is not always the case. We had the privilege of being asked by the wonderful US Homeland Security, and US Customs/Immigration to Q standing in the heat for three hours, only to be greeted by a series obnoxious dullards? Then held seated in a "pen" for another hour while the dullards laughed and joked, awaiting the order to "release" us. A total waste of a day. :eek:

And this was for our last US B2B, and the experience ensured this was our last US fly cruise

This was in Miami, but our US friends asked us not to equate this saga as being the normal USA welcome, because Miami is not actually part of the USA.

We wish you luck.

Please apply for your ESTAS on the official UK Goverment Website ($12.00), otherwise an "Agent" site will change £50/60.00 for doing nothing. Do print off your ESTA and hold safe with your passport, as you will be asked to present it.