Bad disembarkation on Navigator in Galveston today

We sailed out of Houston on Princess this past March. It was the best port we have disembarked from. Princess and NCL are not renewing their contract so the port will be empty. I don't understand why RCI doesn't look at this as an option to Galveston. Galveston is always a mess. Houston was a dream. I guess it's location is the drawback and no hotels etc near it.

We also found Galveston prices much cheaper. Our Liberty cruise next year in a grand suite is $3,000 cheaper than the same room on Freedom for the same week out of Florida.

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I'm thinking we will pack our little portable travel stool. It will come in handy during debarkation. We can trade off sitting in the chairs, as we have done this before at other ports. But the one in line needs to sit, too. Especially if it might be 2+ hours in line.

I hate hearing this, and I think it's on RCI even though they like to point their finger at customs. I've cruised out of Galveston 12 times on three different cruise lines, and Royal Caribbean is the only one where we've had a bad disembarkation. We've had two that were bad, and they were an absolute disaster! I've been to Belize on other cruise lines and from other ports, and it never took me any longer to disembark than it did when Belize wasn't on the itinerary. At some point, Royal Caribbean needs to accept ownership of the problem and take steps to correct it.

In my opinion, they need to capacity control the self-assist, assign/call numbers for that as well as regular disembark, and then follow the schedule/order they've put in place even if there's a delay. It's just beyond my comprehension why they think it's OK to cram thousands of people into a glorified warehouse with inadequate restroom facilities and no access to food or water and have them stand there for 2 or 3 hours!:mad:

Royal Caribbean also seems to struggle in Galveston when a ship is new there. That's one of the reasons we decided to switch to Princess in December, and give Royal Caribbean a few months to get things figured out with the Liberty.

We sailed out of Houston on Princess this past March. It was the best port we have disembarked from. Princess and NCL are not renewing their contract so the port will be empty. I don't understand why RCI doesn't look at this as an option to Galveston. Galveston is always a mess. Houston was a dream. I guess it's location is the drawback and no hotels etc near it.

I have to agree that the Port of Houston was awesome. Unfortunately, the fog issues that plague Galveston in the winter are even worse in Houston because it's so much further up the channel. We had to high tail it back to port on the Friday to beat the fog. We arrived in Houston sometime around 1:00 a.m (I think - I was asleep). The bad part about that was they had to stop serving certain types of alcohol around 9 or 10 Friday evening because of the ridiculous Texas liquor laws.

Disembarkation was a breeze though. I think I was in my car driving home before 8:00 Saturday morning.

one thing i noticed was Navigator's staff's inability to correct a passenger if they were in the wrong. numerous times during our cruise last year were people line jumping (not joining their party, they jumped right in front of me and when I complained they did nothing). then there was the disregard for the self assist numbers. we were self assist and didn't even know it was called. when we got down to the bottom of the stairs, there was a person there and I asked if she needed to see our number. answer I got was no, we don't usually check those.

fortunately, the line was relatively short to disembark but we had to wait quite a bit at the alcohol line even though we didn't buy any on board (those greedy people wanted to charge me for a bottle of wine we BROUGHT with us but didn't drink).

I was on the same cruise as the OP. I was in group 2, one of the first groups called, because I had purchased a transfer. I left the ship at 8:30 when my number was called and wasn't through customs until 10:00. I got on a shuttle almost immediately, but the shuttle didn't leave until 10:45. We got to my terminal at IAH (the 2nd terminal they stopped at) at 12:30 and there was a group that only had 20 minutes to make their flight.

RCI's guidance was a 12:30 or later flight with the transfer, but that didn't work in this situation. Luckily I had a much later flight.

Not very happy with Royal at the moment. Had a relatively early flight (for Galveston from Hobby) but figured with the priority disembarkation I'm supposed to get as a D+ and we would be fine. And the flight was after the recommended time.

 

But customs had an issue that stopped disembarkation right before Group 4, the first of the Diamond Plus groups. When they allowed it to restart, instead of coming and telling us we could go, in an effort to clear the ship really fast, RCCL announced groups 1-10 (out of 20 - and that doesn't include the 6 self disembark groups) in the public areas but waited 15 minutes before coming and telling the Diamonds and Diamond Plus that were in the assigned waiting area that we could go.

 

As a result, instead of getting priority disembark we ended up behind over half the ship and it took 2.5 hours to get through customs - in an extremely hot and sweaty terminal. And we missed our flight home.

 

I understand about customs issues, but Royal made it 100 times worse by calling everyone at once, instead of sticking to the priority of groups that they assigned. This was the worst disembarkation I've ever experienced. My transatlantic was a breeze compared to this.

I know that this should not be new news to you as a Diamond Plus who has been on a bunch of cruises. There is ALWAYS the risk of delays with arriving in port, disembarking, customs, transportation, airport security, etc. Anyone who books an air flight the same day as arriving in port is taking that risk. Most times you can get away with the risk; this time you lost....

When flying, we always fly into the port the day before boarding and fly out the day after arriving back in port. The hotel cost is cheap compared to the hassle when the flight is missed due to delays.

Galveston is always a mess. Will never use it again. Last time it cost us $100 for a taxi because we missed the transfer. As D+ we waited in priority and the diamond concierge who was supposed to take us off never came. Eric had a additude all week. By the time we got off, customs was backed up 2 hours. We barely made our flight. I called the D+ desk and complained. Made them refund the transfers which they did.

So very sorry to hear the OP's travel nightmare. Shame on Royal for not communicating with their most valued Q&A members on a timely basis. We disembarked the Navigator this morning too. But, with self disembarkation and it was a breeze. We started departing the ship ahead of the scheduled start time of 7:30am. We were through US Customs, shuttled to parking and on our way home before 8:00am.

 

We have found self disembark to be a breeze and not any more difficult that wheeling your luggage through the airport. I highly recommend it for anyone with flight scheduled if at all possible for you to do.

Not to hijack this thread, but I'm reading a lot about self-disembark. We're sailing on Oct 18 on the Nav....we have a 9:45 shuttle that Sunday morning once we're off ship. Does self embark typically get you out the door earlier than the rest?

Galveston is always a mess. Will never use it again. Last time it cost us $100 for a taxi because we missed the transfer. As D+ we waited in priority and the diamond concierge who was supposed to take us off never came. Eric had a additude all week. By the time we got off, customs was backed up 2 hours. We barely made our flight. I called the D+ desk and complained. Made them refund the transfers which they did.

I disagree...Galveston is not ALWAYS a mess. Of 12 cruises from Galveston, disembarkation from 10 of them has been flawless. However, when things go wrong in Galveston they seem to go very wrong.

It irritates me that Royal Caribbean could do some things to help improve the situation but they choose not to. Just enforcing the procedures they already have in place would help a lot. As you can see from Theredofshaw's post above, they don't.

We also found Galveston prices much cheaper. Our Liberty cruise next year in a grand suite is $3,000 cheaper than the same room on Freedom for the same week out of Florida.

 

 

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Perhaps this says something about demand for cruises from Galveston.

Perhaps this says something about demand for cruises from Galveston.

Perhaps, but we personally loved our August 23rd cruise out of Galveston and weren't among those who had a problem with getting on or off the ship. I do understand that others had a problem so maybe we were just very fortunate.

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What do people do who are physically unable to stand in line for 2-3 hours? Not the wheelchair bound, but those who are elderly or weak. :(

Not to hijack this thread, but I'm reading a lot about self-disembark. We're sailing on Oct 18 on the Nav....we have a 9:45 shuttle that Sunday morning once we're off ship. Does self embark typically get you out the door earlier than the rest?

It's called Express Departure and yes it should get you off the ship earlier than others.

http://www.royalcaribbean.com/contentPage.do?pagename=getting_off_the_ship

Not very happy with Royal at the moment. Had a relatively early flight (for Galveston from Hobby) but figured with the priority disembarkation I'm supposed to get as a D+ and we would be fine. And the flight was after the recommended time.

 

But customs had an issue that stopped disembarkation right before Group 4, the first of the Diamond Plus groups. When they allowed it to restart, instead of coming and telling us we could go, in an effort to clear the ship really fast, RCCL announced groups 1-10 (out of 20 - and that doesn't include the 6 self disembark groups) in the public areas but waited 15 minutes before coming and telling the Diamonds and Diamond Plus that were in the assigned waiting area that we could go.

 

As a result, instead of getting priority disembark we ended up behind over half the ship and it took 2.5 hours to get through customs - in an extremely hot and sweaty terminal. And we missed our flight home.

 

I understand about customs issues, but Royal made it 100 times worse by calling everyone at once, instead of sticking to the priority of groups that they assigned. This was the worst disembarkation I've ever experienced. My transatlantic was a breeze compared to this.

That really sucks!! We were on your cruise and did self assist and at 7:30am and out of the terminal at 8:20am and seen the line up really stalling behind us! We had a 12:00 flight out of Bush so we had a private driver pick us up at Starbucks across the street for 9am. Thankfully he was right on time and got us to the airport for 10am. I wasn't taking any chances but to do self assist with that tight of a time line.

I'm probably exactly the "why people" you're imagining, so I can shed some light on my own situation at least... I'm going out on the Navigator on the 13th because:

* I fly a lot on points, and Houston is incredibly easy compared to Miami/FLL/MCO from here in Canada which are basically booked out a year in advance. So it's WAY cheaper, even after factoring in the extra $100 or so in taxis/transfers versus what they'd cost in FLL/MIA.

* My wife an I found the eastern carribean stops available that week out of FLL/MIA/MCO not to our liking, so we actually found what you called "mundane" to be "new and more interesting" to us. Basically I think we have opposite definitions of "mundane".

* A Voyager class ship is exactly our level of liking. "Newest" is not our thing.

* I don't know if I was just lucky, or if it was timing but the price of our balcony on Navigator was 2/3rds what the ships going out of FLL/MIA that same week were, with lots of bonuses and OBC tacked on too.

* My wife has never been to Texas. We've been to Florida too many times to count. It will be a refreshing change and we're looking forward to spending a day or two in advance catching some highlights.

* I do agree about IAH, I'm a bit nervous about that given these recent threads, but as I say -- when you think of the incremental costs and time versus the FLL/MIA ports compared to the savings and (for us, I get not everyone) different stops than what we've had before -- we're totally OK with that.

Thank you for your response ... very interesting point of view. You're in a distinct minority, but whatever works .... Enjoy your cruise.

Not very happy with Royal at the moment. Had a relatively early flight (for Galveston from Hobby) but figured with the priority disembarkation I'm supposed to get as a D+ and we would be fine. And the flight was after the recommended time.

 

But customs had an issue that stopped disembarkation right before Group 4, the first of the Diamond Plus groups. When they allowed it to restart, instead of coming and telling us we could go, in an effort to clear the ship really fast, RCCL announced groups 1-10 (out of 20 - and that doesn't include the 6 self disembark groups) in the public areas but waited 15 minutes before coming and telling the Diamonds and Diamond Plus that were in the assigned waiting area that we could go.

 

As a result, instead of getting priority disembark we ended up behind over half the ship and it took 2.5 hours to get through customs - in an extremely hot and sweaty terminal. And we missed our flight home.

 

I understand about customs issues, but Royal made it 100 times worse by calling everyone at once, instead of sticking to the priority of groups that they assigned. This was the worst disembarkation I've ever experienced. My transatlantic was a breeze compared to this.

We were also in the d plus lounge and started to be concerned. We had a 1:40 IIAHflight and knew we had to disembark, shuttle to parking lot to get rental car, drive to Iah, get gas within 10 miles of airport, return car, take shuttle to airport, check in baggage, get thru security, grab lunch, fly home. PIECE OF CAKE? Wrong...expressed our concern to RC rep and she said d plus would be quickest but if we wanted to, go forward and leave with self embarked group. Got forward and everyone inline. We're told they had called 1-10 numbers about ten minutes earlier. Went back to d plus lounge, found rep and we left with suites.

Got to terminal and have never seen such a line in 27 cruises. Told terminal rep we were concerned, passed us ahead, I think she knew we had earlier number than majority of the passengers, got in porter line,$, took shuttel that should not have been carrying luggage, on the road at 10:45. Sped down interstate, tried to get gas but could not find Manuel or gas door unlock, can laugh now,...

Got to gate right at boarding time, no lunch, $$$extra gas bill, but did get to use airport bathroom instead of plane's. :)

Made it home okay but our reservation for Galveston 2016 on the serious rejection table.

We were in the first group off yesterday with self-assist which began around 7:15 or 7:20am. Even though we were the first people at one of the immigration desks, we had to stand there and wait about 20 minutes until the officer was instructed in a work-around for his computer which was not responding when he tried to process our passports. After many re-boots which didn't help, someone came over and told him how to overcome the problem. Almost every desk had the same situation although some were less bad than others. Obviously, when it took so long for them to find a work-around, the line was backing up and it snowballed from there.

It really was awful. We were supposed to get an RC transfer at 9:45, we didn't get out of Customs until after 11:00, so over two hours after we entered the line. It did not move at times for a long time, it seemed. They put us on the 11:30 transfer. I was paranoid and book a 3:44pm flight from IAH and I'm glad I did. We could actually breath. There were people front of me that had flights at noon or earlier who were pretty doomed.

To compare it to our experience flying into Vancouver that evening, there were as many, if not more, customs agents working to handle a few flights, self serve machines to take the brunt of it. We were through Canadian Customs in a minute, two at most.

I think Galveston has staffing problem just to add to everything else. Ten agents to deal with over 3000 people? Who thought that was going to go smoothly?

Not to hijack this thread, but I'm reading a lot about self-disembark. We're sailing on Oct 18 on the Nav....we have a 9:45 shuttle that Sunday morning once we're off ship. Does self embark typically get you out the door earlier than the rest?

My cousins were in the first self disembark group (there were 6) and didn't make it to their shuttle until 9:30.

What do people do who are physically unable to stand in line for 2-3 hours? Not the wheelchair bound, but those who are elderly or weak. :(

Well my aunt was physically swaying on her feet. When we were all crammed into the steamy hot gangway the pregnant lady in front of me sat on the floor when she almost fainted.

I could barely walk through the airport today as a result of yesterday.

The biggest problem was that instead of letting us wait on the ship, they just flooded the terminal with all of us and made us the problem of customs. I would've rather waited extra at the beginning of the cruise than gone through what we did at the end. Flooding the terminal with passengers made it even worse.

We were also in the d plus lounge and started to be concerned. We had a 1:40 IIAHflight and knew we had to disembark, shuttle to parking lot to get rental car, drive to Iah, get gas within 10 miles of airport, return car, take shuttle to airport, check in baggage, get thru security, grab lunch, fly home. PIECE OF CAKE? Wrong...expressed our concern to RC rep and she said d plus would be quickest but if we wanted to, go forward and leave with self embarked group. Got forward and everyone inline. We're told they had called 1-10 numbers about ten minutes earlier. Went back to d plus lounge, found rep and we left with suites.

 

Got to terminal and have never seen such a line in 27 cruises. Told terminal rep we were concerned, passed us ahead, I think she knew we had earlier number than majority of the passengers, got in porter line,$, took shuttel that should not have been carrying luggage, on the road at 10:45. Sped down interstate, tried to get gas but could not find Manuel or gas door unlock, can laugh now,...

 

Got to gate right at boarding time, no lunch, $$$extra gas bill, but did get to use airport bathroom instead of plane's. :)

 

Made it home okay but our reservation for Galveston 2016 on the serious rejection table.

Lucky you about getting passed ahead. Everyone we asked just blew us off completely. We didn't get out of customs until 11:20. At that point the line was still stretching out of the luggage room.

Galveston has always been notoriously bad for disembarking passengers. It's worse now with Texas and their new grab for money (taxes) on liquor and tobacco. so much for duty free shopping! Thanks to all my fellow cruiser's and their experiences in Galveston, I will never sail from there!

Funny, we have gone through customs with several bottles in liquor boxes from the ship and have never been taxed....don't smoke though...so there is duty free shopping. Just a limit on how much liquor you bring in duty free.

And its not new......

We had the transfer to Hobby. We were in group #2. We walked off the ship at 8:15. It was a mess finding our bags. We cleared customs at 10:00 am. The delay seemed to be clearing customs. The agent looked at our passports, verified our names and then had to wait on a prompt from the computer before giving us back our passports and releasing us. There were ten lanes with custom agents. We got to the airport before noon. We had a 4:40 flight, but had to wait till 12:40 to check in. (TSA will not allow you to check in earlier than 4 hours ahead of time) We sat and had before checking in.

I guess I always plan on the worst case. I book a later flight incase of delays. Yep I spent the day at the airport but I didn't miss a flight and along with an added delay in St. Louis we made it home to MN by 11:30 PM.

Lots could be done better by Royal and CustomsWe are at the mercy of Customs in the time it takes to get through the process. Just the same as getting through TSA at the airport.

It does seem to go quicker in Port Canaveral and FLL.

JoeRum