charleston parking procedure

A two part question--- First has the parking procedure in Charleston gotten any better over the last year --when we were there in March of last year it took almost two hours to get on the ship from the time we entered the parking lot to board the ship--- it was a nightmare and it seemed like many of the staff had no idea what to do ---We had pre-paid for parking but that did not seem to speed up the process--any comments would be great!!!!! Also we have 11:30-12:00 boarding time What happens if parking takes to long and we get to the terminal after 12----- Is there an early/late line they make you get into as I have heard some other ports have_____ We are leaving on feb 16 and would like a smooth embarkation-----Thanks for any comments and smooth cruising to all

I'm taking a group out of Charleston April 4, and have the same questions as you! How did things go? Is it worth it to prepay for parking? I'll have 7 cars there.

we sailed in dec from Charleston and being platinum we planned on being there and parked say as soon as the lot opened

which in theory might have worked OK BUT ....

we got there pretty much on timeish and got to go right into the lot AS IF they were going to let us park

generally anytime we have gotten there early and they didn't want to park peeps they'd just turn you around and tell you to go park on the street or come back at a certain time

so, we rode right in - no prob or so we thought......

now that might have worked normally but we'll never know because what happened was a us coast guard snap inspection OR a tsa inspection or health dept or some thing, possibly a customs inspection or all of these!!!!

so after we got in the line pretty easily we sat a while, then after about 30 minutes they processed our payments and stuck all the little stickers all over the cars and told us there was the holdups of the inspections so they also routed us back out of the parking lot line!!!!!

told us to park on the streets till the ship was cleared and that they'd come and find us on the streets to go ahead and park

so the short story is everyone rushed out in the lines they were in and parked all over the place as close as they could to the parking lots entrance and maybe 25 minutes later they did ride out in a police car and motion anyone in before moving on to other streets

from there they could see our paid stickers and bypass the normal line to let us thru to luggage dropoff and then to the warehouse and everything was as normal as it gets in Charleston which is generally messed up!

;p

as far as getting there late? I really can't see that it would matter, dang place is crazy anyway

just get there early and if you get told to come back in 30 minutes or an hour just do what we do come back after riding around the block twice!:)

We sailed 2 weeks ago. Pre-paid parking and the process was much faster than our previous cruise. 10 minutes at the most from gate to parked.