Constellation Translatlantic - Two Immigration Questions Please

[CruisinGerman]

Hi, fellow cruisers:

 

My wife and I will be on the Transatlantic Constellation April 28. Can someone who has done this route please help me out with a few logistics questions about immigration I have not been able to get Celebrity to answer:

 

1. Embarkation day in New Jersey. We have to attend a half-day meeting in Manhattan and will be going to the ship afterwards. We will definitely make it with no problem, although we cannot get there hours before departure as we would have liked.

 

So that we can time everything correctly and not miss the ship, we would like to know if, once we arrive at the cruise terminal, whether you have to go through some sort of official immigration, customs or passport control with government officials in order to leave the U.S. and board the ship, or whether the only formality is checking in with Celebrity personnel and then boarding the ship immediately. When we arrive at U.S. airports, sometimes the immigration lines are hours and hours, so we need to know if there is official U.S. immigration (and therefore long lines) to leave the country before boarding a cruise ship, or whether it is just check-in with the Celebrity staff.

 

2. Do you surrender your passports upon boarding, or do they just register the information and leave them with you to hold? Our only legal form of identification are our German passports, and we are afraid that if we have to surrender them, we will be walking around Le Havre/Paris without any identification. Unlike the U.S., in Europe it is illegal to walk the street without carrying identification. In Europe, we also carry identity cards, but we left those at home before coming to the U.S.

 

3. In Le Havre, we want to tell a private tour company what time to meet us to take us to Paris. So I would like to know if when we reach Le Havre, do we just walk right off the ship, through the terminal, and onto the street, or is there an immigration process, in which we will have to stand in line for hours to get our passports stamped before being allowed onto the street to meet our tour? What time do experienced cruisers think we should tell the tour company to meet us? (I would invite other cruisers to partake in our private transportation and tour to Paris, except we are arranging a German driver and guide, so I don't think that would interest most of you.)

 

I'm sorry if my questions sound stupid (I am German so I am probably overly anal-retentive when it comes down to time schedules and logistics), but maybe someone who's been on that transatlantic route recently would be kind enough to help me.

 

I also look forward to meeting all of our fellow travelers during the trip.

 

Danke,

 

Gunther and Uta

[ocngypz]

As far as embarkation is concerned, these is a separate line for non US citizens for Immigration control. I've never seen a line.

 

As far as holding your German passports, I cannot comment.

[nu2sea]

Gunther,

 

Here is the link to the last page (as of now) of our roll call for this cruise:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=6364290#post6364290

 

Although I don't know the answer to your question about LeHarve, a lot of the roll call members have taken this cruise before and someone should be able to tell you.

 

Even if they can't, it's a fun roll call anyway!

 

Hope to see you on board,

Susan

[CruisinGerman]

thank you to both of you so far for responding. susan it will be nice to meet you on board. i'm going to go through the roll call list and see if we can all meet everybody.

 

i do hope someone has the answer to my questions, especially the one about Le Havre.

 

Thank you all again.

 

Gunther

[nu2sea]

thank you to both of you so far for responding. susan it will be nice to meet you on board. i'm going to go through the roll call list and see if we can all meet everybody.

 

i do hope someone has the answer to my questions, especially the one about Le Havre.

 

Thank you all again.

 

Gunther

 

You're more than welcome to read through the roll call, but I should warn you that there are close to 1500 messages on it (:eek: ), so you may not get all of the way through until the cruise is over!!!!:D

 

Susan

[Hebe]

In LeHarve, you will walk directly off the ship and will be about 50 feet from the gate where you can meet private tours. My experience in the 3 times we went into that port has been no immigration.

 

Our experience has been that you keep your passport in Connie TA ports. I would suggest that you always make color copies or your passport anyway and carry those for IDs.

[swan705ca]

I am British but travel on a Canadian passport, a number of cruises ago we always had to leave our passports with the purser when we checked in at the cruise pier. The last 4 cruises we have had them returned to us after inspection at check in. In August of last year I was on the Golden Princess Tansatlantic cruise, one of our ports was Le Havre and it was the normal show your room card ID when you got at ports but they suggested that you also had a photo ID (I always have a coloured photo copy of my passport in my wallet). On the Star Princess in March (we were on The Star the week before the fire) the security staff at the gangway asked if you had a photo ID and even suggested that you go back to your cabin to get it before you left the ship. I hope this information will help you.

[Jim_Iain]

Departing you will not have any more clearance than you would for any other cruise. If you are traveling on a U.S. passport you show your passport on registration and take it with you. If you are traveling on a non-US passport you have to surrender your passport and they return it to you later.

 

If you are arriving later in the afernoon of sailing there will probably be virtually no lines.

 

In Le Havre the ship docs at a commercial harbor which is in the middle of nowhere. Celebrity has a shuttle into the town of Le Havre. Most tour operators pick up right outside the fence that surrounds the dock. When we visited Le Havre we were arriving from Amsterdam. Since both locations are in the EC there were no customs formalities.

[CruisinGerman]

thanks to everyone for their words of clarification. you've helped me far more than the customer service people at celebrity.

 

i look forward to meeting everybody on the ship.

 

sounds to me that it is the cruise staff that handles check-in, passport verification, etc. and then you board the ship.

 

i just wanted to make sure that we didn't have to wait in an endless immigration line staffed by immigration officials (as we had to do at JFK last week to enter the U.S.). That is an unpleasant enough experience and I just wanted to make sure that we don't have to live through the same thing again before we board the Constellation, since as I mentioned before, we will probably be getting to the ship just a few hours before it sails.

 

Danke again to everybody.

[rienreiter]

Gunther:

 

You should be OK. Think of checking in at the pier about the same as checking in for an international flight. They would check your documents during the check-in process and you proceed to boarding. However, I do not know about whether or not they will keep your passport or if they will give it back to you immediately.

 

As far as Le Havre, of the european cruises that I have been on, none have had a passport control check to debark the ship. You just walk off the ship and you're there.

 

Hope this helps.