Getting on and off cruise ships

This is from an e-mail I sent my sister explaining the embarcation/debarcation rituals (mostly the latter) associated with cruising. Thought it might be generally useful.

Cruise times work something like this:

The ship will leave Sunday evening, but you should be able to start the boarding process (you thought airlines were a pain!) around noon. Anticipate lines. Do your paperwork online before leaving home, and bring copies with you. Wear comfortable shoes. Bring a book.

The crowds fluctuate, and the earlier you can be at the port, the better. If you get there at the exact right moment (you'll need a crystal ball to nail it exactly), you will breeze through with no waiting. It's really not all that bad, though - at least, it hasn't been for us, yet. And once you've handed in your paperwork and provided the all important credit card number for onboard charges, you'll be herded into the final waiting area and boarded by groups. Then, it's generally a matter of working your way through one last incomprehensible maze and you'll be greeted by the photography staff, ready to provide you with the first of many pictures that prove you really did go on a cruise. And then they let you get on the ship.

On the following Sunday, the ship will be in port docked just about at dawn. Two options exist for getting off: let them deal with the luggage, or drag it off yourself.

Let them deal with the luggage:

Depending on the poshness of your final cabin, and earliness of airline reservations (if Carnival knows about it), you will be allotted leaving groups, and you will get luggage tags to fill out. Everything except minor carryons gets packed, locked, and tagged by midnight Saturday (I think), and overnight the stewards will come and make all the bags vanish (you leave them in the corridors). Then, on Sunday morning, you gather with your group somewhere on the ship (auditorium, casino, lounge X, etc) and wait for them to call your tag color. At that point, you file off the ship, go through customs and immigration, and are shepherded to a barn where all the bags from the ship are laid out. This is where strategic tagging or luggage selection becomes important. Everyone in the US has a black, wheeled, carryon. If you bring yours, and you have a black luggage tag on it, you will be spending quality time in the barn finding which one's yours. On the other hand, if I'd held on to my hot pink Samsonite set from college graduation and used it, I could be out of there in about 15 seconds. So bring non-black luggage, and invest in the fluorescent (go with the ugly color - everyone has heard this tip too) nametags for each one. Once you have your bags, you're golden, and can get moving toward home. It will be before noon, but you shouldn't plan on flying out early-early on Sunday.

Drag it off yourself:

We did this last year on Princess, and Carnival has it too. You will still group/assemble somewhere, but you are responsible for dragging your own stuff off, and I think the customs/immigration process is a bit longer while they make sure you haven't brought back half of Mexico's liquor output for the year or something. Anyway, since you have everything with you, you don't get to visit the barn-o-luggage, and you can stick with basic black. On the other hand, since you have everything with you, juggling all of it can be a tad challenging. When we did it, we actually did some weird re-packing to allow us to stuff one entire suitcase into another, so we didn't have more than 2 per person. This option probably gets you off earlier than you might otherwise, especially if you don't have urgent flight issues or didn't stay in the "CEO sup er-deluxe VIP suite".