Is booking an 9:50 AM flight on Debarkation day an option?

[Vincent]

Greetings,

I have booked a 4 night cruise for my wife and I on Mariner of the seas for Jan 24th next year, and have the option to book a return flight home on Southwest Airlines, leaving Orlando (MCO) at 9:50 AM. My questions are if we purchase "The Key", it states that you get choice departure on debarkation day, so would this help get us through the wait to disembark quicker than normal? Are current wait times to disembark longer due to COVID? Is this departure time even an option? Otherwise we are looking at a much later and longer flight (We are using travel funds through Southwest that are set to expire, so SW is our only option for flying).

We have booked a balcony view, and the ship is scheduled to arrive at Port Canaveral at 7 AM. We are US citizens, will have all required docs.

We've done similar flights pre-COVID, however it was not at Port Canaveral or on RC.

Thanks in advance!

[Matt]

9:50am flight is way too early. I wouldnt book anything earlier than 11am

[smokeybandit]

You'd pretty much have to be first off the ship to make that flight.

[Rollo]

I would try that flight time out of Fort Lauderdale but not out of Orlando. Travel time between port and airport is too long 

[Oliver]

I wouldn’t do it. 

[Jkaczano]

No way. Between the drive time to the port and Orlando airport's notoriously long security lines, 11AM would be my hard cut-off, preferably not before noon.  

[PPPJJ-GCVAB]

I would not take that chance…like everyone else has said it’s risky to book flights before noon.

[Ampurp85]

That is a hard no. MCO is one of the worst airports and then add in a short staff. We had a noon flight and just barely made it, nothing to do with disembarkment. We were off the ship fast, made it to MCO pretty fast. Lines were crazy, several people had already missed early flights and they weren't coming from a cruise ship.

[VACruiser]

Orlando is a terribly busy airport. Even if you got there on time the notoriously long security lines can be your downfall. 

[JasonOasis]

Before my last cruise which set sail on October 30 and returned on November 6th I would have said go for it.  Even though Symphony of the Seas arrived back at PortMiami around 4am they did not open the doors until 7am, which was a bit shocking to me because I'm use to them opening the doors at 6am.  I booked a 9:45am departure out of MIA thinking the doors would still open at 6am because that is what was on all the documentation I had.  It wasn't until day 6 of the cruise when they started talking about arrival procedures that I realized Royal had changed the door open time to 7am.  In fact this was the first time I was made aware of the fact that door open time had been moved back 1 hour even though all my documentation I had received prior to sailing showed 6am.  Because MIA is so close to PortMiami we still made our 9:45am departure with time to spare but Port Canaveral is at least an hour away from MCO.  If your documentation is showing a 7am arrival it doesn't mean that is when Royal will open the doors.  Even if CBP officers are in place like they were at PortMiami and the ship has been cleared by local authorities Royal still wouldn't let anyone off and there were quite a few people on my cruise with 8am,  8:30am departures out of MIA because we all thought the doors would open at 6am.  

If I were you I would choose a later flight just to be safe and reduce stress.  Also one last thing prior to COVID when getting off the ship we are all use to seeing cabs everywhere buses all sorts of ground transportation options even when you are part of the first group of people getting off.  We were not the first ones off the ship but by the time we did get off and out to the taxi stand there were no cabs, there were no buses, no vans, nothing at Terminal A and the first people who got off were still waiting for cabs to get them to the airport. Although the cruise industry is back, it is not back to how it was pre-COVID so even if Royal opens the doors on your cruise at 7am there may or may not be ground transportation including taxis waiting to pick people up like they were before COVID.  It is really going to take time to get everything back to normal please give yourself more time. 

[Done]

Don't do it!  Too many things can go wrong.  Just because the itinerary says you arrive at cruise completion port at a certain time it may be late or customs may not clear the ship in a timely manner and so on.... 

[PurdueFlyer]

I'd echo everyone else:  negativo 

[Vincent]

22 hours ago, Vincent said:

Greetings,

I have booked a 4 night cruise for my wife and I on Mariner of the seas for Jan 24th next year, and have the option to book a return flight home on Southwest Airlines, leaving Orlando (MCO) at 9:50 AM. My questions are if we purchase "The Key", it states that you get choice departure on debarkation day, so would this help get us through the wait to disembark quicker than normal? Are current wait times to disembark longer due to COVID? Is this departure time even an option? Otherwise we are looking at a much later and longer flight (We are using travel funds through Southwest that are set to expire, so SW is our only option for flying).

We have booked a balcony view, and the ship is scheduled to arrive at Port Canaveral at 7 AM. We are US citizens, will have all required docs.

We've done similar flights pre-COVID, however it was not at Port Canaveral or on RC.

Thanks in advance!

Thank you everyone! Too risky I concur, and I think most would agree that the way things are currently going with US airlines, if we were to miss our original flight, hard to say when we might be able to get back home.