Back on day six we had told our stateroom steward that we needed to disembark with our kids who were on the first deck and that we wanted to have luggage tags that all matched. He went down to the first deck and picked up some tags for us and left them in our stateroom. That meant we were Daisy.
We awoke in time to shower and get ready to leave our stateroom and head for breakfast. We were scheduled for Triton, late. By the time they opened the doors, they had already called Daisy. We decided to eat breakfast first, we had a long day of travel ahead of us.
We had a different waiter that morning, not sure if that is normal or not but he was awesome. We got breakfast and were out of there. As we were leaving the ship, I met Lon. He is one of the people in charge on the ship and one of the people I spoke with the day before. He is a VERY nice gentleman who worked for Disney at WDW before taking his turn on the Wonder. He knows and understands Disney and was very receptive and understanding of our concerns, top to bottom. He was there hoping to see us off and wish us well. Wow! Talk about taking strides to make things right. I couldn't have been more pleased.
Disembarkation from the ship was a breeze, it was customs that held us up. We learned from our embarkation experience to keep everyone together, which we did. They recommend that the head of household keep all the passports and custom form(s).
TIP: I further suggest that each passport be opened to the photo page and sorted in order of the names on the customs form(s) and that everyone stand in that order in line. All 7 of us went through very quickly and the Canadian customs officer was very appreciative.
We then picked up our bags but what we didn't know is that we hadn't really cleared customs yet. We were going to open up our bags and start transfering things from our carry-on to checked baggage and were told we could not open our checked bags yet. So, we headed out of the customs area, handing over our checked and verified customs form to the final Canadian agent.
The next thing we did was follow the signs and people directing us to the
DCL transfer area. This is a VERY organized process. After only about 10-15 minutes we were loaded onto a bus headed for Vancouver airport.
TIP: Pick up US customs forms at Guest Services aboard the ship and fill them out when you fill out the Canadian customs forms. It will save you a step when you leave the airport. That is, of course, if you are heading to the US.
During the bus ride was watched a Disney "sales" video that talked about WDW, DLR, DVC and
Adventures by Disney. We stopped in an empty parking lot and a Disney person boarded our bus to explain the US customs process and hand out forms for those who might need them. We had ours filled out already.
After we left the bus we headed to our airline checkin. We didn't do any checkin on board the ship and that wasn't a problem. Our flight was 1:30 and it was still early. We had plenty of time. We checked in at the kiosk and printed off receipts for our bags and boarding passes. When it was our turn they tagged all the luggage and handed it back to us. This was a little strange but we soon figured out that we were about to go through another customs process.
We stood in line and eventually were called to put our checked bags on a conveyor. They stopped each bag, checked the boarding pass for each passenger and a camera took a picture. Since we were all together on one customs form, he linked all the pictures together too. That is, except person number 7, who, with a different last name and different address, had his own customs form. This is where we discovered one of the differences between US customs and Candian customs. He was on his own from this point forward as far as US customs was concerned.
Now that our checked bags were on their way, we stood in another line to go through the standard airport screeners. We had moved a number of items that we had onboard the ship in our carry ons that were not allowed as carryon items on an airplane to our checked bags before saying goodbye to them. That made this process a bit easier. Still, we had one person pulled out of our party for random screening. All that "extra" time we had was disappearing. We still had no worries, but I can certainly see why you want to leave two hours to get through the airport.
After finally clearing the airport screeners it was time to head through US customs. There were signs all over welcoming us to the US, even though we were still in Vancouver. I know this is normal, but is sure seemed strange. We all got through the line eventually. The customs officer looked at the pictures of the bags taken earlier. I'm not sure what he was looking for, but he checked us through and we were now heading to our gate. We had about an hour to spare.
The rest of our trip home was pretty un-eventful, save for the false warning light of air pressure trouble on one of our engines that caused almost an hour delay coming out of Seattle. We were picked up promptly by SuperShuttle at the Orange County airport and dropped right at our door.
WOW ... sad to be off the ship, but good to be home.
and by the way great trip report
