The End Of A Cruise

How long do most cruise vacations last?

Cruises range in length from literally one day, overnight cruise. There's a few of those; to around the world cruises that are well over a hundred days. And we actually have clients who book back to back cruises where they're on board for six months out of the year. There's very few of those, but they do exist, so it really ranges. The standard cruise is a seven day, week long cruise. Most people have a seven day vacation or they want to take a seven day vacation. Short of that, there are two, three, four and five day cruises available. Within a seven day, there are some cruise lines that do a five day and a two day, and a five day and a two day to cover that rotation or three and four, three and four. Usually the three and four three is a Friday to a Monday over a weekend and then Monday through the Friday for the midweek cruise. And on both coasts of the United States, and in Southern California and in Florida you can find three and four day cruises or possible five and two day cruises.

What are the steps for disembarkation?

The steps for disembarkation probably start on the last night of the cruise, where usually at some point late into the night or early in the morning, you will get a statement of your account, your shipboard account, of all the charges that you may have on the cruise. Assuming that that's fine, you have nothing else to do with that. You're set to go. On the day of disembarkation, there are different ways to do this but the standard way is that you are given a color-coded tag that you put on your luggage, and people are disembarked by color. It is to avoid three thousand people on a large ship all getting off at once. They call different colors - there's several hundred people at a time, or however large the group is. They keep calling colors, and people disembark that way in an orderly fashion.

What is a 'customs declaration form'?

For most ports of call, and most cruises, you will have to fill out a customs declaration form - it's a simple form that identifies who you are, where you live for customs, and whether or not you have made any purchases that you have to declare. Just like traveling anywhere outside the country, we're allowed a certain amount of tobacco that we can bring into the country, a certain amount of liquor that we can bring into the country, and so you have to declare this. All of the cruise ships have stores on board, and they have duty-free shops. It's not uncommon for people that enjoy alcoholic drinks to buy a bottle of their favorite liquor, because they can buy it on board the ship for duty-free prices. However, they can't buy a case of it because we're not allowed to do that. Otherwise you will have to pay heavy customs on it. It's simply to declare your purchases, and if you've traveled outside the country and spent a tremendous amount of money on a variety of things. You need to declare them.