I have only been on two cruises in my life. The second one I disembarked today.
Both were international cruises. One ended in Southampton and one was a circle Miami - Miami but stopped in the Bahamas.
On both going through customs was an absolute breeze. Literally walked through with almost no fuss (actually no fuss at all…I only stopped walking when others were ahead of me and that was one family…I was just waved through).
But, the last time I took a plane and landed in the US the customs process was an hour or more. Awful.
So, why can ship cruise passengers basically walk through but airplane passengers need to wait in very long lines?
FWIW I just got Global Entry but have not had occasion to use it yet.
I think there’s an element of theater involved in airport security. Part of the security procedures is intended to show the public that the government is actively doing something to prevent hijackings and terrorist attacks aboard commercial flights.
There’s never been any similar incidents aboard cruise ships in decades. So there’s no public demand to show we’re protecting cruises. And the security procedures are therefore more relaxed.
I have both returned from international flights (India via Germany) and cruises (just a few weeks ago) and both were complete non-issues from a customs perspective.
Passport control, however, is vastly different. As you describe, the immigration checks off the cruise were super-fast and the immigration checks for flights can take forever. I ascribe that to the ratio of agents to customers. A cruise has relatively small number of people to process and a very predictable flow. Flights can land whenever and it’s not uncommon to have multiple international flights land at the same time and overwhelm the passport control stations at a medium-sized airport.
Are you sure you mean that customs is much different or passport/immigration control?
I did not know of the distinction. I just mean waiting in the line to get into the country and show them your passport. Whatever you call that. As a tourist I am not immigrating and when coming home I am not immigrating but if that is “immigration” then fine. Call it what you want.
It’s that whole process I wonder about.
The cruise was disembarking 2,500 people at once (give or take). The immigration staff literally let people just walk through (I was one…was just waved through). I am a US citizen and had my passport in hand but still…
Yeah, that’s immigration/passport control. Customs is the “are you bringing in any property/fruit/etc” and “do you need to pay customs duties”?
But the answer is basically that a cruise ship has X passengers and Y agents and they can control X (hell, they have to practically force people to leave the buffet on a cruise ship) to make sure that X/Y is reasonable.
But at an airport the passport control folks don’t know how many planes are going to land at a given time. And they always seem to have two folks take a break just when the 747s land and disgorge 400 people each.
ETA: I do wonder about the “waved through” part. They should have at least done a facial recognization scan. If that matches someone on the manifest then they might not have needed your passport.
We travel internationally fairly frequently. We’ve been in terrible lines coming off cruises and easy lines coming off planes, as well as the reverse. It hasn’t been as clear-cut a difference as your experience. Even with Global Entry, we’ve sometimes hit very long airport lines, and sometimes walk through with just a brief biometric scan. Even with NEXUS, it can take an hour to cross the Canadian border by car.
I have no knowledge of US procedures but have disembarked at Southampton several times.
People on cruise ships have been on board for days, weeks or even months. The crew keep an eye out for suspicious activity, and it’s not unknown for Customs to discreetly extract passengers and their luggage. You may not be surprised to find that cruises that call in at S American ports are checked more thoroughly than those to Northern Europe.
The bulk of the luggage is taken during the night, giving customs ample time, if they need it, to go round with the sniffer dogs. This is very different to the high pressure when a plane unloads.
Global Entry FTW. I just came back from a trip to Europe and literally spent less than 10 seconds in Passport control. Didn’t even have to stop or scan anything; walk down the aisle and they had a dude with an iPad that had all the Global Entry folk on it already, in the order we were walking, and he just did a quick face check as we walked passed him (I assume our photos were taken as we entered).
The non-Global Entry folk were shunted to a very long line, which must have taken at least half an hour or more to get through.
And yes, it’s very Big Brother. But they have all that info on me anyway (I worked for the federal government years ago).
Or not so discreetly. One cruise, I went back to my cabin on the last night, to get dressed for dinner and pack. The crew had completely emptied the cabin next to mine. All the furniture and every thing, was all out in the hallway, and was eventually taken away somewhere else. They then stationed a security guy outside the door all night. When I opened my door the next morning for my breakfast delivery, after we’d already made port, there were several cops in the hallway, checking it all out.
Man, I don’t know. My wife and I are taking a cruise on Viking around the British Isles. We had to send them pictures of our passports and a current picture of ourselves. Lots of questions too. I guess this is easier done from home but it was a PITA.
One of the big things about cruising, as @Jas09 said, is the metering.
I’m posting from a ship right now. Once we dock for disembarkation in a couple of days, they will meter the 2700 passengers off over the space of ~4 hours. So call it 700 people per hour. That’s two 777/A350 sized aircraft. At my hub, we’d arrive a half-dozen of those an hour, plus two dozen smaller jets from nearby international places.
The other issue is that in most cases, the immigration / customs facilities in airports are way too small. Every US airport is very space constrained. Huge increases in traffic since the 1980s and zero additional land. New buildings built atop old ones. etc. So there isn’t room enough to put in enough stations for enough officers to process the headcount they’re facing. Hence the push to automate as much of the interaction with as many of the people as possible.
Conversely, a lot of cruise ports and cruise terminals are new and large. Sized for the ships they now service, not for something half that size from the e.g. 1980s. Seaports inherently have a lot more space than airports.
A separate issue:
Tellingly, the experience arriving at any US airport is real nice if you have Global Entry, OK if you have a US passport, and sucketh utterly if you’re a foreigner trying to enter. OTOH, when I entered the EU a couple weeks ago, the line for EU people was short and automated, while the line for non-EU = foreigners, was long and mostly manual with lots of passengers and few immigration officers.
Cruise ships are completely controlled spaces. You do all the onerous security stuff when you board on day 1 but after that you’re in a closed system.
When you get off the boat at a port of call, your identity and belongings are checked when you come back on. There’s nothing to declare or check on disembarking day because they know exactly what you came onto the boat with, where and when you got off, and what you purchased when you were ashore.
Back in America, the only thing they need to know is that you’ve gotten off the boat and that’s what the cameras are for.
ETA: I’ve only been on large cruise ships, no idea what the experience is like on the much smaller ones.
Which these days in air/sea travel you generally get started with ahead of arrival, filling in the relevant forms while still under way in, which you just hand over at destination. So for a large number of travelers it melts in with entry control and they don’t even notice it’s a separate step.
We take no less than 2 international trips per year and have been doing that for over 30 years. Most of the time we come back via O’Hare less than 10% of the time through Mitchell.
We’ve rarely had a hassel at passport or customs.
The OP has just run into a bad day there and that sucks for them.
When I did the crossing from New York to Southampton on the Queen Mary there was an immigration officer on board. On day #4 each floor of the ship was given a time to present themselves, with their passport, to that immigration officer. I arrived at the appointed time and there was maybe five people ahead of me. In about three minutes I was standing in front of the immigration official sat at a desk with another behind him. Handed him my passport which he looked at, then looked at me and handed the passport back. That was it. That was the whole immigration check into Great Britain. Maybe five minutes out of my day to do it.
When the ship docked we all just walked off and went on our way.
