Saturday Dec 10
Carnival Wine Cruise 2005
Saturday was of course the day you leave the ship - and they expect all people to be off before 11am so it's an early day. Around 7:30am I think they started announcing that all people who wanted to hand carry their luggage could leave. Apparently a LOT of people chose this option because they repeated the call one or two more times over the next hour or so. Then they began to call people by the color tags they had, which had NOTHING to do which what level you were on.
We packed up all our remaining stuff and checked over the total receipts. Bob had charged about $100 total - the $60 in tips, plus $40 for a bottle of wine. My bill was about $300 - the $60 for tips, a bottle of wine, a glass of wine, plus 100 minutes of internet time and my massage. Since both were charged to a credit card, we didn't have to "do" anything to settle the bill, it was all set.
We closed up the room, and walked down to the silver dining room for breakfast at 9:30. Our evening waiter, Alex, was there seating people. We were seated at a round 6-person table - a lot of people were in here having the one final meal. For some reason none of the dishes had cinnamon on them - maybe they were running low or something. Also the French toast wasn't very toasty :) I guess they're in a rush here too.
We finished up dinner and they still hadn't gotten to our tag color. We went up to deck 5 and hung out in the window area, where many other people were also sitting and lounging. They kept calling out new tag colors. You have to wait until your tag color is called - but you don't have to go immediately when it is. You can choose to lounge on the ship until they make a final call.
Eventually around 10am I think they did do a "all other tags" call. Everyone headed for the deck 3 garden area. Bob and I lingered above, watching the line go down until it seemed reasonable, then we joined it. You first swiped your card one last time as you left the ship. You're allowed to keep the card. Then you go down the steep gangway to the customs area. You go through a short maze and show your passport to the person there. Then you go get your luggage from the tag-color-marked area. If you wait until the end like we did, it's very simple, there are only a few bags left and it's obvious where yours are.
You then walk the bags over to the exit, hand in your customs card, and walk out. It's very quick and easy (again probably because the hordes had left). Outside was a long line of taxis waiting to bring people back - both smaller taxis and bigger vans. The bigger vans were $8 per person so we hopped into one. It was only maybe 5-10 minutes to get to the airport where we were dropped out. The van towed a little cargo unit that held the luggage.
We went in to JetBlue for our 4pm flight out - luckily they had one leaving at 11:45 that they put us onto standby for. It was about 10:50 by this point. We headed over, were allowed onto the plane, and headed on home!
Photo Collection from Saturday
Carnival Liberty Winecruise main travelogue page