Past Miami Cruisers - need advice!

[stefanospops]

What is the earliest anyone has flown out of Fort Lauderdale (FLL) AFTER a cruise from Miami? I understand that Disney does not recommend flights earlier than noon from MIA, but Southwest has a flight that leaves at noon from FLL. Is that cutting it too close?

Our cruise returns to Miami on Oct 25. My choices for direct flights are a 5pm flight that leaves from Orlando to Buffalo, but that means driving almost 4 hours on a Friday, or another flight leaving from Fort Lauderdale at noon. We have three younger kids AND my wife hates to fly. She would rather drive to Orlando to have a direct flight instead of doing connecting flights from MIA or FLL. Happy wife, happy life!

I prefer not to stay over, even a day if I can avoid it. Any advice?

 

[neg58]

It doesn't take that much longer to get to FLL than MIA. I did it in my private car in about 40 minutes, and if you are in a taxi or shuttle it should be faster, especially since they know where they are going and I didn't! Plus smaller airport so, probably, easier to check in.

What are your choices out of FLL if you miss this fight? It would probably involve 2 or more connecting flights. If you can live with that, go for it. I'm doing it out of LAX, which I know will be tight, but if I miss it, or if my luggage misses it, there are other Southwest flight headed east that day and it may make for a long day but I think I'll make it and it's better than staying over.

 

[amandat118]

We flew out of FLL in February. Had a 1:00 flight time but got there early enough that we tried to get on the 11am flight so we wouldn't have to wait but we couldn't get on because our luggage was already checked in. We were on US Airways. We could have made a 12 pm flight easily out of FLL. We had pre arranged transfers that were there when we got off the boat and it all went very smooth.