Not seeing your bags with the airline checkin process?

[PrincessShmoo]

I was a little concern the first time I did this but it worked out fine and it was convenient. However since my first cruise I haven't used this service because I fly in two or three days prior to my cruise to enjoy the local sites or visit the parks (depending on my cruise departure location).

Yeah, but we're talking about after the cruise, not before.

 

[bumbershoot]

We usually fly United and I've thught about doing the airline check in service but I always have stuff that I need to put in my checked luggage, like my hair products, my face products, make up, clothes from the night before. So for me it's just easier to pick up all our luggage and Cart it to the airport. It helps to be Premier so I can usually skip the longer regular lines for checking baggage.

My hair and face stuff either come in smaller containers or I decant them into smaller. That way they are all in the 311 baggie (or ds's baggie).

Everyone has clothes from the night before. They just go in carryon! Choose shoes wisely.

It's just such a nice service.

Or keep one big bag (especially if you bought booze in port) and put the full sized shampoos etc all into that. Then you only have to deal with that one bag and whatever carryons you had.

 

[michellekcm]

We did this a few weeks ago for the first time.

The whole not having to have our luggage was awesome - with a 3 year old still in a stroller, and a 7 year old, not having to drag 4 suitcases through the airport and sit with them while waiting for the flight to open was great.

Our issue was the seat assignments - the boarding passes we were provided had us sitting all over the place. My 3 yo was seated 11 rows behind us!!! I understand that DCL can't go through all the seats for everyone and just take whatever the airlines give them, but that took a lot of sorting out by us at the airport. So we're not sure right now if we'd do it in the future, unless maybe we pre booked our seats (not 100% sure how that works with US airlines )

 

[mmouse37]

Ah.... but it really doesn't say that the flight MUST be after 1:00. Only that if your flight is before 1:00 you should be on an early bus, and if it's after 1:00 you can catch a later bus.

I'm still looking for it. I can't recall who posted it, but I do remember someone posting that they were told "no flights before 1:00" on their cruise on another "what time should I book my flight for" thread. Maybe they misunderstood the 1:00 thing.

But that makes sense. Thanks.

Correct, it just mentions the time but does not say your flight needs to be before that time.

MJ

 

[hnthomps]

Correct, it just mentions the time but does not say your flight needs to be before that time.

MJ

We actually got a lot of different information about what the timing of our flight would mean with regard to luggage. I don't have the exact things with me, but this was how it went
-original documents told us our flight needed to be after 11:30am to participate, so we booked an 11:50 flight.
-One piece of paper we received with instructions said if our flight was before noon, we had to be off the ship before 8am, and might not be able to participate in the luggage check in.
-We got three slightly different answers from three different people at guest services about whether we could participate in the luggage check in. We ultimately decided it had to be ok, as more people and documents told us that the cut off was 11:30 (and even if it had been noon, the difference between 11:50 and 12 seemed immaterial)
-we were then told if we weren't off the ship by 8am, they would confiscate our luggage.
-but then a guest services employee told us "we don't want your luggage. If you follow the rules, we'll get it to you"

We were sufficiently worried about the whole thing that we were in line to get off the ship right at 745, all of our luggage having disappeared overnight as promised.

We were at the airport by 830am for our 11:50am flight. We next saw our luggage in our home airport.

Anyway, the luggage check in was awesome, but as was the case several times, careful reading of documents revealed contradictions even when on the ship.

 

[hanscarlet]

If you have a flight that qualifies and taking the bus isn't financially prohibitive, it's a fabulously convenient service.




Glad you did that. Always keep that as a possibility! Tipping those guys a little bit is better than waiting 45 minutes to check bags.



Yep.

Yes we did the $5/bag thing with the skycaps at PHL and MCO - they were awesome, well worth the tip because of saving time in the lines and they didn't give me a hard time about weighing my luggage, I know my one bag was right around the 50Lb mark so I was nervous but they didn't care about anything after i handed them the $$, I am thinking about putting a nice review on their FB page because both sets of skycaps at each airport were really professional... it's tough traveling with 4 checked bags and trying to lug around two little kids at the same time, they earned their tips