What time is safe to fly home from FLL after cruise?

[WDW4TheGirls]

Looking at booking my airline reservation, and wondered what time would I safely be off the ship, through the disembarkation process, catch a cab, and be at the airport? I would hate to miss the flight home because I booked it too early!

 

[Mpadovani2]

I have successfully caught a 10:26am flight out of FLL from Ft Lauderdle port. Express walk off with luggage in tow begins around 6:45am. If everything goes well at customs, you could be in a cab by 7:15/7:30. If you have the ship take your luggage off, that is a different story. Hope that helps.

 

[WDW4TheGirls]

Thank you! Does anyone know what to expect if the ships takes off our luggage? (And what is the difference between the 2 options? We have sailed DCL and their disembarkation was smooth, but our first time on RC)

 

[starvenger]

Does anyone know what to expect if the ships takes off our luggage? (And what is the difference between the 2 options? We have sailed DCL and their disembarkation was smooth, but our first time on RC)

You should expect much the same as the DCL disembarkation.

Was on Harmony in August/September, with my family (6 adults, 4 kids under 10). We had an 11:00 flight from FLL-YYZ (meaning a theoretical check-in cutoff of 90-120 minutes). We did the regular disembarkation, and drew group 5, which is maybe 15 minutes after they start standard disembarkation. It was very quick. Luggage is arranged by your group number, so you pick it up and head to customs, where at that time there was essentially no line. We have NEXUS, and didn't bother going to (or even looking for) the Global Entry line. We were at the airport by 8. Dropped off our bags, got our boarding passes (we checked in while on the boat, but had to get the boarding passes at the terminal), went through security (note: we used TSA PreCheck here, saved only 5 minutes over my brother, but we didn't need to bother with things like taking off shoes, taking out tablets et al) and were sitting at the gate no later than 8:45.

TL;DR - Ship to Airport will be about 30 minutes, if you have an early departure number. YMMV for check-in/security.