2.5 Hours in Customs Line: Cruise Passengers Face Unusually Long Delays in Seattle

Norwegian Joy cruise passengers were seen standing in a line that stretched for blocks down the Seattle waterfront after major customs delays backed up Pier 66 on Friday, October 2.

One traveler said it took two and a half hours to disembark the ship through customs.

No one likes waiting in a long customs line, especially when you are on vacation and ready to get your port day started or begin your cruise. Normally, clearing facial recognition or standard passport checks in a U.S. terminal takes just a few quick minutes.

That was not the case for thousands of cruisers on Norwegian Joy when the ship arrived at Pier 66 in Seattle. What should have been a routine, fast-moving process turned into a multi-hour bottleneck that backed up inside the terminal and stretched down the waterfront.

Local news outlet, Kiro7, interviewed one passenger who had been cruising for 40 years who called this case very unusual.

Why Passengers Went Through Customs in the First Place

This was not a normal round-trip cruise. Norwegian Joy had finished its Alaska season and was on a 5-night Pacific Coastal repositioning sailing from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Los Angeles. These short one-way trips help cruise lines move ships between regions while still generating some revenue.

After Los Angeles, the ship is scheduled for a longer voyage through the Panama Canal toward PortMiami for the winter.

Because the cruise began in Canada, Seattle was the ship’s official first U.S. Port of Entry.

Under U.S. Customs and Border Protection rules, every single passenger had to complete a face-to-face passport and immigration check before the ship could continue normal operations.

Even guests who planned to stay on board all the way to California still had to step off, clear customs, and re-board.

Each passenger was notified of this requirement, but apparently there were a few snafus that slowed things down.

Technical Glitches and Missing Guests

In most cases, these port of entry checks are spread out and move quickly, at least much faster than at airports. But because every passenger on board was required to clear customs at once, thousands of people flooded the terminal at the same time.

To add to the bottleneck, reported computer glitches inside the terminal quickly slowed everything down.

Cruisers described waiting in hot, crowded hallways as the disembarkation line dragged on.  According to a Reddit post one user described it this way:

“We got off the boat easily but as we exited the ship the lines started… I’ve never been in a line so long or crowded. We were in a very hot enclosed hallway. It was extremely unsafe, especially for children and elderly.”

Another cruiser shared their experience in the same Reddit thread:

“It took 2 and a half hours to disembark through customs. Longer for non US citizens. The ship is supposed to leave in an hour and they’re not letting anyone on board yet. The line to get on board is blocks long and we don’t know what’s going on.”

To make matters even worse, toward the end of disembarkation, everything came to a halt when it was reportedly discovered that a few guests failed to show up for their customs check.

CBP regulations strictly dictate that 100% of the ship’s manifest must be accounted for before embarkation can begin.

A passenger on board explained what caused the final hold-up:

“I’ve been told by one of the crew there were 6 people that didn’t disembark for customs that they had to track down. It held up 3,000 people.”

The Impact on the Ship’s Next Passengers

Because morning disembarkation took so long, afternoon boarding for new embarking guests was an even longer wait. One passenger stated that “hundreds of passengers are just sitting on the sidewalk with their luggage waiting to see when they’ll let us into the building“.

Lines wrapped outside Pier 66 and extended several blocks along the Seattle waterfront. Passengers posted clips online showing massive crowds waiting on the sidewalk long past their scheduled boarding window:

Not the Cruise Line’s Call

It’s easy to blame the cruise line when a terminal gets chaotic like it did in Seattle. In this case the decisions rest with federal border officers. NCL’s crew had to follow CBP instructions.

Some complained that they didn’t receive enough communication about this process, but it’s easy to overlook a letter or notification when you have a million other things on your mind during a cruise vacation.

When officers have to stop processing to locate missing passengers or deal with system problems, the ship can’t start loading or unloading on its own. A few reports did also state that there weren’t enough border patrol agents to handle all the passengers.

The small number of guests who apparently skipped the customs line for the required check created a much longer day for everyone else.

One traveler described the process this way:

“I waited for the last group to be called and got off around 5:15. I don’t think they actually started letting people back on the ship until after 6p. All aboard was supposed to be 7, but the line is still out the building and six or seven blocks down the street. I’m at the restaurant on the pier having a glass of wine and watching the debacle. I feel really bad for the crew that’s going to have to deal with an onslaught of hungry disgruntled passengers.”

Despite the chaos at Pier 66, the delays are now in the rearview mirror. Norwegian Joy cleared the Seattle port and is back on schedule, currently making its scheduled stop in Astoria, Oregon, as it continues south toward California.