Venice Customs and Immigration

Go to cruiscritic.com with your question. Much better chance of help there when it comes to cruises.

I have not entered there, but as usual, the length of the line for Immigration depends on how many officers are working. The actual scrutiny and stamping of each passport is usually very brief. Walking through the green "nothing to declare" customs exit also does not take any time, although truly suspicious characters could be stopped for an inspection.

And just based on others reports of "debarking" (maybe disembarking) much of the time may be taken up with the cruise line closing you out of your obligations, getting your luggage and other items and getting you into customs. They probably are staffed less than an Airport, delaying further, but still four hours seems excessive.

Thanks for everyone's comments. Laura a big thanks for turning me to Cruise Critic as I received all the info I needed and connected on roll call thread of others traveling on the same ship. I though that website was strictly for searching for cruises, was I wrong. What's great is I am connecting to people on the same cruise and sharing ideas. Thanks again.

aluribe1,

I'm glad that you have received the answers you were looking for.

For the sake of others reading this thread in the future, can you share what you have discovered?

You first have to join Cruise Critic,
just add a little information. You can choose the boards or roll call tool. You choose the Cruise line, name of ship and date of departure. Only one person can be in charge of the Roll call. It's a forum where anyone traveling on the same ship can share ideas, information or set up separate tours at the ports of call. That person in charge of Roll call thread sets up a google spreadsheet and keeps track of anyone wanting to join the group and Meet and Greet later on the cruise. Basically communicating making new friends on the same cruise. On the same website there is loads of information on finding deals on cruises, destinations, reviews, blogs and helpful information for first time cruisers.

Four hours is not excessive depending on how you count. Depending on the size of the cruise ship you could be dumping 4 to 5,000 passengers. The cruise ships all use a staggered exit. Depending on a number of factors you will be given an exit window of maybe 15/20 minutes and a color luggage tag related to the departure time. Anything other than carryon luggage is placed in the hallway the previous evening and collected by ship personal. The ship my start exiting at 8am but only those with a 8am departure and luggage tag may exit. If 8am used a red luggage tag, then all the red tagged luggage will be in one pile which makes it easier for you to claim your luggage. If it is a 9am departure with a green tag, the green tap luggage will not hit the dock till 9am. And so it goes until the last departure which could be 11am or noon. It is a huge logic problem to get everyone and linked up to their luggage. While it may not take you personally four hours to get, you could be in the last wave that is at the end of the four departure cycle.

This is the main reason why we take only carry on size luggage so we can walk off anytime regardless of our assigned time.