Summer Vacation (final in series)

Friday morning we awoke early (before 7 AM) to prepare for disembarkation. (Gary was up even earlier to to report to the ships stores to claim his duty-free (2 bottle limit) bottles purchase.) Confusion abounded regarding the procedures for International passengers passing through US customs and Immigration. We had been informed (yesterday PM) by a guest services officer at the purser's desk that Canadians could pass through US Customs (along with Americans) after exiting the ship in the terminal building (a departure from the ship's norm, although consistent with what we did in the Port of Baltimore a year earlier when travelling on an RCI vessel). However, both the written instructions delivered to the stateroom and John the cruise director's disembarkation lecture (which was looping on the ship's TV channel) indicated that International guests were supposed to meet officials on the ship at the Royal Fireworks lounge at 8AM to pre-clear US Customs. Only guests who clear customs in the terminal were eligible for the self-disembarkation option and all others were required to report and be issued colour coded tags to affix to their cases before setting out for the porters the prior evening. We had retained our luggage, expecting to self-disembark.

Perplexed, we reported to the Royal Fireworks lounge at 8:00 AM to find a small group of passengers bearing non-American passports waiting patiently but no customs officers in the lounge. Instead we saw uniformed customs officials attending to a large group of Americans (in a long line) in an adjoining lounge who were over their duty-free customs limit and had voluntarily reported there to declare and pay their duty. We were getting very antsy around 9:15, still waiting for some activity and set off to seek out clarification of the procedure. It turned out that the original message we had received had been correct (ie. that there was no requirement to pre-clear customs in the ship) so we headed back down to our staterooms to await the self-embarkation call. Enroute to our cabins, a PA announcement was indicating that the ship had been cleared and calling for self-embarkation guests from deck 3 (our deck) to report to the midships tower to exit. (Disembarkation calls are made from the lower decks up, since the gangplank is on deck 2). So we grabbed our luggage and immediately headed out down the hall to disembark. The line moved swiftly and we took the stirs to avoid an elevator wait. As we approached the mid-ship tower, we heard Johnny (the assistant cruise director) make an announcement clarifying (what we already knew) that there was no need for any international guests to pre-clear customs in a lounge.

Exiting the gangplank, we almost immediately heard a NCL official calling out for international guests. We reported to her and (after she kibitzed with us about Americans not really considering Canadians "foreigners") she ushered us over into the shortest lineup behind a customs desk reserved for international travellers (scarce on board). Our customs "interrogation" was light and painless (tho we did see a group of Asians in front of us being finger-printed). Following customs, we were out in the parking lot with our luggage loaded and ready to hit the road by 8:40 AM! All in all, despite the confusion, it wound up being the fastest disembarkation process I have ever been through on any cruiseship!

We drove through a persistent drizzle most of the morning, pausing briefly to pick-up coffee and breakfast sandwiches at a suburban MacDonald's drive thru and again later for a washroom, gas-up and snack break at a gas bar / retail Sheetz outlet. Our goal was to make it to Pennsdale, PA by mid-day to do some shopping (to take advantage of our 7 day duty free $ limits). We pulled into the Lycoming mall around 12:40. The mall was a bit dated but did have three major department stores (Penney, Macys and Sears) and most of the other chain apparel stores (Hollister, Aeropostale, American Eagle, Old Navy). Our group split up to go our chosen shopping ways, agreeing to meet back up at the Penney store entrance at 2:00 PM.

We had a very productive shopping trip. In total we managed to purchase 13 articles of clothing for $230 in the course of our 1 hour 45 minutes shopping spree. We spent $69.40 at each of Hollingers and Aeropostale, $16.96 at Penney and the balance at Old Navy. Claire scored a fleece hoodie from Hollister, a pair of faded boot cut blue jeans from Aeropostale and a "rocker girl" tee from Penney. Ryan bagged a pair of jeans from Old Navy, a bar stripe shortsleeve rugby top from Areopostale and a polo shirt from Hollister. I purchased a pair of plaid shorts from each of Aeropostale and Penney (the latter (Arizona label) were originally $40 and were marked down to $6.97), a thermal long sleeve tee from Aeropostale (50% off), plus three solid coloured "destination" thermal long sleeved tees from Old Navy and a gray oxford style button up thermal tee, all at $10 per. As a bonus, Old Navy gave us a 40% discount coupon (also redeemable at Canadian stores) redeemable against our next single clothing article purchase, plus a 10% off next purchase survey completion discount on the register receipt. Penney also gave us a 15% off next purchase survey discount coupon on the reverse of the POS terminal receipt. The best part: Pennsylvania's state RST rate is 0%. I daresay it would have been impossible to purchase the 13 items we bought in Pennsdale in 100 minutes for less than $230 if we shopped all day in Toronto!

Following our shopping spree, we drove non-stop for 3.5 hours before stopping at a roadside gas bar / food centre on the NY thruway I90 for supper. We ordered burgers at Fuddruckers. They offered a $5.99 manager's special that included a 1/3 burger, chunky fries and a medium sized soda fountain drink. (Extremely reasonably priced and good quality / tasting, as roadside dining options go!) Their Fuddruckers burger comes served on a butter toasted bun and you dress it at a "top it yourself" condiments bar. The food court also had an Arbys and a Tim Hortons in it. We were eager to order Timmys coffee after a week of deprivation at sea without it and discovered (much to the distress of our car-confined bladders) that the large size cup at the US Tim Hortons outlets is closer to a extra large serving on the Canadian side of the border!

Following our dinner break, we had less than 30 miles to go to hit Canadian customs booths at the border bridge crossing. The time was closing in on 7 PM as we approached and we were fearful of hitting the long holiday weekend traffic exodus. As we reached the Buffalo area flashing overhead roadsigns posted wait-times border crossing warnings: 0 to 30 minutes for the Peace and Rainbow bridges and 30 to 60 minutes for the Queenston-Lewiston bridge. Our planned route took across the latter and we decided to stick with it (after briefly considered and rejecting re-routing). We "accidentally" took the truck lane as we approached the border crossing booths and re-joined the car line at the duty free shop cut-in (probably saving ourselves 15 minutes in the process), so the wait turned out to be closer to the 30 minute low end.

Traffic moved well once we hit the QEW (despite hitting a few roadwork zones) and we arrived back in the city at around 9:00 o'clock. Exhausted from the long drive and happy to have our own mattresses to sleep on again, we hit the sack soon thereafter! And so our family Summer Vacation 2008 officially came to a close! A safe and good time was had by all! I expect soon it will be time to start planning next year's adventure!