The night before disembarkation, you have a choice to leave your bags out for them to be taken and given to you when you get off the ship. This is so you’re not having to carry around your bag the morning of or while disembarking the ship.

My mom and I never use this option because it’s quicker to just take everything off with you. That being said, we did not receive a group number of when we were supposed to exit. I checked the app multiple times when I selected our check-out time and that we would take our own bags off. After checking the app and even going to guest services to find out our group number, we were told we didn’t have one and just to choose which group we wanted to leave in.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Morning of Disembarkation

When I woke on the morning of the 5^th day, the ship was still pulling into port. We were back in Miami. Mom and I made sure pack up most of our stuff the night before so we didn’t have much to do besides get dressed and go up for breakfast one last time. It wasn’t too busy that morning but we were also up pretty early.

We came back down to the room after breakfast and sat out on the balcony, trying to enjoy it one more time before we got off. I think this cruise spoiled us for balconies. Personally, I don’t think I can go back to oceanview rooms.

I went back inside to scan the TV for when they were allowing certain groups off. The early groups were available to leave and we didn’t have anything else to do so we headed to the dining room to exit. We were out and off the ship in about 20 minutes.

They scanned our Seapass cards as we got off so basically we got to keep them. We went through customs in less than a minute too. Because Mom and I had our passports and got those scanned with a picture on embarkation day, all the port officials had to do was use the facial recognition. We didn’t even have to take out our passports.

Getting to Airport

When we got out of the cruise terminal building, I got in the taxi line because I didn’t feel like waiting for a rideshare and the prices were pretty much the same.

We originally chose to use an airport transfer when I filled out the check-out form in the app but because we were getting off between 8-8:30AM, guest services said it wasn’t available that early. That bummed me out because it would’ve been a little over half the price of our taxi ($16 per person. The taxi ride was $56 with tip).

Then, I was mad at myself because we got the airport and our gate 4 hours early so we could’ve waited for the later departure to take the airport transfer. Oh well, you live and you learn right?

Bye Miami!

We entered the airport, checked in my mom’s bag (because she bought full-sized Rituals products), and got Mom wheelchair service. We actually saw the woman who helped us the day we flew into Miami and was able to give her the tip that we forgot to give last time.

Another person took us through security and to the gate. The service was lack luster compared to the other woman but we still gave a tip (mostly because she saw us give a tip to the other woman).

While we waited our four hours to board, a bird flew into the airport! It was a nice little surprise to officially end the trip.

This is the end of the Cruising to Labadee series! My main goal of this trip was for my mom to get a break and relax and thankfully that was accomplished. She hadn’t gone on a vacation since her kidney transplant. She likes cruises so I thought this would be a good way to ease her back into vacations.

Our next big vacation together will be for her birthday where we’ll be taking a Virgin Voyages cruise. I’ve never used this cruise line before so it’ll be a first for the both of us.

Now, it’s the holiday season. I don’t have any more trips planning between now the Virgin Voyages cruise but there are so many places I want to go! Next week I’ll share my Travel Wish List in honor of it being Christmas Eve.

Until then, you can check out more cruise blog posts here. Happy holidays, overthinkers!