How busy is customs/passport control MCO

[Thorpy]

Originally Posted by Joshie1

I remember the days of “staying right” when you arrived into the Customs Hall.

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Yeah, individual queues are not half as good as a post office style queue. At least you keep moving and it is about as fair as it can be.

[baboons]

Originally Posted by Sunset girl

We’ve been going to Florida for over 20 years, we flew in last Tuesday and landed at 3:20pm we got out of the airport at 7:20pm☹️
The reasons being that the immigration hall was packed and took us at least 2 hrs to get through... then the queue for the car hire .. finally got to the desk and the car wasn’t ready so then an hours wait for that.

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Aah, that's awful. It won't help you this time, and you may already know, but some companies including Alamo let you avoid the desk altogether. I'd happily pay a premium for that.

[Juliemack]

Seems it's pretty useless looking at the data records then. They must be way off...

awt.cbp.gov

[Sunset girl]

One of the reasons for the huge wait at immigration was 2 planes landing then over 700 passengers queueing !
I felt sorry for families with small kids, they should have a line just for families with kids say .. under the age of 6.

[tspill]

Does anyone know if the building work has finished? Or when it will finish? As this also adds to the delays if it is busy.

[Thorpy]

Originally Posted by Juliemack

Seems it's pretty useless looking at the data records then. They must be way off...

awt.cbp.gov

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I would say they are reasonable, but with caveats and conditions.
The biggest factor is when you start counting time and when you stop. If they count as you walk into the hall, and stop when you walk to the luggage belts, I bet they are reasonably close.

The problem is that as a passenger it is dead easy to look at the time when you are "about to land" because the seatbelt light has come on. The reality is that it can be half an hour from that point to the gate, and that's before they even open the aircraft.
The other factor is that you can quite reasonably be waiting 10 minutes before the airbridge is in place and the door opened.
So 40 minutes from when you consider "we're there" to actually getting into the hall, and that's perception rather than actual delays. The other side of that is that you can be held on the plane for a while because immigration is busy, which they could get creative with in terms of counting the time for immigration queue purposes, although
they do seem to have a few long waits so maybe they do count the time.

[HelenLime]

It took us around an hour but I understand it to be highly variable. Queue was constantly moving though which is something.

[scoobydooby]

Same answer I always give to this. It will take as long as it takes. You can’t control it. You can’t change it. You can only ruin the start of your holiday stressing about it. Find your zen. It will end. In 11 trips in the last decade we’ve done 20 minutes and 2.5 hours and pretty much everything in-between. You’re going on an amazing holiday most people never will. Don’t sweat the small stuff 🌈

[Bertiebear]

Went April 2016 was through in 30 minutes. August 2018 1.3 hours but there was a storm.

[Thorpy]

Originally Posted by scoobydooby

Same answer I always give to this. It will take as long as it takes. You can’t control it. You can’t change it. You can only ruin the start of your holiday stressing about it. Find your zen. It will end. In 11 trips in the last decade we’ve done 20 minutes and 2.5 hours and pretty much everything in-between. You’re going on an amazing holiday most people never will. Don’t sweat the small stuff 🌈

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Three U's - Unpredictable, Unavoidable and uncomfortable !