The problem for me is that I need to 'visit a bathroom' before joining a possible 1 hour queue (I've not seen anything about pass-outs) so I'm
always at the back of the line
.
Funny (or not) story ... Last time I landed at MCO I was actually near the front of the queue for immigration when a couple of agents left. (It was about 6pm and I guess their shifts ended.) There was quite a queue behind me and 2 or maybe 3 agents still going.
About 5 mins later I got to a desk and ... yep, the computer wanted to give me the full monty (I have an hypothesis as to why). So the agent pings for assistance. After several minutes - looking anywhere but the (now rapidly increasing queue) - no-one arrives, so he shuts the desk down and himself takes me off to the place where they search your case for [whatever*]. No more desks had been opened at that time.
I felt so bad for those people stuck in that queue, but what can you do?
* I was released without charge
one year (many many years ago) we flew into JFK on the 4th of july.
as always, we arrived in the very early morning.
there were only 2 agents working at that hour on a major holiday.
One agent for aliens (that would be you) and one agent for americans
It was a 747, so there were a lot of us, but also a lot of other planes had already arrived as well.
Anyway, if you've ever been in immigration in terminal 4 at JFK, you know that it's HUGE.
An enormous cavernous room that fits a LOT of people.
This was way back when we were what we refer to in the family as "the original four", my husband, daughter, son and me.
In other words, only americans, none of the aliens that have invaded since the kids married.
So we were in the line for citizens, which normally moves along rather swiftly in comparison to the non-citizen line.
Well not on the fourth of july with only 1 agent working on the american side.
We were in line for about 80 minutes.....apparently they wanted to get us ready for WDW...
The only other wait of that length happened to us in 2017, again in JFK (do not EVER EVER EVER EVER land in jfk)
By then we had our family aliens and as i've related before, the youngest among us (22 months old) was marked by the system for special care so we had to go into the "we think you're a criminal" line (it doesn't say that, but we all know that to be the case).
That line took forever and a day.
Which resulted in our race to our next flight, having first to go through security again because of the terminal change (avoid JFK at all costs).