My wife and I are booked on a Holland America two week Cruisetour from Fairbanks, Alaska to Vancouver, BC. We are U.S citizens and live in Maryland.
The cruiseline has made arrangements for our air transportation to and from the cruise. We go through Minneapolis on the way to Fairbanks, never entering Canada. When the cruise is over, it docks in Vancouver where we will be using their "Express Baggage Service" so that we don't have to lug our suitcases around from the ship to Vancouver airport and go through customs there.
We leave Vancouver via a Northwest airline flight (#194) to leave for home at 12:20 pm on June 15th, and arrive at Detroit around 7:50 pm. From there, we connect to another Northwest airline flight (#1132) leaving at 9:10 pm to Baltimore, Maryland.
Our Travel Agent has informed us that we will need to disembark the flight that arrives in Detroit, go to the baggage retrieval area (carousel), get our bags, take them through customs, recheck our bags onto the next connecting flight, go back down to the Northwest concourse, go through the carry-on security area, get to our gate, and get on board the connecting flight in order to make the 9:10 pm flight to Baltimore.
I might be just a little crazy, but it seems to me that there doesn't appear to be much time between the first plane arriving and the second plane leaving in order to get all that accomplished. Somehow I envision myself as in the old O.J. Simpson commercials running down the airport concourses with two large bags and carry-ons. Oh, and there are two others with us with the same amount of luggage to contend with.
Am I just being paranoid, or does this seem like it will be awfully "tight" (and stressful)?
My TA says Northwest plans these trips all the time and that there will be ample time to do all of this.

Bottom line is that we have 1 hour 20 minutes (if planes are on time) to get off the plane, get to the baggage area, retrieve our baggage, find customs, get through customs, go back to the terminal to check our bags back in, get to the concourse and go through the security checkpoint, get to the gate, and get onto the plane. WHEW! And all I though we'd have to do is get off the plane and walk to the connecting flights' gate in the same concourse. Silly me!.
I figured the customs part would come after we arrived in Baltimore, our final destination, if at all.
I was under the assumption that by using the Express baggage service, we as well as our luggage would be "secured" from the ship to the plane at Vancouver and would therefeore not have to go through customs at all.

Have any of you had simiar experiences? And can you reassure me that we will be "OK"?

I don't mind having to go through customs if that is necessary, but this almost seems ridiculous. It would be less effort to simply go through customs in Vancouver and not have to worry about Detroit at all. I have to wonder what I'm paying the extra money to use Express Baggage Service for?

I have asked this question to Holland American Reps, my TA, and others on the CruiseCritic forums. I have not received a concensus yet as to what the process will actually be. Most everyone is giving me their opinion of what they think should happen. Shurely, there is someone knowlegible that can tell us what to expect.

Thanks for any information you might be able to provide.

The "baggage service" you paid for has nothing to do with U.S. customs--it will help you avoid Canadian customs. That being said, you will probably pre-clear both US customs & immigration in Vancouver (assuming they still do that there, but I don't see why anything would have changed) and then your flight is essentially a "domestic" flight when you get into Detroit and you won't have to go through any of the re-checking, etc, nor will you have to go through customs again.

Some of the big Canadian cities (almost certainly Vancouver) has US customs officials stationed there for clearance. It's as though you cross the border between the ticket counter and the gate. Maybe check the Vancouver Airport website.

If not (almost certainly is), then you will clear customs in Detroit. Outside customs, there will be a Northwest agent to collect your checked bags. You will probably get your boarding pass in Vancouver for all segments.

No need to be OJ. No need to write a book "what if I did it........miss my flight"

You will clear US customs and immigration in YVR. Your flight will be arriving at DTW domestic.

As everyone else has said you will go through US entrance formalities in YVR. Once you hand your bag over to the NW agent in YVR you will not touch it again until you arrive at your destination airport.

What they said, plus: both of your flights are mainline NW, so you will arrive and depart from the A concourse of the McNamara terminal in DTW. 1:20 is more than enough time. I think anything over 30 minutes is legal in DTW.

Thanks so much to all who responded to my customs questions.
Because of your responses, I contacted my Travel Agent again, and she in turn called Holland American Lines, and Northwest Airlines AGAIN.
This time, she verified that by us using HAL's Signiture Baggage Service (which we sign up for while on the cruise ship), we will NOT to have to handle our checked baggage from the time we leave the ship in Vancouver until we take it off the carousel at Baltimore Washington International.
In Detroit, we will not have to do anything except get off one plane and get on the connecting plane to BWI.
And we will not have to go through any customs inspections with the possible exception of our carry-on items at Vancouver.

Thank you so much for your assistance in hepling me get the facts straight about all of this.

Ed

As others say, you may have already cleared customs in Vancouver. However, I've made that tight connection at DTW before coming from Europe, so I did have to clear customs/immigration in that tight time frame where NW has scheduled me for less than 90 minutes to make my connection. They really do off-load your bags and get you through customs/immigration fast there, so it shouldn't be a problem, to be honest. The only time I missed my connection at DTW is because I missed it by a mile. My plane left FRA 4 hours late and I couldn't have made any reasonable connection anyway. They rebooked me on a later flight at no cost.

My advice is that, I worry too, but there is no real reason to worry. They actually know what they're doing at DTW. So relax and enjoy your cruise. I guess this is just another opinion but at least it is based on actually traveling through customs/immigration at DTW.

So HAL baggage service is bonded?