Cruise ships face some problems that land-based hotels rarely have to deal with.
Traditional hotels, for example, don't have a single day when all guests leave and another group replaces them a few hours later. Sure, hotels might have more turnover on Sundays or the day after a huge event, but even for something like the Super Bowl, not every person staying in Las Vegas for the game will leave on Monday.
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Cruise ships, however, must quickly get their passengers off the ship so they can clean the rooms and bring a new group of customers onboard. Even people sailing on the same ship in the same room on back-to-back cruises need to leave their rooms and go through immigration (which sometimes means leaving the ship and sometimes involves customs officials coming onboard).
That's a daunting process and even the slightest glitch can cause major pain for passengers. If there's a delay getting to the port and getting people off the ship that can lead to new passengers and old passengers being at the port at the same time.
In addition to causing crowding issues, it also means that parking lots have not cleared out for arriving passengers. That can lead to gridlock at the port, impacting not just the affected cruise, but others leaving from the same port.
Image source: Carnival Cruise Line
Here's how Royal Caribbean disembarkation works
Every cruise line handles embarkation and disembarkation differently. In a broad sense, however, passengers on Carnival Cruise Line (CCL) -), Royal Caribbean, MSC, and even Virgin Voyages have the same general disembarkation choices. Passengers can opt to walk off with their own luggage,
On Royal Caribbean ships, passengers who opt to have the cruise line handle their luggage get luggage tags in their room the night before the cruise ends. Those tags have a number that will ultimately help the passenger know when to leave.
People who opt for the assisted departure pack their bags, put the luggage tags on their bags, and leave those bags outside their rooms on the last night. Porters collect those bags and ultimately deliver them to the cruise terminal the next day.
Each tag has a number and Royal Caribbean shows where each numbered group can wait after passengers have to vacate their cabins. On the departure day, the cruise line uses one of its in-house television channels to share expected departure times for each numbered group and the designated waiting spots.
Carnival makes a disembarkation change
Carnival has begun rolling out a new disembarkation program that uses its app to control the process, Cruise Hive reported.
"We always want debarkation to be as easy as possible. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not," said Carnival Brand Ambassador John Heald shared on his Facebook page. "I wanted to let you know that we are rolling out a new debarkation system for those guests who put their luggage outside of their cabin door and want to choose what time they will disembark."
Under the new system. guests will pick a departure time on the Carnival Hub app and to receive notifications on the app as to when they can leave the ship.
The current disembarkation process requires guests to go to guest services to get luggage tags. That can create long lines and backups, at a time when guest services is also busy. Luggage tags will be delivered to the passengers' cabins based on the selection people make in the app.
Carnival is currently testing what it's calling "Digital Debark" on four ships, Conquest, Spirit, Dream, and Elation. It plans to slowly role it out across the fleet, but has not shared a timetable for the change, according to Heald.
Digital Debark will not impact passengers who opt to walk their own luggage off the ship.
