Aside from having to get off the ship when your cruise ends, the worst part of cruising tends to be the process of getting on the ship.
It's a hassle that's arguably worse than the process of getting on an airplane because it has a few more steps.
First, you have to park at the port. The difficulty of this effort depends on which terminal at which port you're leaving from. In some cases, you're parking in a garage or land lot adjacent to your ship. In others, you're finding a spot in a lot or garage serving multiple ships, and you may end up fairly far from your cruise ship.
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Once you get to the terminal, checking your bag is easy or you can opt to carry it on. Either way, you must line up, usually by your boarding time, wait in line, show your ticket and ID, and then go through security. That's a little easier than at the airport because you don't have to take off your shoes.
After that, you wait in line to have your boarding pass and passport checked, then you make the walk to your ship. Usually, there's one more check of your boarding pass and then, finally, you are on the ship.
But — before you can truly be on your vacation, you have to do the muster drill. And Carnival Cruise Lines (CCL) -) and Royal Caribbean made major changes to this process after they returned to sailing postpandemic.
Image source: Carnival Cruise Line
How the muster drill at Carnival and Royal Caribbean works
Muster drills are a legal requirement. Before a ship can sail, every passenger needs to know where they need to go in the event of an emergency and what happens in that unlikely event.
Before the covid pandemic, all the major cruise lines handled the muster drill the same way. At a certain time before departure, all ship services would shut down and passengers had to head to their assigned muster spots.
Once everyone — literally every passenger — arrived, various safety info would be shared, including the captain playing the emergency signal and someone at each muster station showing how to put on a life jacket.
It was an awful process, where many passengers ended up waiting outside in the sun for fellow passengers who opted not to show up on time.
Once the major cruise lines got permission to sail after the covid shutdown, social-distancing requirements made gathering all passengers and putting them close to each other a dangerous idea.
So Royal Caribbean (RCL) -), Carnival, and Norwegian Cruise Line switched to a virtual muster where passengers could watch safety videos on their phones or in their cabins and then check in at their assigned muster stations.
This process was easier, requiring no standing around, and made passengers depend only on themselves to comply. Royal Caribbean and Carnival have maintained that system, while Norwegian (NCLH) -) and Disney (DIS) -) have returned to the classic muster drill.
In a recent Facebook post, Carnival Brand Ambassador John Heald addressed whether his cruise line would also make the change.
Will Carnival bring back the classic muster drill?
On his Facebook page, Heald shared an email that a passenger had sent to the cruise line's senior leaders.
"So apparently, ------ Cruise Line is going back to the old and far more logical way of doing muster drills. No reasons have been given, only speculation, but it makes total sense to me and total sense to other professional cruisers all who hope Carnival does the same," the writer said.
Heald made clear that Carnival had no plans to stop using a virtual muster and asked his followers to vote on whether they wanted the cruise line to go back to how things used to be.
The results were overwhelming. Only 2% of voters wanted to return to the classic muster drill while 98% wanted to keep the virtual muster.
Sharon Eshelman Phillips' comments broadly summed up how the vast majority of the more than 1,200 commenters felt.
"The new way is so much easier and quicker. Please do NOT go back! We would be stuck waiting for slowpokes, sweating like crazy and you couldn’t really hear it. The mass exodus was horrible for stairs and elevators. This was is at our leisure and so much more convenient and informative," she wrote.
