Some would argue that having to go back home on the final day of your cruise counts as the worst part of cruising. It's admittedly not fun as after a few days, a week, or even longer of being on vacation, nobody likes having to get up early and drag their luggage back to their car, a rideshare, a cab, or an airport shuttle.
Still, Royal Caribbean (RCL) , Carnival (CCL) , and their associated brands have made that process pretty easy. You can either leave your tagged luggage outside your room on the final night or simply carry if off when the ship gets cleared at the port.
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Boarding, however, still comes with all sorts of hassles. The luggage part is relatively easy as you can check your bag at the curb or opt to carry it on yourself.
Getting through the terminal takes a bit of effort as you have to go through a metal detector and a station where you show your boarding documents and passport, but it's as streamlined as possible. Once you get on the ship, however, a number of hassles begin.
Image source: Royal Carribbean
Royal Caribbean works to improve boarding
You have to figure out how to login to the internet if you bought a package and anyone with a premium dining plan needs to make dinner reservations. That second step can be a hassle. If you buy the Ultimate Dining Plan (UDP), you are entitled to dinner at a specialty restaurant every night and lunch on sea days.
Making those reservations can be a tedious process. You have to either visit a specialty dining restaurant or a desk setup on the Royal Promenade to make your reservations. That's a slow process based on the computer system staff members use to enter your information.
If there's someone in line ahead of you, it's possible to spend a half hour, or longer, getting the process completed. That's time where you should be on vacation where you're dealing with what are essentially administrative details.
It's a flawed process which Royal Caribbean has a plan to fix, according to Matt Hochberg of the Royal Caribbean Blog. Royal Caribbean Chief Product Innovation Officer Jay Schneider addressed the problems in an October meeting at Royal Caribbean headquarters
"We spent a lot of time researching with guests what their day one experience is. And what we've learned in that journey is that there is a lot of heavy lifting that the Royal Promenade today takes, that we wish it didn't," he said.
Royal Caribbean making day one improvements
Royal Caribbean seems to understand that the current system puts stress on passengers making the first part of their vacation the worst part.
"They want to start their vacation. They don't want to go find a Voom desk," Schneider said.
To fix the problem, Royal Caribbean plans to allow passengers with a dining plan to make reservations through the app before they board the ship. That's how passengers reserving individual restaurants do it currently, and the cruise line plans to make that change for UDP passengers later this year (although it has not announced a specific timetable).
In addition, on its newest ship, Icon of the Seas, Royal Caribbean has streamlined the process of accessing its Voom internet packages. Under the old system, passengers had to create an account and then login.
The new system simply connects anyone to the Voom internet system once they board the ship.
Royal Caribbean has also added an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant to its app that can answer many common questions. When it does not have the answer, it can connect passengers to live support.
"Being able to text someone from your pool deck chair or your swim-up bar seat is where we'd much rather you be [on vacation]," Schneider said.
