Guests with Royal Caribbean cruises scheduled for later this year are seeing check-in times that are later than usually offered by the cruise line.
A number of sailings for November and December 2020 are showing cruise check-in times that go as late as 5:30pm.
Check-in times for Adventure of the Seas December 4, 2020 sailing
Check-in times for Mariner of the Seas November 20, 2020 sailing
Check-in times for Oasis of the Seas November 29, 2020 sailing
Prior to Royal Caribbean suspending its sailings in March, the latest check-in time for most sailings was early afternoon. Typically, Royal Caribbean ships would depart in the mid to late afternoon.
There has been speculation that one of the new procedures Royal Caribbean may adopt in order to foster social distancing during the check-in process is to spread guests out with more check-in times.
In the weeks before cruises shutdown, Royal Caribbean was already thoroughly sanitizing the cruise ship terminal before and after every sailing. They also added special sanitizing of high traffic areas onboard the ship.
The extra cleaning takes time, which may require cruise ships to push back their departure times in order to accommodate all of these (and other possible) changes.
Royal Caribbean has only hinted at a few possible changes it will embrace once cruises resume. The cruise line is still developing its full set of policies and procedures, which will not be announced until at least the end of September.
Thanks to RoyalCaribbeanBlog readers Thomas Bissland, Meagan Mapson, Joanne Griffith & Judy Carson for their assistance in this post.
