A case of mistaken identification cost one family their highly anticipated Royal Caribbean cruise vacation.
A family from North Carolina was booked to sail on a Royal Caribbean ship from Port Canaveral, but were turned away at the cruise terminal.
According to Shannon Nutting, her son was denied boarding because of the type of identification he had.
Her 16-year-old son attempted to use a student ID as his photo identification.
She claims she cleared it was acceptable to use this form of identification before the cruise began with the cruise line.
"He said, unfortunately, you're not going to be able to board today because the school ID is not acceptable," Nutting said in a report to ABC News.
"So, I explained to him that we had talked to Royal Caribbean, and they had assured us that the school ID was valid, and I was upset by that point, crying, so I asked could I speak to a supervisor."
She also said the reason her son had this form of ID was because he has special needs, so it's why he didn't have state-issued ID yet.
"I called to make sure he could board without it. She said she didn't care what he had, and we couldn't board, and she just walked away," Nutting said.
In the end, she and her family were unable to get on the cruise and the ship left without them.
"All that year of saving and paying on it, everybody was just heartbroken and devastated. Everybody was exhausted," Nutting said.
It turned out to be a mistake
Following the debacle at the terminal, Ms. Nutting followed up with Royal Caribbean's offices to figure out what happened.
According to her, Royal Caribbean acknowledged the mistake and said they could fly to Cozumel, Mexico to join the ship there.
"They told her that we should have been able to book. At that point they wanted us to fly to Cozumel. For us to pay to fly to Cozumel and board the ship two days later."
They opted not to do this, and finish out their vacation in Florida.
Royal Caribbean told reporters that this was a human error by staff at the cruise port, and Nutting and her family should have been able to board as they had the right documentation.
Moreover, additional training will be given at the port to prevent similar issues from occurring again.
They offered the Nutting family three options:
- Convert the value of the cruise fare paid into a future cruise credit to use on another sailing, plus a $700 onboard credit.
- Full refund
- Full refund on the cruise, plus a 25% future cruise credit
Nutting said none of the three options were acceptable, because she wanted a refund and to be reimbursed for expenses.
"We wanted the money for the cruise back and the expenses. The expenses that we had for traveling to Florida while we were there for meals, gas, the lodging, and all of that," she said.
Passport is the best and safest form of identification
If you're taking a cruise, you should get a passport to avoid situations like this from occurring in the first place.
It's legal for US citizens sailing on a ship that departs and returns to the same US port to cruise with photo identification and a birth certificate, but situations like what happened to the Nutting family are not unheard of.
In the past, we've seen similar stories of families being denied entry on a cruise because they don't have the right documentation, whether in error or not.
The truth is having a passport is as straightforward as it gets, and no one has been denied entry to a cruise for having a valid and unexpired passport.
Admittedly, passports are expensive for a family to get at first. But they last many years, and it's an investment in your travel future.
You can not only use a passport for cruise ship vacations, but also land trips.
Plus, if you want to try a cruise outside of the United States, it opens up so many other bucket-list options, such as Europe, Australia, and Asia.
