If you've recently been annoyed by a surge of notifications popping up from your Royal Caribbean app, you’re not alone.
Cruisers have reported receiving numerous pop-ups on their devices from the mobile app. However, they don't contain any important information. Rather, they're test notifications filled with placeholder text like "head - test segment 1, subtitles - test segment 1, content - test segment 1."
The generic phrases ascended sequentially with each push notification, going from "test segment 1" to "test segment 19" within hours.
Royal Caribbean confirmed they were aware of the pop-ups but didn't say what updates were being made to the mobile app.
"We're sorry you received pop-ups. Our IT team is doing updates on the app. We've let them know guests are receiving notifications. Sorry about that," Royal Caribbean wrote on X.
It seems the random notifications finally subsided around 12:30pm EST.
The random spam of pop-ups left guests confused and irritated
"I thought I was going crazy," CaptGoodvibesNMS commented on a Reddit thread about the glitch, "Now I know it’s RCI losing their marbles."
Another sarcastically wrote, "Make sure you click every single notification, make sure they know we got it."
Amidst the jokes and confusion, others hypothesized as to what the notifications could be related to.
"Do we think these notification issues are related to booking trouble?" asked one Reddit user. "I put some excursions and a soda package into my cart this morning but was unable to check out — I kept getting a 'cart empty' or 'cart rolled away' message on both the app and website."
One user seemed to agree, as they noted they couldn't log into their Royal Caribbean account during the push notification incident.
Personally, whenever I clicked on one of the notifications, I was redirected to a webpage to book flights through Royal Caribbean. This could mean they're working on a feature that allows guests to book Air2Sea flights directly on the app.
Although annoying, the vague notifications resulted in funny memes on social media
The digital hiccup quickly became an inside joke within the cruise community, and forums filled up with sarcastic cracks about the incident.
For example, amishengineer suggested that everyone mark themselves "safe from testing in production," as one might on Facebook after a natural disaster or major event.
Others joked about the notifications like it was a multi-day all-nighter, mimicking the famous SpongeBob SquarePants meme of Mr. Krabs looking frazzled while keeping the Krusty Krab open 24 hours for days in a row.
Another user quipped, "boy oh boy i cant wait for [test] 19, really wonder what surprises it holds."
Royal Caribbean has recently added new features to the app
It seems Royal Caribbean's been playing with its mobile app more than usual lately. Two months ago, they rolled out new app-exclusive badges that denote which ships you've sailed on.
A little over a month later, they enhanced the feature to include destinations. Different regions of the world that Royal Caribbean ships visit are listed, including Bermuda, Perfect Day at CocoCay, Europe, and Mexico.
Although it's a quirky feature that subtly makes guests want to become repeat cruisers, it doesn't add anything practical to the app experience, which may explain why they're playing with a new functional tool.
