Heading on to a cruise ship is the holiday of a lifetime for many looking to travel the world, as it’s a comfortable and relaxing way to head to multiple destinations around the globe.
And you can pretty easily do this in style, with the most modern vessels effectively floating cities at this point.
As with any holiday, there are a couple of pointers and tips those experienced in cruising recommend you bring in to your holiday when planning. Yet, one of the most popular hacks has just been banned by cruise line Royal Caribbean.
Royal Caribbean rule change and ban
One of the most popular tips when it comes to holidaying on a cruise ship is to get around the lack of plug sockets in your cabin.
Often, they can come with just one plug socket for the entire room, which can be an issue when you have a cabin of a few adults and children, if you’re on a family trip.
More modern ships have moved with the times, though, equipped with a few as well as USB and USB-C ports.
To get around this, cruise ship content creators across the world have time and time again recommended taking a ‘must have’ gadget – the universal plug adapter and extension lead.
Bradley Jones, who has been on 50 cruise ship holidays, said the devices were his one must-have when heading on to a cruise.
But for those trying to get around the lack of access points, you’re now out of luck with Royal Caribbean after the cruise line banned extension leads on safety grounds.
What do the rules say?
Over on the Royal Caribbean website, the company explains the rules.
The company says that electrical extension cords ‘including power strips / surge protected strips and multi-plug outlets’ are banned.
“We do allow consumer type power conversion device USB charger (multi-plug blocks on which the outputs are for USB cables),” the cruise line notes.
But it adds that devices must be stamped with US / Europe recognised ‘Conformance Marking’ to demonstrate compliance with Electrical Safety standards.
While this is on their website, reports online suggest that the rule has been in place for longer than stated with it enforced on a sporadic basis. Some have said they’ve never had an issue while others said their devices were taken off of them at departure.
The travel hack was used by many travelling with Royal Caribbean; the world’s second-largest cruise line carrying millions of passengers across the globe every single year.
But now it’s off limits, with reports of the item in question being confiscated in recent weeks.
Everyone loves a holiday hack, whether that’s the best thing to do on a cruise ship that you’re missing out on or simply how to bring down costs.
But one particular way to bring down costs is now not permitted on any Royal Caribbean ship, with it banned under ‘cybersecurity and deliberate electronic crime’ reasoning.
It’s all to do with Wi-Fi. And if you know anything about cruise ships, you’l know how expensive it can be.
One Royal Caribbean cruise ship worker, Bryan James, revealed just how expensive it is, costing him $12 for ‘just three hours coverage’. That only got him a download speed of less than 2MB per second, too.
“It can then worsen depending on how many people are using the service,” Bryan explained.
One YouTube user posted: “What I am hearing is that, if you are working on a cruise ship, you should download a tonne of videos to a hard drive for entertainment.”
Considering the average download speed in the UK is now almost 70MB per second, and the average monthly cost being less than £30, it’s not the most competitive.
For customers, prices start at $15.99 (£12.50) per device, per day, according to the cruise line’s own website.
To get around big costs, especially if you’ve got multiple devices, passengers have brought on travel routers, which when connected to a Wi-Fi network, act as a portable Wi-Fi network for you to connect multiple devices to.
That way, you’re paying for one fee but able to connect as many devices as the router will allow you.
Enforcing the ban
In reality, travel routers have always been banned on Royal Caribbean ships. The issue was that it was really difficult to stop it.
Taking the matter more seriously, the router has been officially added to the banned item list on the cruise line’s website.
The reason for this is due to potential links to ‘cybersecurity’ issues and ‘deliberate electronic crime’.
Now, multiple social media groups from the cruising community have reported that these routers are being confiscated at the point of boarding when luggage is scanned.
Carnival Cruise Line has also put routers on its prohibited items list, with passengers reporting having their devices taken from them upon check-in.
The shocking incident happened on the Princess Cruise ship, the Ruby Princess, while it was approaching San Fransisco in California.
Authorities reported that a man, aged 72, fell overboard before the approach at around 7.00am local time on Monday (2 December).
Ruby Princess was on a five-day holiday to Mexico when the incident happened, with the trip having began on 27 November.
The disappearance of the man was only reported when the cruise ship docked in the city, with crew realising he was unaccounted for.
As a result, he is feared to have fallen overboard, with other alternatives ‘ruled out’.
Not identified at this stage, he is now feared to have died in the incident with it being some time since he was last seen.
A Princess Cruise spokesperson said: “Princess worked throughout the day with local authorities.
“CCTV footage has also been extensively reviewed and the ship was searched thoroughly several times without success.
“Having ruled out other possibilities, this is being treated as a man overboard incident.”
The spokesperson added that everyone at the cruise line ‘extends their heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of the guest who was travelling alone’.
US Customs and Border Protection has since taken over the investigation into the incident with the ship now docked in California.
San Francisco TV station KRON4 has also reported that the United States Coast Guard is searching the area via plane, with the search happening up to 45 miles off the coast of nearby Monterey.
Hunter Schnabel, of the Coast Guard, said: “What information we have to go off kind of does make it a little more difficult.
“To search a wide area of the ocean does take a lot of time and there is a lot that goes into that.”
The Ruby Princess has since departed San Fransisco for a 16-day holiday to Hawaii, with more than 4,000 people voyaging on the vessel.
In October, a woman died after falling overboard from the MSC Virtuosa as it sailed near the Channel Islands off the coast of the UK.
British and French police launched an investigation into the matter in an attempt to determine what happened.
Founded in 1968, Royal Caribbean is one of the world’s leading cruise lines working out of Miami, Florida, taking millions of people around the globe every year on a wide range of holiday offerings.
The company’s flagship ship – Wonder of the Seas – can carry more than 7,000 passengers.
There’s also Serenade of the Seas, which is used by Royal Caribbean’s for its Ultimate World Cruise where it travels right around the world for nine months straight.
There is also a tonne of vital work done that passengers will never see; the behind the scenes jobs that keep the ship well oiled in every sense.
That includes drill work in case of extreme events such as a fire.
Things are obviously a little different if such an event happened at sea, given you can’t just walk away from it like you could on the high street. This is where safety drills are put in to action and staff become essential to controlling risks faced by you on board.
But such an event is not top of the list of worries when it comes to life on Royal Caribbean cruise ships.
No, that goes to another phenomenon that doesn’t happen on board the ship at all. And it’s ‘unforeseen’, which is terrifying.
The top spot goes to the storms that cannot be tracked.
“You’re anticipating, where’s the storm going to be? Where’s my ship going to be? What am I going to do with my ship,” according to Craig Seltzer, who has worked as Royal Caribbean’s Chief Meteorologist for the last nine months.
Speaking to Mark Sudduth of Hurricane Track over on YouTube, Seltzer explained that there is real difficulty when it comes to tropical storms and hurricanes moving across multiple itineraries planned for the ship.
The ship has to physically avoid these if they can, which includes docking at ports not planned – a logistical nightmare for those trying to find space.
He said ‘you want to get tropical storms from the beginning’ with a big push on long term forecasting, which includes risk management of different outcomes.
On top of the two regular weather patterns monitored – which are port weather and voyage weather – there is the fear of unforeseen weather events.
The problem with this is the inability to properly monitor the weather from shore due to how far out in the ocean storms can be happening.
Micro-bursts of stormy weather form part of this phenomenon; something Seltzer himself experienced when he’d only been on the job for a month.
He’d checked in with one of the ship’s captains and believing everything was fine with winds at 40 knots.
An hour later, the captain called him to say winds were now up to 65 knots. That’s 46mph to 74mph, so quite a big difference and pretty bloody windy.
Seltzer said: “I’m like, what is happening? It’s ahead of what the forecast was.
“It’s not even near what the forecast was, and it’s higher than what the forecast was.”
Such events can cause big problems for a cruise ship, with the sudden change in gusts potentially blowing deck chairs around on the top decks.
Cruise ships are incredibly popular holidays, with thousands of passengers taken across the world at any one time via the engineering marvels.
Ranging from a few days to a nine month around the world expedition, there are a variety of options and destinations to choose from when it comes to deciding on what cruise ship you wish to spend your down time on.
With 50 holidays on cruise ships under his belt by the time he turned 30, Bradley loves nothing more than heading on to the open seas for a bit of rest and recreation.
Starting off on family cruises when he was a child, he started cruising as an adult once he turned 18 and hasn’t looked back since, celebrating his 30th birthday on board Princess Cruises’ €950 million (£812 million) Sun Princess.
Bradley, from Wales, has achieved ‘elite’ status due to his expeditions, with it giving him a number of hidden perks he can take advantage of every time he heads back on board a cruise.
And after experiencing so many cruises, he also knows a thing or two are the secret costs that’ll leave you significantly out of pocket.
No, it’s a pretty standard device. A plug. But not just any plug.
“In a cabin you’ve quite limited some times, especially on an inside cabin. And you’ve got to charge the phones, the kid’s iPads, my hair dryer, straighteners.”
Bradley revealed that many people get caught out, not realising that the cruise ship you’re catching does not have the same plugs as the location that boarding takes place.
He explained: “Some of these companies, such as Princess or Cunard, some of them are American.
“When people catch these ships in Southampton they automatically think they’re British so they take British plugs.
“Last time we cruised there was a British couple who said ‘I didn’t even think, I thought there would be normal British plugs’. That little thing is huge, people need that.”
