DCL Has Their Protocol Out!!!

Right, which means # of staterooms open is a bit of a red herring when talking about capacity. Even in “normal” (pre-covid) times, there could be empty staterooms on a full ship. While someone may have a choice of 6 staterooms when booking does not mean DCL will take 6 more reservations for all those rooms.

595241

If communism is just a red herring and Disney obscuring staterooms is a red herring, then Disney is communist . . .
 
It’s possible the inside staterooms are taken up to allow social-distancing by crew, not filled with passengers. Plus # of staterooms is misleading because there could be 1-2 passengers in a room or 4-5.



WDW gave an initial 35% capacity figure but never clarified - % of what? - max capacity, average seasonal attendance, etc. They haven’t really given anything specific.
35% of max I would think. By definition, capacity is the max something can hold. That would apply whether it’s a ship, a park, a restaurant, a hospital, a car or a bucket of spackle.
 
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35% of max I would think.
I agree. But my point was Disney rarely clarifies such things. 35% sounds like quite a reduction and very low crowds, but if average attendance at a guven time is 50% of max, that 35% isn’t nearly as reduced as it first sounds.

DCL is similar. They rarely sailed pre-pandemic with rooms available. But that didn’t mean max capacity in terms of the total number of passengers onboard. So Covid “reduced” may or may not be a considerable difference except during peak holidays.
 


FYI, Royal Caribbean announced today that everyone will need to take a covid test prior to sailing, including all vaccinated passengers and as of August 12th this applies to all sailings even three and four night.
 
FYI, Royal Caribbean announced today that everyone will need to take a covid test prior to sailing, including all vaccinated passengers and as of August 12th this applies to all sailings even three and four night.
Do you know what type of test they will require?
 
I agree. But my point was Disney rarely clarifies such things. 35% sounds like quite a reduction and very low crowds, but if average attendance at a guven time is 50% of max, that 35% isn’t nearly as reduced as it first sounds.

DCL is similar. They rarely sailed pre-pandemic with rooms available. But that didn’t mean max capacity in terms of the total number of passengers onboard. So Covid “reduced” may or may not be a considerable difference except during peak holidays.

True. That's why WDW hasn't felt as empty as we all hoped it would be over the past year.
I think the ship's overall capacity is more complicated. People are able to choose their own cabins so that means indirectly choosing thier muster station which has capacity limits, even if overall the ship isn't at capacity. Also the kids' clubs have capacity limits too so booking availability with children can vary according to age.
I've tried booking a cabin that I know for certain sleeps 4 but it wouldn't allow me to book 4 of us in it. It would allow 2 adults but not available if I searched as 2 adults/2 kids. It would allow 2 adults and 1 child age 9 but not as 2 adults with 1 child age 12.
I would think that now in the post covid cruising world, they'd be a bit more at liberty to move people around as needed and cite covid as an acceptable reason.

Still, all ships have a max capacity listed among their specs. If a ship's capacity is let's say 2400, then they should base it on a % of the ship's capacity. Even if it doesn't feel so empty, at least they would be being up front about their numbers, which as a pp mentioned, other cruise lines are doing. The fact that DCL is being so secretive it will drive people away for sure. Trust is a 2-way street. It is hard to trust when you know important information is deliberately being withheld. I am considering a cruise 3 weeks from today but I'm waiting to hear from people who are sailing next week. Being on open deck isn't so bad but being forced in a crowded indoor space, even masked, is not cool.
If they were proud of how they were limiting passengers, they would announce it. It would be popping up all over their website. I have a hunch that they're not.
They are crazy to think that people won't notice or won't care how reduced it is.

Here are the specs on the Dream.
Disney Dream Cruise Deals and Deck Plans | CruisesOnly
 


Do you know what type of test they will require?
PCR or Antigen (Again this is for ROYAL)

FOR SAILINGS 5 NIGHTS OR LONGER

All guests age 2 and older — regardless of vaccination status — will need to take a COVID-19 test (PCR or antigen) with an accredited test provider, such as a drugstore chain or diagnostic lab, no more than 3 days before arriving at the terminal for embarkation. Guests will need to show their negative test result upon arriving at the terminal. The results can be printed out, or can be presented on your phone, such as the email result from your test provider. Costs associated with this test are the guests' responsibility.

FOR SAILINGS 4 NIGHTS OR LESS

All guests age 2 and older will need to take the pre-cruise test as outlined above. However, on these shorter sailings, guests who are fully vaccinated may choose to provide proof of vaccination in order to be exempt from this test. For short sailings departing on or after August 12, this exemption will not be granted, and vaccinated guests will be required to take this test.
 
FYI...Norwegian has won their injunction against the state of FL...cruise lines are now free to require vaccinations.

Still reading the order, will post further details once I figure them out.

I predict DCL will release protocols for the Fantasy in the next few days....
 
FYI...Norwegian has won their injunction against the state of FL...cruise lines are now free to require vaccinations.

Still reading the order, will post further details once I figure them out.

I predict DCL will release protocols for the Fantasy in the next few days....

While I don't think requiring vaccines is so necessary for land-based businesss, I think it's essential to keep cruise ships sailing.
Cruising was already a giant germ-fest. Now with covid, they really need to do all they can to keep covid off the ships or all this gearing up and prepping to return to sailing will have been a waste. When ships are full of covid, like FL is right now, no one will want to sail. It would be shut down.
 
So in conversing with some lawyer-friends on other forums, it seems that the injunction is narrow to apply to Norwegian and only Norwegian. That said, I wonder if other cruise lines will still requiring vaccines knowing that if NCL got an injunction, then FL would not dare try to enforce the law against another cruise line.

The wait continues.
 
FYI...Norwegian has won their injunction against the state of FL...cruise lines are now free to require vaccinations.
Right now I think the injunction only applies to the plaintiffs in the case (NCL and subsidiaries), but I imagine other cruise lines will file to join too.
 
Update just dropped

Only applies to Dream still

"Know before you go"
"Pre cruise checklist"
I wonder if this has anything to do with the reports from yesterday with people being turned away because they did not do all the necessary pre-cruise testing.
 
"Know before you go"

Addition: "In order to sail, every Guest 18 years of age and older must individually create an account associated with their reservation on the Safe Passage Website by Inspire Diagnostics"

"Pre Cruise Checklist"

Addition: The whole page is new
 
"Know before you go"

Addition: "In order to sail, every Guest 18 years of age and older must individually create an account associated with their reservation on the Safe Passage Website by Inspire Diagnostics"

"Pre Cruise Checklist"

Addition: The whole page is new
I bet that people thought they only needed one Safe Passage account per stateroom and the other 18+ in the room didn't create one.

When I created my account, both my kids appeared automatically. My wife had to create her own account, but once she did, her info appeared in my account as well.
 
So I just completed my Online Check In for the upcoming Dream cruise on 9/13. We did the Safe Passage app on day 32 where you enter you vaccination information (dates, vaccine type etc) and then about 2 days later you get a go/no go. We got a “Go” and a QR code from Safe Passage, and printed that out. The Safe Passage was quite easy, just have the info in front of you.
Now on the Check In, while it’s was not difficult, it was also not a breeze. The first mistake I made was waiting for Day 30 – I was thinking that as soon as my Disney Cruise app said 30 days I could check in – alas no. I had set my alarm for midnight as my app counted day from day 31 towards day 30. When it hit 30 I tried my check in and it wouldn’t work. After about twenty seconds it dawned on me that while the app said 30 days, it also had 23 hours left. Rats – can’t check in till tomorrow midnight!
So the nexy day, after setting two alarms, I was at the computer at midnight as the app counter down to day 29. Then I was able to start the Online check-in process.
Staring off is the Guest Info section. First snag was Disney Cruise Line still wanted to use my address from five years ago, although I’ve entered and edited my new address many times, and had three DCL cruise from the new address. Go figure. Then you had to post a picture of yourself. I had already taken a headshot picture of myself and one of the DW. Of course the Check-In didn’t like either of them for some reason, so I retook a selfie of myself and cropped it and it worked. The DW was sound asleep, so I cropped her picture and the app STILL didn’t like it, but accepted it upon review. Then you had to enter the passport info. I had scanned both passports in anticipation, but guess what – the app won’t take a scan, it has to be a picture. So I took pictures of both and entered them and that worked. I entered phone number, emergency contact info etc etc, and hit Save. Well it bounced as the app didn’t like the country code. I had entered “01”, but no it insisted on just “1”. So I hit save again, and it bounced again. The app would let me manually enter the expiration date of my passport, which I had done. You had to use there little calendar to do so. So I went back and did that. Finally that worked. So that whole Guest Information process took at least 30 minutes.
Next was On Board account. This should be easy right? No – as when I opend this section up the area for credit card info was not working and the buffering circle just went round and round for literally a minute. So I hit the back arrow, praying I won’t have to start the whole process from scratch. But luckily it went back to OnBoard Account and when I opened it up finally the credit card info showed up. After that 2 minutes and done.
Third section was Travel Plans – 30 seconds max
Fourth section was Port Arrival time. We are the kind of cruisers that like to arrive at dawn, but everything I had seen so far showed the earliest port arrival time as around 1pm-ish, with many folks getting 3pm port arrival times. So when I clicked on the button I was super happy to see there was an 11:15 to 11:30 arrival time open. This had to be because I was doing this at midnight as the clock turned to 30 days
 
Then you had to enter the passport info. I had scanned both passports in anticipation, but guess what – the app won’t take a scan, it has to be a picture. So I took pictures of both and entered them and that worked.

Was your scanned passport a PDF? I'm wondering if there is a restriction on PDFs vs JPEGs for uploads.

I have scanned our passports as JPEG, and taken photos as well. The scanned JPEGs are better quality than the photos I took. I plan to try the scanned JPEGs first.
 
Was your scanned passport a PDF? I'm wondering if there is a restriction on PDFs vs JPEGs for uploads.

I have scanned our passports as JPEG, and taken photos as well. The scanned JPEGs are better quality than the photos I took. I plan to try the scanned JPEGs first.
Our passports are scanned as jpeg and it worked for me. Still says pending though. We recently booked for Aug 27. It didn’t reject our photos at any point so I guess that’s a good sign.
 

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