Food from ship on excursions

[dtuleya]

I've seen several people mention that they pack a small collapsible cooler, order from room service the night before and then take food from the ship onshore when they arrive at port. Is this allowable? I thought I saw mention somewhere that it is actually illegal to do this.

 

[pittypat]

We were on the Magic in June and ordered sandwiches the night before to take ashore at Cayman. We had them delivered that morning and I packed them in our small, soft sided cooler and off we went. We had booked our own excursion (not a DCL one) so they, of course, did not care. No one said a word to us as we left the ship. It worked out great for us as our day was full and we had no time to stop and eat.

 

[mum of two pirates]

The PassPorter says this about roomservice. TIP: ----- Be aware that the DCL does not encourage this.

 

[kcashner]

It is not illegal to take food from the ship for excursions OUTSIDE OF THE US. It is illegal to bring any food off the ship with you onto US soil that consists of fresh food, fresh animal products, etc. SO...you can take your lunch off in the Cayman Islands, but you can't bring an apple with you when you disembark at Port Canaveral. You can bring packaged food with you onto US soil--for instance, you can bring a box of apple juice (or a sealed bottle), but not an opened bottle. The regs are US Customs, not DCL policies.

DCL doesn't encourage you to pack a lunch from their food to take it ashore, but they certainly don't do anything to stop you. You can also order cookies from room service or pick up something from Topsider's buffet. DCL's biggest concern is that they don't want to be responsible if you get sick from food that hasn't been properly cooled during your time ashore.

 

[westjones]

This is a good idea. We will try this too.

Sounds like we should take some zip lock bags to pack these in to keep them fresh.

DJ

 

[mobetsy]

One hint: when we ordered room service sandwiches for our non-DCL trip to Coki Beach, I forgot to tell them to skip the chips, so I got nine separate plates with a sandwich and large stack of chips on each You can bet I tipped generously! I should've asked for about 3 with chips and the rest w/o. We also got cookies and took them with us, all of it in ziploc bags stuck in a collapsible insulated bag. Worked really well!

 

[dtuleya]

Thanks for the clarification. Three of the people traveling with me (one being my oldest DS) have Crohn's disease and we don't want to take any chances with local food/water.

 

[muntzfab4]

We did this for our July cruise and it worked out great!

 

[DrCavin]

We saw them stop a woman and her son from taking pizza off the ship in St. Marteen. We had food in our soft-sided cooler & was not stopped or asked what was in the cooler.

 

[wintermom]

I ordered sandwiches and cookies for our day in Nausau from
room service early in the morning. They told me when I ordered
them that I could not take them off the ship. My understanding
was you could not bring food into the US but maybe Nausau
has the same laws? I had read on these boards that lots of
people did this (that was how I got the idea), so I went ahead
and took them in our beach bag. There were no fruits or veggies.
No one said anything to us, hope we didn't do anything wrong,
I was planning on doing the same thing this year.


Wintermom