Online Cruise Check In

We’re coming up on 30 days until our cruise within a week or so! :partying_face:

I am trying to figure out what we need to do/have ready for the online check in. A few questions for anyone who has experience:

  1. Do we need to check in right at midnight to get an early port arrival time? We are taking a Disney shuttle to the ship from the airport Hilton so we can’t control when we get there. Don’t want to be stuck unable to board if the bus gets us there early.

  2. What information do I need to have for each passenger? Passport information?

  3. I also can’t figure out what information they need about vaccinations anymore since there is no required testing. May just go ahead and see if we can input that info to the company/link they sent when testing was still a requirement.

  4. Is there anything else I need like credit card information?

Any help will be greatly appreciated. I can’t believe we’re finally so close!

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Yes, check in right at midnight if you want an early boarding time. You and everyone else will be trying to do the same to make sure to get ready, empty your cookies, flush your cache, have multiple browsers at ready in case one fails. It can be very slow.

Don’t forget to also sign up for activities that open up also at midnight like the princess gathering. I suggest you do this in parallel.

You can control your arrival time if you just take an Uber, it isn’t that expensive.

You will need photos in jpeg for each traveler and also jpegs of the passports too. The system will scan the jpegs for the info so you just have to confirm.

No more vaccination info needed. Thankfully we are way past all the fearmongering.

Yes, you will need credit card info. I think mine was preloaded somehow, maybe from my WDW account. You may also need travel info like arrival and departure flights and hotel addresses depending on your case.

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Thanks so much for the information! What do you mean by photos of each traveller? Like a head shot that I take on my phone of each of us? I’ve never heard of that requirement. Are there rules about the composition of these photos?

And they want a photo of your passports as well? Just the page with the photo?

I can see that this is going to be a pain!

I took photos from the shoulders up with a light color wall in the background with my phone. Like passport photos but homemade.

For the passport book you just need a photo of the main page. For a passport card you need photos of front and back.

(pro tip: use software to reduce the size of your photo so that instead of sending a photo that is 4MB+ in size it is only 50kb. One trick is to send it through Whatsapp then download it, this will automatically reduce the size. This is helpful when you are battling against 4,000 other cruisers at midnight for the fastest connection.)

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These are the instructions for the photo:


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When they say “Do not use any Citizenship ID photo” does that mean you can’t use the same photo that you used for the passport?
Seems like that would be convenient since the requirements are the same.

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That’s exactly how I read it. There may be legal issues with using the same photo, or maybe they just want to have a second photo to compare against.

Since they are taking Disney transportation, they can’t chose their boarding time. We took Disney transportation and were assigned group 3. Initially we were going to uber so when I checked in, the earliest port arrival time I could choose was noon and had a boarding group of 20-something. After switching to the Disney bus, we were given group 3 and were some of the first people to arrive at the port.

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Yes, you can’t use same photo as passport. I just snapped a photo on my phone.

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That would be fantastic! Thanks for the information.

Thanks for posting this. Is there somewhere on the Disney website that I can find this information? All I can see is that I can do online check in 30 days before departure but no information about what is required.

I got this directly from my check-in page. I don’t think it is available anywhere else. It seems like Disney likes to “surprise! it’s midnight and you need a to take selfies of the fam! sweet dreams!” Classic Disney, nothing surprises me anymore.

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It helps to watch a few videos on youtube about the check-in process. It’s easy but it is better to be prepared. Look for someone who actually does a screen share.

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Take headshots of your family before check in. Have photos of passports ready. Basically that’s it. I think I entered my credit card info for charging if it wasn’t already stored. It will ask something to the effect of if you are flying, what day and when your flight arrives and the airline,and when your departing flight is. I know I also entered airline, maybe flight number (but don’t remember), where I was staying before the cruise. I’ve done Disney cruises the last two Octobers and never got up at midnight to check in. This year check in was on a Friday so I got up about an hour early and did it before work. Last year was a weekend and I got up and drank my coffee and checked in at that time. If you are taking Disney transportation to the port, I don’t think there is a need to rush to do the check in.

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If you have kids, it will ask if your child can get off the ship without you. My DS is 13 but I put that he could only get on and off the ship with us. I think if you are traveling with another stateroom, you’d be able to add them as people who can take your kid off the ship.

I’ll add that I tend to start the online check in on my computer but end up finishing on my phone for some reason. Maybe because that’s where my pictures are???

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Thanks everyone for all the help and suggestions! DH went on at midnight Wednesday night and easily completed the whole check in in about twenty minutes. We did get automatically slotted into Boarding Group 3 because of the Disney ground transportation. Shrinking the photos by downloading them through WhatsApp was a great success. So glad you guys told me about needing the pictures. I am amazed that there is nothing obvious on the website telling you what you actually need to complete the online check in!

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Oh my gosh, this is exactly how I felt last night! At least for us it was 9:00 and not midnight. Luckily, I had snapped a bunch of selfies when I was trying new glassess out and used one of those for me.

I was completely unprepared for the check-in process @paulasc. Clearly I should have read this thread before I had to do it! We are sailing out of San Diego and providing our own transport, but we also got BG 3!

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When we sailed several years ago and took Disney transport, they did not arrive at the ship till 1 o’clock. But everyone here is saying you get boarding group 3. So are they arriving sooner now?

We left the airport Hyatt before 9:30 and were at the cruise terminal before 11:00. That was the first bus out from the hotel. DH went down to the lobby about 8:00 to check us in for the transport and picked the earliest one.

They were a bit late starting boarding but we were still on the ship by about 11:45.

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Our plan is to stay at the Hyatt at the airport as well. Thank you for the information.

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