The airport Hyatt was super convenient. We actually flew in two days before the cruise (luckily avoiding the snowstorm) and our flight was super late. It was so nice to just walk from baggage claim to the hotel at midnight!
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Currently trying to do online check-in and getting slammed with issues. I appreciate all the advice in this thread because I was ready to go. Uploading the photos was easy-peasy and I was able to get past that page no issues.
But the site is just lagging all over the place for everything else, erasing info randomly when I scroll down to the next set of fields, and then once I finally make it down to hit Save just blips and takes me to the top of the form sometimes erasing everything and some other times just spinning endlessly. I did figure out after a bunch of attempts that it was saving things if I went completely out of the check-out & back in. I’m now currently stuck on the final Cruise Contract. I cannot get it to load and this is my 5th-6th attempt & it just spins & times out my login after a few minutes and it unfortunately isn’t saving. And this is just stateroom 1 of 2 
Also, I cannot see Online check-in available when I am logged into my account on a laptop (tried on two different ones using Chrome). The only place I can get the button to pull up Online Check-In is the app on my phone (where I am having all the issues as and then it takes me to a browser. So I’ve been trying to pull up this info on a laptop to see if that will help but I can’t even get that in. Oh well, the cruise will be worth it & it’s not like we were trying to get an early time (we will be driving down from Orlando the morning before we board so noon (which is was the earliest available when I was able to pull up port times finally) is more than reasonable.
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I did a cruise in January and I never could get the web version to respond. I had to do it on my phone. Which was a pain because the documents I needed were on my computer. Lots of grumbling in the cruise’s FB group that night.
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I felt better once I logged into my cruise’s FB group while waiting on endless spinning & saw that I was not alone in my misery.
I was ready to give up because I hadn’t gotten it to load a page at all in an hour. But then about 20 min. ago I decided to try one last time and I was able to get in & finish the one stateroom on a computer (finally! I had everything saved on a file in my phone but all the info after that is much easier to enter on a browser and I was struggling so much with doing it on my phone. And then after that I was able to finish the second room in less than 15 min from documents to port arrival time. So maybe enough people gave up that I was able to get through. But seriously, that was the worst. But now we’re all checked in! Now I just have to nag the other 2 families coming with us to do their check-ins tomorrow so they can have port arrival times close to ours.
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The online check in leaves so much to be desired. It’s terrible. It took us 2 hours and we said never again. We will just wait until the next day and do it at a normal hour. There were 5 cruises checking in and the site kept crashing.
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Luckily for me the madness all started at 10pm my time and we are usually night owls, most especially on weekends, so I wasn’t staying up much later than I normally would. But definitely next time, I’m going to give it its first 2-4 hours to throw it’s conniption and then try before my late bedtime for hopefully much less agony.
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Just checked in for our second cruise now and it was far and away a much better experience now that the check-in is tired by Castaway Club (loyalty) status. I was done with both staterooms that we need for our group of 6 in 14 minutes with boarding group 8, port arrival time 11:45am.
Like the first time, I had all our selfie photos and passports prepared (compressed via sending to myself in WhatsApp) ahead of time & uploading the photos was absolutely seamless and was done within 7-8 minutes for both.
A couple of things I did differently than the first time that made it go even faster:
- I did one stateroom on my phone through the app and the other on a laptop browser.
- Did not stop and complete every field available, only the bare minimum to get to port arrival time.
The bare minimum
Guest information
Basic info for each guest (name, address, DOB, emergency contact & uploading their identification & selfie photo). Anything that could apply to more than one person in the stateroom (i.e. emergency contact, address) allowed you to select that it applied to the other guests in the room without having to manually enter the details again. Everything in this section was mandatory & could not move to next without filling out every field & uploading both ID and selfie photo. For all minors, it was asked if their parent/guardian was traveling. For both me and DD10 it asked if we would be 24 weeks pregnant at the time of sailing.
Onboard Account
Payment on file. You just need to have one payment form saved here and every guest needs to have either a payment form or a checkbox that the primary guest guest will be covering their charges. DCL was able to pull up the cc on file with my Disney account and I just had to add a few extras (like CCV). And then I was able to select the other people in the room that the cc would cover charges for. I did not bother with adding any one else’s charging privileges at this time and for the 2nd stateroom I did, I was able to check that the primary guest in the first stateroom would be covering all charges for the 2nd room too.
I went back later after getting a port arrival time & accurately added who I wanted to have charging privileges and made it so that both mine & DH’s staterooms had the card added instead of just one of us paying for both (wasn’t sure if having just one adult be the only one covering charges would mess with the ability for the other of us to be able to charge to the room or not).
Traveling with Children
The only thing I needed to select here was how I wanted to handle my children debarking.
There were 2 options:
- The children were only authorized to debark with the adult(s) in their stateroom
or - Other adults that I was linked to/traveling with could take the kids off the ship.
Since DH & I are in separate staterooms for the booking we did want 2 but that had more steps to do the actual authorizations, so I clicked option 1 to get to the next page.
I came back later and did all the authorizations so we can each come & go with all our kids on the ship. This page also is where the Oceaneer club registration can be done ahead of time. Again, it wasn’t required to get to the port arrival time, so I skipped it and came back later to fill it out (asks a couple of questions about each kid depending on their age & for a secret word that they will ask you when you pick-up kids). You can also authorize any other adults you’re traveling with to pick-up kids from the kids club (I had to select that DH would be authorized for pick-up for the kids in my stateroom & vice versa for the kids in DH’s stateroom).
Travel Plans
Enter travel plans before/after so DCL can coordinate transfers & debarkation process.
None of the before plans are required so I left that section blank.
It was required to select how I would be debarking (i.e. using private transportation, driving a car left parked at the terminal, catching a flight) and then give details for that plan (i.e. flight number, airport if flying). I think you could also select a WDW resort too from a dropdown and maybe that’s quickest.
Since we’re parking a rental car at port to drive back to Orlando after, I selected driving a car left parked at the port. It asked for a destionation address, but also had a handy checkbox to “Use home address” so I did that.
Again, any of this info you can go back & edit later to your actual plans & the goal the first time through is to pick quick things to get to your port arrival time quickly. You could also have your actual accurate plans with flight numbers, airports, times, destinations and hotel addresses ready to copy & paste quickly.
Port Arrival & Cruise Contract
Then you finally get to port arrival time where you can pick the soonest one available and click next to the final page. The only thing to do on the final page is accept the terms of the cruise contract. This page can be finnicky to load and gave me SUCH grief when I was checking in on our first cruise. All the screens gave me a hard time that first time checking in but this one would totally error out trying to load and I’d have to start all over. Tonight it was night & day difference and it loaded within seconds and I was able to scroll, click accept and get the actual damned port time I selected on the screen prior.
Hopefully this smoother experience is the norm now with the tiered check-in because this was a much better experience this time around with only the other silver members trying too.
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What time do bookings and check-in open? I remember someone saying midnight but is that Eastern time?
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Yes, it’s midnight eastern time for both.
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Nice! Finally benefits us on the west coast for once. 
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Yes!!! I remember when pre-selecting your 3/day FPP was 60 days in advance at midnight eastern. Those were the days.
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Can you clarify what exactly is the bare minimum for the port arrival time? Or is everything you listed necessary?
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Each section above is the name of a page of the Online Check-In. I tried to detail what was required and then anything that I said I went back & did later was not required of me to get a port arrival time (or I picked options that were faster than what I actually wanted just to get to port arrival time faster).
But to maybe more succinctly recap what’s required…
In Guest Info > everything was required, especially the ID and photo uploads.
After that it was just a matter of adding the minimum & skipping the extra.
Payment info (and checking boxes for each person in the stateroom to be covered by that payment info) was required for Onboard Account.
For Traveling with Kids, the only thing I was required to select was how to authorize them debarking (only with adults in stateroom or authorize other adults on reservations linked to mine). This one I’m not sure will pop up like this if you only have one stateroom with your whole family. Nothing else here was required so if that question isn’t included, just continue to the next screen.
In Travel Plans, this is the screen that can be the most time-intensive so you’ll want to click whatever’s fastest or have your details ready to copy/paste. The pre-cruise plans were not at all required so you can leave those blank. What was required was selecting method for debarkation & providing the details for your destination (i.e. if you picked flight, all your flight details would go in there, if you picked Another Hotel/Address you would have to provide the address). I selected we would be driving a car left parked at the terminal (we actually will be) to leave & it only asked for the destination address, but also I could just click the checkbox “Use Home Address” & it was all done).
Once I had those bare minimum details, I could select a port arrival time. And the first time I tried to just click next to the port arrival page I hadn’t entered any travel plans or a credit card and it did technically let me go to the Port Arrival page, it just showed as locked with no way to pick one. Once I went back and added the cc fully & the travel plans, then the port arrival times appeared.
Hope that helps.
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Thanks! That is helpful. On RCL the photos and passports were not required for just the port time. So I will be prepared!
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One other question: how did the arrival time work with two cabins? Did you have to complete both cabin forms before you were assigned your arrival time? Or was it independent for each? in which case, what happens if it’s a different time?
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It’s this one.
The official verbiage is that if you have two times for one group, you all wait to board at the latest time. It depends on how early your time if they strictly enforce that. If it’s on the earlier end (i.e. 11am-12pm-ish), they’ll likely make you stick to the policy. If you have two later times, then (depending on the port and the day), they’re a lot more likely to just let you enter freely. There comes a certain point in boarding when they aren’t as overwhelmed and those arriving after 12:30-1pm-ish can just show up and waltz on through without too much fuss of which 15 min. arrival window you grabbed on check-in. But it’s definitely dependent on the port & what kind of day they’ve already had (i.e. if the ship was delayed coming into port & customs then they’re liking running behind all around and everything will be a bit later).
If you’re doing the cabins one right after the other (or doing each one on two different devices which is what I did this time), at worst case you’ll be in adjacent arrival windows & can just go at the very end of the first window which will be the start of the second window.
The only time you’ll have times more apart than that is if something goes catastrophically wrong after you get one room but are still processing the other or you just check-in one room, call it good, and then the next day realize you didn’t get your second room done.
Also, if for any reason you want to be able to have one stateroom go earlier, they totally have an area where you can hang back before pictures & gangway entrance, very much like an airport boarding gate area, where the first group can sit back & wait for the 2nd group to catch-up. But this would only be an option I would execute if for some reason we just couldn’t all hang back outside and had port arrival times more than one or two time slots apart.
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Can you clarify what ID had to be uploaded for children, if any? Our passports for two of our kids are still in process and may not arrive by the check-in day (but should arrive well in advance of departure). We don’t need passports necessarily but I believe we need birth certificates to board — or at least to disembark at a port? Since we’re not disembarking in Mexico, do we even need that?
Best answer is here https://disneycruise.disney.go.com/guest-services/passport-travel-documentation/
US Citizens (Including Children)
- Original valid US Passport
- Original valid US Passport Card
- Original valid Trusted Traveler Card (NEXUS, FAST)
OR
- Original or copy of their state-issued birth certificate AND a physical Government-issued photo ID (digital/mobile state-issued IDs are not acceptable to sail)
- Puerto Rico birth certificates issued prior to 7/1/10 are not acceptable
- Hospital-issued birth certificates are not acceptable
- Original Consular Report of Birth Abroad issued by the Department of State AND a physical Government-issued photo ID (digital/mobile state-issued IDs are not acceptable to sail)
- Original Certificate of Naturalization issued by US Citizenship and Immigration Services AND a physical Government-issued photo ID (digital/mobile state-issued IDs are not acceptable to sail)
Children 15 years of age and younger are required to present one of the documents listed above, but do not need to present a Government-issued photo ID.
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Thanks! This is the list I was going off of. The question though is whether this is needed at the 30-day online checkin, or when arriving for embarkation, and/or when leaving the ship at a foreign port?
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Fair enough. I think that’s the list of what documentation to bring with you. I don’t know about the Disney online check-in (haven’t sailed DCL in many years) process. RCL wanted us to upload just cell phone photos.
I do know that for ports, ships always tell you to bring government ID (for those who have it) - in case of so many things, like a mishap/emergency or missing the ship. I’d think as a parent you should at least take the birth certificate for the kids.
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