Now that cruising is finally opening back up and more and more people are getting ready for embarkation day, we have all been asking ourselves: what is embarkation day like in 2021? Will there be long lines to board the ship? Where do you have to wear a mask in the cruise terminal and onboard a cruise ship? This post details our experience for Embarkation Day onboard the Celebrity Edge in early July 2021. I hope you find it helps you plan what to expect for your embarkation process!
One of the major reasons we chose to cruise Celebrity was because Celebrity is only sailing with vaccinated guests. 5% of the passengers could be unvaccinated, but we assumed most of those would be children.
A couple of weeks before sailing we were able to start most of our online check-in process. And that is where we hit the biggest hiccup of the trip.
Emily’s passport expired in 2020. We did some research and felt assured that she could get on the ship using a birth certificate. We have seen plenty of people in the past using birth certificates to get on cruise ships in the past and I’m going to be honest I think we looked down on those people. Now I’m wondering if they used to have passports too and just didn’t realize they were expired.
This was a Saturday to Saturday cruise, so we headed towards Ft. Lauderdale on Friday. We spent the night in a very average hotel in Jupiter Beach that was conveniently located right off the interstate.
Saturday morning we got up, grabbed some food from the hotel breakfast. We had a one hour drive to the port and by the time we got parked and went to the first bathroom we saw, we were right on time for our 12:30 check in.
We found a porter to give our luggage to and then looked at the rather disorganized set of lines to approach the terminal. The lines weren’t so much disorganized as they were completely unlabeled. There was absolutely no way to tell which of the three or four lines we were supposed to be in!
We put Emily in the line that was snaking around the building in the shade, and I went to ask what was going on. When I showed the employee my boarding pass she said I could go on in, so I got Emily back over there, we put on our masks (we were working on it, but we were reminded by an employee as well) and headed into our first check-point: the COVID card.
We were grateful we had somehow managed to snag an early check in time (luck in doing the on-line check in right when it opened) and didn’t have to stand in the line to wait for a gap between the on-time people or our check-in time, whichever came first. The not-on-time line was in the shade, but it was still hot out there! (I think the other line(s) were for priority guests of some sort.)
The first person we talked to in the terminal was the vaccination card check. She looked at our cards, asked us to verify that they were a true and correct document, asked if we were feeling well and then since we passed, she gave us a bracelet.
Then we proceeded on to the metal detector and on to the passport checker.
And then we were on board. No lines, no waiting.
I mean, the people who were early waited. But we didn’t. We left the car at 12:29 (per my picture making sure we could find it again) and walked onto the gangway exactly at 1:00.
We got on the ship and the first thing we did was take off our masks! Since we had on our vaccination bracelets, they were not required on board. It was kind of weird to walk into a public environment and take off our mask.
Per the app, our rooms would be ready by 1:00, so we headed straight to our room. We were joined in the elevator by a couple who were interested in my very large hat (they were not the only ones!). They followed us off the elevator and then down the hallway…and they turned out to be our next-door neighbors which was just hilarious. What were the odds that we would literally get on the ship at the exact same moment as our neighbors?
After a few room photos we headed up to the Oceanview Cafe for some lunch.
The Oceanview Café (the buffet) is organized with a whole bunch of different stations. All the food was crew-served, but the drinks were not so after we got our food we were able to sit anywhere we liked (no social distancing among the tables) and grab all the drinks we wanted.
For more about how cruising has changed check out our post on Cruising After COVID.
After lunch we came back down to our room to complete the muster drill. The muster drill is so incredibly different than it used to be.
We had a couple of videos to watch. These could be viewed either on the Celebrity app or on the TV. We watched them on the app because the TV wouldn’t turn on. It asked us who was watching them, we clicked that both of us were there and then it turned green. After we watched the couple of short videos, we had to report to our muster station to be checked off. One crew member checked us off on a tablet and the other gave the two of us a super-short speech and then we were off.
That was it. Nobody fainted. Nobody vomited. Nobody was mad because you had to leave your drink somewhere and couldn’t have it in your hand for the duration of the muster drill. The buffets didn’t close while it was going on so nobody was hangry. It was inside. And most importantly the whole process took less than 10 minutes.
It was the best thing ever.
After we got our cards scanned at the dining room that is our muster station, we wandered around the ship checking out some of the more unusual features like the random horse, the Martini bar, Eden, and the rooftop garden as well as the usual suspects like the pool.
After we checked out the ship, we headed back to the room to watch the sailaway from our aft-facing balcony.
We met our cabin steward Maria and one of our suitcases had appeared so she went to go find the other luggage. It didn’t take long before she came back with it and we spent a few minutes unpacking between debarkation around 6 and dinner at 8 in the Normandy main dining room.
The Celebrity Edge has 4 main dining rooms and since it was a 7 night cruise we booked most of them twice.
We were seated at a two person table like you would expect with anytime dining, but they skipped a table between us and the next couple who was seated. For those of us who have cruised before, we all know those tables are super close together! It seemed like some of the restaurants were separating the tables and some were not. The inconsistency between the four main dining rooms and even the individual hosts who were seating you was a little odd.
We were given physical menus that were like every other menu we have ever used in the main dining room on a cruise. We were pleased with the food, but especially the fact that they had escargot every night!
It was around 9:30 when we finished dinner and so we wandered around the ship for a few minutes before heading to the buffet – which was open for dinner and thus available to get drinks at – grabbed some ice and water and headed back to our room for the evening.
We tried to see what type of programming was available on the tv, but it wasn’t working so we just quit and I think both went right to sleep.
Check back for our next post to learn if our TV gets fixed and what we do on the first sea days of our cruise!
Looking for more information? Check out these related posts!
Cruising After COVID: What It’s Like to Cruise in 2021
Looking for something to do near Miami before or after your next cruise? Think about the Everglades.
