- I just spent a week on the world's largest cruise ship: Royal Caribbean's Symphony of the Seas.
- Royal Caribbean's terminal in Miami is massive, and makes boarding and disembarking a ship a bewilderingly painless process.
- There's a standard security screening, like at an airport.
- But I was surprised to find that I only ever had to show my passport once, even when getting on and off the ship at various ports.
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I just spent a week on the world's largest cruise ship: Royal Caribbean's Symphony of the Seas, a ship so big that I regularly walked around 17,000 steps a day. It has room for 5,518 guests, approximately 2,200 crew onboard, and 23 dining venues serving around 30,000 dishes a day.
Obviously, it takes military precision to run a ship this size smoothly.
To me, this efficiency was most obvious while boarding and disembarking, a process that was surprisingly similar to boarding a plane— but better.
Keep scrolling to see what getting on and off the giant ship is like.
Royal Caribbean has a shiny new terminal in Miami from which its ships depart. It's only about 20 minutes from the airport.
The ship fits over 6,000 guests, and another 2,200 crew members. As such, I'm not surprised at the amount of traffic we hit right around the port, which also had several other ships boarding at the time.
It looked so much like an airport terminal that, when we arrived, I thought my friend had accidentally driven me to the airport.
Unlike an airport, however, you can just flag down one of the employees wearing white shirts and hats and simply give them your name and bags.
From here, it seems your stuff somehow magically appears outside of your room on the ship.
Unencumbered by heavy bags, I then made my way up an escalator and past a live band playing music to get guests into vacation mode.
Upon arrival, I got into a very short line where I was asked to show my ID and boarding pass. Guests can check in online or on the Royal Caribbean app until three days before departure, which I did. It's super easy and saved me time at the terminal.
Security lines move quickly: Since boarding starts at 11 a.m. and goes until 3 p.m., people are spread out. When checking in you also get a suggested boarding time, which aims to disperse crowds.
Check-in is followed by a pretty standard security screening, though I found you don't need to take off your shoes or remove any laptops or liquids. I breezed on through despite a giant carry-on filled with sunscreen.
The terminal is truly massive. According to Royal Caribbean, the goal is to have guests "go from 'car to bar' in mere minutes, without lines or paperwork to fill out." In my experience, they delivered.
Source: Royal Caribbean
The Miami port currently handles around 750,000 Royal Caribbean passengers a year, but may see up to two million thanks to the new terminal, according to the Sun Sentinel.
Source: The Sun Sentinel
I boarded straight into the hubbub: the Boardwalk area, which is filled with shops, bars, and restaurants. Rooms aren't available until 1 p.m., so people tend to start drinking, eating, and hitting the pools right away.
The night before the cruise returned to the port in Miami, I found a luggage tag in my room.
Most guests choose to leave their bags outside of their room the night before, with the tags attached but I held on to my carry-on.
The next morning, guests could disembark anytime between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. Our ship docked in Miami around 3 a.m, and I got off at 8.a.m., while many others were still enjoying one last breakfast on the ship.
Much like an airport, there are immigration rules.
Unlike an airport, there's no waiting for your luggage. Bags await you in an orderly manner: You'll find them under the same number as the luggage tag you were given the previous night.
You then get in line for immigration. Despite there being separate lines for passports and birth certificates (!?), no one asked to see mine.
All I had to do was swipe my SeaPass (my room key, which doubled as an ID and credit card), and I literally walked right on through.
Once outside, I ordered an Uber and waited for it to arrive in one of the designated ride-share zones, surprised by just how quick and painless disembarking the world's largest cruise ship was.
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