During our recent 7 Night Eastern Caribbean Star Wars Day At Sea cruise on the Disney Fantasy, we decided to try Disney Cruise Line’s Onboard Airline Check-in. This is a program that Disney Cruise Line has that allows you to receive your boarding pass and check your luggage for your return flight home while onboard the ship.
In order to participate in this program, you must purchase Disney Cruise Line ground transportation from the ship back to Orlando International Airport. You must also sign up for the program. I don’t know the deadline, but we signed up when we boarded the ship at the Port Terminal. You must be flying from the Orlando Airport after 11:30 am on one of the following airlines: Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Jet Blue Airways, or United Airlines.
The instruction sheet said we would have to put our luggage outside our room by 10:30 pm the night before debarkation. If we didn’t place the luggage outside, we would have to take our luggage onto the Disney Cruise Line ground transportation ourselves. The instructions also detail what should and should not go into our luggage, including film and hazard materials. You should also make sure you don’t put any important medications or passports (or other identification you will need for your flight home) in your bags because you won’t see them until you return to your home airport. This also means you will need to keep clothes and anything else you will need the next morning with you in the room overnight, and carry them off the ship.
On the final night of the cruise, we returned to our room to find the standard Customs form as well as a folder containing all the information we needed for onboard check-in. We had boarding passes, luggage tags, and instructions. The boarding passes were normal boarding passes and included all the information we needed for check in, including our TSA PreCheck information. The luggage tags were a bit strange. They included information for our flight, but it was explained in the instructions that they would be removed and normal luggage tags would be put on the luggage.
We put our luggage outside before 10:30 pm and it was collected by the room attendant. Just as they said, our luggage was sent back to our home airport where we collected it. However, there was a downside. It was mentioned in the sign up form that if we had any status with the airline, we should take our own bags to the airport to check them in to make sure we would not be charged baggage fees. Since we have a Citi AAdvantage Executive World Elite Mastercard, we get a free checked bag for up to eight members that are on the same reservation purchased with the card. We sent two bags off using the onboard check-in program and got charged $25 for one of them, which we should not have been. We could have tried to sort it out, but I didn’t see the charge until the final morning of our cruise.
Overall, the program worked just as we expected it to. Our bags arrived at our home airport and we were able to use the boarding passes they provided to us. We had another cruise not long after this one and we elected not to use the program again. There were a few reasons for this. The first is that we had to keep a number of items with us in order to get ready the next morning, including some basic toiletries and clothes. There were enough items that we would have to keep a small bag to put it into and carry it onto the airplane.
The second reason we didn’t use this service again is that we like to do the express walk off. We keep our luggage in our room until the morning we leave the ship, take it with us to breakfast, then walk right off the ship with it. We don’t have to try to find it in the port terminal among all the other luggage. We then take the luggage to the DCL bus and hand it to the driver, who puts it under the bus for our trip to the airport. We recollect the luggage when we arrive at the airport and take it to the airline with very little effort. We can add items to the bags (toiletries) or get some things out if we needed to as well, such as another change of clothes if something got spilled on them at breakfast. This also saves us from rushing too much the night before in order to have to put it out by 10:30 pm. The only negative in doing this is the need to find an elevator in the morning (for our rolling bags).
If you have enjoyed this article, please be sure to check out our Disney Cruise Line information page, which has useful hints as well as our cruise trip reports!