Royal Caribbean: dress code, drinks, and what you can bring aboard

Royal Caribbean sorts every evening into one of three named levels, and the names do real work because the ship uses them in the daily planner. Casual is the baseline, and the line describes it as jeans, polos, sundresses and blouses, all the right amount of laid back. Smart Casual is one notch up: collared shirts, dresses, skirts and blouses, or pantsuits, with jackets and blazers encouraged rather than required. Formal is branded Dress Your Best, and Royal Caribbean describes it as suits and ties, tuxedos, cocktail dresses or evening gowns. How many formal nights you get depends on how long you sail, and the line publishes the ladder: one on a 5-night cruise, two on 6 to 10 nights, three on 11 to 14 nights, and three to four on anything 15 nights or longer, with a note that this can vary by itinerary at the ship's discretion. Underneath all three levels sit two rules that do not relax on any night. Bare feet are not allowed at any time in any venue, full stop. Tank tops are not permitted in the Main Dining Room or the specialty restaurants at dinner. The casino adds its own version, requiring shirts and shoes and asking that swimwear be covered up, and the Chef's Table enforces the formal code regardless of what the rest of the ship is doing that evening. Swimwear stays on the Pool Deck, and shorts are explicitly welcome at breakfast and lunch, which is the clearest signal of where this line draws its line: daytime informality is fine, wet and barefoot is not. One more clause on that page has nothing to do with the ship. Royal Caribbean warns that camouflage and military-style clothing is illegal in Antigua, Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago, and that religious sites may require modest dress, which is worth knowing before you pack the cargo shorts you like.

• Casual: jeans, polos, sundresses and blouses. Smart Casual: collared shirts, dresses, skirts, blouses or pantsuits, with blazers welcome.
• Formal, branded Dress Your Best: suits and ties, tuxedos, cocktail dresses or evening gowns.
• Formal nights by length: one on 5 nights, two on 6 to 10, three on 11 to 14, three to four on 15 or more, at the ship's discretion.
• Bare feet are not allowed at any time in any venue, and tank tops are out at dinner in the main and specialty dining rooms.
• The casino requires shirts and shoes with swimwear covered, and the Chef's Table enforces the formal code.
• Camouflage and military-style clothing is illegal in Antigua, Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago.

Level names, descriptions, the formal-night ladder and the venue restrictions are all quoted from royalcaribbean.com's own dress code FAQ, read on the date in the sources below.

This is the policy most likely to be misremembered, so it is worth reading exactly as written. A guest of drinking age may bring one sealed 750 ml bottle of wine or champagne aboard on embarkation day. Not one per stateroom, one per guest of drinking age, and on back-to-back sailings the allowance renews at one bottle per sailing. Boxed wine and other containers are prohibited, so the pouch or the bag-in-box does not qualify even if the volume matches. Beyond that bottle, the wording is unusually firm: guests are not allowed to bring beer or hard liquor onboard for consumption or any other use, which closes the argument about carrying a bottle purely as a gift or for a cabin party. What happens to the rest is the part people miss. Bottles bought in port or in the onboard shops are safely stored by the ship and returned to you on the last day, for home rather than for the balcony. Sealed alcoholic beverages seized at embarkation are returned at the end of the voyage if they are in their original sealed packages, and security may inspect any container and dispose of anything found to contain alcohol, which is what happens to the mouthwash bottle full of vodka. The food and drink page adds a sharper note on this: beer, seltzer and hard liquor seized at boarding are not returned at all. Guests under the legal drinking age do not get alcohol returned to them in any case. And the consequences page reads harder than most: guests who violate the alcohol policy, whether through overconsumption, providing alcohol to minors, behaving irresponsibly or attempting to conceal alcohol at security screening, may be disembarked or refused boarding at their own expense. Two footnotes worth carrying. All guests must comply with TSA guidelines on transporting liquids, and chartered sailings may run a different policy entirely, in which case the charterer sets the rules.

• One sealed 750 ml bottle of wine or champagne per guest of drinking age, at embarkation, renewing per sailing on consecutive cruises.
• Boxed wine and other containers are prohibited. No beer and no hard liquor, for consumption or any other use.
• Alcohol bought in port or onboard is stored by the ship and returned on the last day.
• Sealed alcohol seized at embarkation comes back at the end of the voyage; the food and drink page says beer, seltzer and hard liquor seized at boarding do not.
• Security may inspect containers and dispose of any found to contain alcohol, and guests under drinking age receive no returns.
• Violations, including concealment at screening, may mean being disembarked or refused boarding at your own expense.

Quantities, container rules, storage, return and enforcement wording come from royalcaribbean.com's onboard alcohol guest policy, with the seizure note on beer, seltzer and hard liquor from its food and drink page.

The drink policy that costs people money is the non-alcoholic one, because Royal Caribbean sells beverage packages and the carry-on allowance is the cheap alternative to buying one. The published rule is that guests may bring non-alcoholic beverages aboard as carry-on items on boarding day, not to exceed 12 standard 17 oz cans, bottles or cartons per stateroom. Read that sentence twice, because three separate details in it get lost. It is per stateroom, so a couple sharing a cabin has twelve between them and not twenty-four. It is boarding day only, so the case bought in port on day four is not coming aboard under this allowance. And it is a count of containers rather than a volume, pegged to a standard 17 oz size, so twelve large bottles is not a clever reading of the rule. Bottles are explicitly named alongside cans and cartons, which matters because that is not universally true across cruise lines and is one of the details worth checking again if you are switching lines. Two things sit outside the twelve. Milk and distilled water brought aboard for infant, medical or dietary use are permitted, which covers formula, feeding pumps and the specific dietary cases that a blanket limit would otherwise catch. And food gets its own allowance: guests are free to bring non-perishable prepackaged food in limited quantities, which is the page's way of saying snacks yes, a cooler of homemade sandwiches no. If you are traveling with a medical need that depends on a particular drink or a particular volume of water, carry the documentation and raise it at check-in rather than at the scanner, because the exception is written for exactly that case and the officer at the belt is not the person who wants to adjudicate it in front of a queue.

• 12 standard 17 oz cans, bottles or cartons per stateroom, carried on at boarding, is the whole non-alcoholic allowance.
• Per stateroom, not per person. Two people in one cabin share the twelve.
• Boarding day carry-on only, and cans, bottles and cartons all count against the same number.
• Milk and distilled water for infant, medical or dietary use are permitted on top of the twelve.
• Non-perishable prepackaged food is allowed in limited quantities.

The twelve-item limit, the per-stateroom wording, the infant and medical exception and the prepackaged food allowance are quoted from royalcaribbean.com's food and drink onboard policy.

Royal Caribbean's prohibited items page splits into things that are simply not coming aboard and things that may be held for you, and the difference is worth understanding before you pack something borderline. In the first group sit firearms, ammunition, explosives, incendiaries, replicas and gun parts, banned with no exceptions. Illegal drugs and substances including marijuana are prohibited regardless of medical authorisation or local legality, which is the same sentence that catches people carrying gummies bought lawfully at home. Fireworks, sparklers, flammable materials and anything with an open flame are out. Clothing irons and garment steamers are out, with no workaround, which is the single most common confiscation on any cruise line and the reason to pack wrinkle release spray and fabrics that survive being rolled. Then comes the item worth checking before you pack rather than after: extension cords, power strips and multi-plug outlets are prohibited on this line, and there is no non-surge exception in the wording. The only electrical carve-out is for device and USB chargers marked with a recognized US or European conformity certification. Two-way radios are permitted within limits, capped at ten miles of range, five watts of output, internal voice communication only and no external antenna. Blades are handled by length: grooming scissors with blades under four inches are fine, and recreational diving knives are permitted when checked with Security for organized excursions. Royal Caribbean also has the most modern clause of any line's list, allowing smart glasses aboard but barring their use in the casino, spa service areas, restrooms, locker rooms, medical facilities and other places where people reasonably expect privacy. Finally, the asterisk. Certain categories on the page are marked to indicate they may be retained by Security for the duration of the cruise and returned to you on departure, and the page states that the Chief Security Officer and the Staff Captain hold final discretion over anything disputed. That last clause is the honest summary of the whole page: a published allowance describes the normal case, and the two most senior safety officers on the ship decide the rest.

• Weapons, explosives, replicas and gun parts are prohibited with no exceptions, as are open flames, fireworks and flammable materials.
• Illegal drugs including marijuana are prohibited regardless of medical authorisation or local legality.
• Clothing irons and garment steamers are prohibited outright, with no workaround.
• Extension cords, power strips and multi-plug outlets are prohibited, with an exception only for chargers carrying a recognized US or European conformity mark.
• Two-way radios are capped at ten miles of range and five watts, with internal voice only and no external antenna.
• Grooming scissors under four inches are allowed; dive knives are checked with Security for organized excursions.
• Smart glasses may be brought aboard but not used in the casino, spa, restrooms, locker rooms or medical facilities.

Every prohibition, exception and the retention and discretion wording is quoted from royalcaribbean.com's prohibited items onboard policy, read on the date listed in the sources.

Royal Caribbean's luggage page is notable for what it does not say. There is no maximum number of bags per guest, no weight limit and no dimensional limit published on it. What the line asks for instead is judgement: limit the number of pieces you bring, keep your luggage to a reasonable amount of personal property, and bring bags that will physically fit through the terminal x-ray screening machines, which is a real constraint on the oversized hard case people occasionally try. Locks must be TSA-approved. The more useful half of the page is the carry-on list, because it is written from experience rather than from policy. You are asked to personally carry passports, visas, citizenship documents and family legal documents, all medication in original labeled prescription containers, at least three days of extra medication beyond the length of your trip, and a change of clothes and a bathing suit. That last pair is the tell. It means the line expects your checked bags to be with the porters for hours rather than minutes, and it is why the outfit you plan to wear at dinner on day one belongs in the bag on your shoulder. Royal Caribbean does not publish a stateroom delivery time for checked luggage anywhere we could find on that page, so treat any specific hour you read elsewhere as folklore rather than policy. It does publish the counterpart warning: if you carry your bags aboard yourself rather than checking them, your stateroom may not be immediately available to store them, which turns a hand-carried suitcase into something you tow around the pool deck for a couple of hours. The three days of spare medication is the clause worth acting on even if you ignore everything else here. It exists because ships miss ports, weather delays disembarkation, and a pharmacy that stocks your prescription is not a thing you can count on in a port you did not plan to be sitting in.

• No maximum bag count, weight or size is published. The stated constraints are reasonableness and fitting through the x-ray machines.
• Only TSA-approved locks.
• Carry personally: passports, visas, citizenship and family legal documents.
• Carry all medication in original labeled prescription containers, plus at least three days of extra medication.
• Carry a change of clothes and a bathing suit, because checked bags follow later.
• Royal Caribbean does not publish a cabin delivery time, and warns your stateroom may not be available to store bags you carry aboard yourself.

The luggage guidance, lock rule and carry-on list are quoted from royalcaribbean.com's onboard luggage policy. The absence of a published bag count or delivery time reflects what that page does and does not state.

Two deadlines on embarkation day are enforced rather than suggested, and both are published. The first is your arrival time. You select a slot during check-in in the Royal App, and it appears on your mobile boarding pass. Royal Caribbean encourages guests to complete check-in in the app at least three days before sailing, and if you have not done it by then you must finalise it at the pier no later than two hours before sailing. The hard limit is stated separately and is the one that ends cruises: all guests must be fully checked in and onboard the ship no later than 90 minutes prior to port operations closing, or permission to sail is denied. Port closing times vary by location, and the page gives Vancouver closing at 5:00 PM as its example, which is a reminder that the deadline is a property of the port rather than of the ship's departure time. The slot cuts both ways. Arriving early does not get you aboard early, because guests cannot begin boarding before their assigned slot, and arriving late may mean waiting until the terminal can fit you into a later group. The second clock is the muster drill, and Royal Caribbean's version has three parts: watch the life jacket instructions video, listen to the emergency horn, and visit your assigned muster station. The first two can be completed in the Royal App or on your stateroom television, which is why people think the drill is now optional. It is not. The third step is in person, and a crew member at the station verifies that you have completed the other two. Your station is shown in the app and on your SeaPass card. The drill is mandatory under SOLAS and is conducted before the ship departs, with individual or group safety briefings arranged for anyone who boards after it has run. Guests with a medical condition or another limitation are asked to tell a crew member, who will arrange a way to comply that works for them. Do the two screen steps in the terminal queue or on the way to lunch, walk to your station, and the whole obligation is over in a few minutes.

• Pick an arrival slot at check-in in the Royal App; it prints on your mobile boarding pass and you should arrive at that time.
• Complete check-in at least 3 days ahead, or finalise at the pier no later than two hours before sailing.
• Be fully checked in and onboard no later than 90 minutes before port operations close, or you will not be allowed to sail.
• You cannot board before your slot, and arriving late may put you in a later boarding group.
• Muster drill: life jacket video, emergency horn, then an in-person visit to your station where a crew member verifies you.
• Your muster station is on the Royal App and on your SeaPass card, and the drill runs before the ship leaves port.

Arrival and check-in deadlines come from royalcaribbean.com's port arrival time FAQ, and the three-step drill, verification and accommodation wording from its muster drill and onboard safety FAQ.