Privacy record
Privacy Policy
What CruiseDayGuide collects, why it is used, how long it remains, and who else handles it.
For the day
before the
big adventure.
Read every guide without giving us anything
If you hand us an email, we use it for the thing you asked for and nothing else.
There is no sign-up, no login, and no paywall. Browsing a port guide asks nothing of you. Information you type into a form, such as your email, is only collected when you choose to submit it.
Provenance: Last updated September 7, 2026
What we collect, and when
When you ask for a personalized guide
The form takes your email, your ship, your sail date, and your party size (how many adults and kids, and the kids' ages). We use it to build and send one guide email. Ages are used to pick which recommendations you get and are never stored.
What we keep afterwards is two things. First, a record that someone requested a guide for that ship and date, so we don't email you the same thing twice — your address is stored only as a one-way SHA-256 hash there, never as readable text, and it expires after 90 days. That 90-day record also keeps the advertising parameters that brought the visit, including Google or Meta click identifiers (gclid, gbraid, wbraid, or fbclid) when one was supplied, and the page you first opened. It still contains no readable email address. Second, if your cruise is still ahead of you, a reminder entry that does hold your actual email address so we can send the pre-cruise reminders — a month out, two weeks out, a week out, and the day before, whichever of those are still ahead of you when you sign up — and one later note with upcoming sailings from your port, which may include a disclosed affiliate link. The reminder entry deletes itself three days after you sail. The note keeps its own entry, which also holds your address and deletes itself three days after the note is due.
When you email yourself a saved plan
We take your email and the list of places you saved, send you that plan, and keep no copy of the message. If you also told us your ship and sail date, you get the same pre-cruise reminder entry described above, on the same delete-after-sailing timer.
When you ask a question
The contact form forwards your name, email, question, and any trip details you included straight to our support inbox. Nothing from it is written to a database — your question lives in email, and we only use your address to answer you.
When you request a sponsor placement
We store your business name, contact email, requested ports, booking link, proposed sentence, preferred start date and approval confirmation in our private database to review and manage the placement. Approved orders and payment references remain there while needed to manage billing and resolve requests; they are not public listings. Stripe handles card details on its hosted checkout. Private order pages do not load our analytics or advertising trackers. Email us to request access to or deletion of your request; records still needed for billing may need to be retained.
What stays in your browser, and share links
Saved favorites live in your own browser's local storage. We never see them unless you act on them. If you create a share link, the saved list and trip details behind that code are stored for 30 days and then deleted — no email or name is attached to it.
The same local storage holds the last trip you personalized — port, ship, sail date, how many adults and kids, how you are getting to the ship, which airport you named, and the terminal your plan resolved — so the site can offer to pick it back up instead of asking you again. Not the kids' ages. It never leaves your device, it is dropped once your sail date has passed, and clearing your browser data removes it, as does “Not my trip” on the home page. Your packing-list checkmarks are kept the same way.
Your Boarding Day Plan uses one versioned, sailing-scoped record in local storage. It identifies the port, ship, and sail date, records when the plan last changed, and keeps only your decisions: how you are getting to the ship, which airport you chose, your night-before origin, party counts, a chosen hotel, your arrival window, travel time, and extra time, explicit dinner and morning choices, and whether the plan came from a shared link.
Saving that plan is best effort. If local storage is blocked or full, the planner still works in memory and your changes last for this visit, but they are not saved for the next one. The record contains no email or child ages. It also excludes sourced operational facts such as terminal, address, departure, source, and confidence details; recommendation and booking copy; and any navigation or derived timeline. Clearing your browser data removes the durable copy.
When a link contains advertising parameters, this tab also keeps a small attribution record in session storage: which ad or link brought you, the page you first opened, and when you arrived. It is separate for each tab, closes with the tab, and contains no email or name.
Automatic, on any form
Your IP address is used briefly as a rate-limiting key so one person can't flood the forms or use them to spam someone else's inbox. It is held for about an hour and is not attached to your email or to anything you did on the site.
Analytics and advertising
GoatCounter counts pageviews without cookies and without cross-site identifiers. It also keeps fixed, low-cardinality counts for successful guide and saved-plan email requests and for classified commercial-link categories. We record when a visit arrives from an AI assistant such as ChatGPT or Claude as a plain count of that channel. On a guide page it also counts whether the reader opened the map or saved a place — the action alone, and nothing that identifies you. To see where our forms stop working, GoatCounter also keeps aggregate counts when a form is started, client validation blocks it, a request is submitted, succeeds or fails, or the page is left first. These fixed counts contain no form values or persistent reader identifier. Exit counts are best effort and incomplete.
Vercel Analytics and Speed Insights report aggregate traffic and page-loading speed for the site.
YouTube webcam players. Cameras on port guides and webcam pages load the privacy-enhanced YouTube player and request muted playback when more than half the camera is visible. This connects to YouTube and its owner Google, which can receive your IP address, browser and device details, and referring site. Players unload when offscreen or the tab is hidden. Turn off Load cameras automatically below any player to require a click; this preference is saved in your browser ascdg:camera-autoload:v1. Reduced-motion and data-saving settings also keep playback manual. Camera loading is separate from marketing consent and does not grant advertising measurement.
Where offered, an authorized camera player or recent snapshot can also connect your browser to the operator and hosting service named beside that camera. They can receive your IP address and browser details. These media use the same automatic-loading preference. A snapshot shows its supplied capture time; we do not capture or redistribute a stream ourselves.
YouTube cabin tours
Cabin comparisons offer optional creator tours through YouTube API Services, using the privacy-enhanced embedded player. Each tour stays unloaded until you choose its Load YouTube tour control. We do not request its YouTube player, thumbnail or a preliminary connection to YouTube before that action. Loading one tour does not authorize loading other tours, and the camera automatic-loading preference does not apply to cabin tours.
When you load a tour, our server first checks its public metadata and embedding eligibility with YouTube. This server request sends the selected video ID, without forwarding your IP address, quotes or comparison preferences. We cache the video's title, creator, publication date, duration and eligibility for up to 24 hours; expired data is not used to load a player.
Loading a tour connects your browser to YouTube and Google. They receive the selected video ID, your IP address, browser and device information, and this site's origin. The player request sends only the site origin as its referring address, not the page path or query. The selected video identifies the cabin tour you chose. We do not send your quotes, budget, traveler ages or saved comparison to the player. Privacy-enhanced mode does not mean anonymous playback: YouTube may use cookies or similar browser storage and show advertisements. Its handling of player data is described in the Google Privacy Policy.
Our private comparison tools continue to exclude our third-party analytics and marketing tags. Choosing to load a tour permits that YouTube player, not advertising measurement by CruiseDayGuide. We do not request access to your YouTube account or collect your YouTube login details. You can leave the tour unloaded and still compare cabins and costs.
Google Analytics. On public pages the site loads Google Analytics 4 for every reader. It exists so that advertising partners can verify the size of our audience from a source they accept; it is analytics rather than ad delivery, so it is not gated on the marketing choice above. It receives the page path only, never the query string, so a personalised guide or a saved plan never reaches Google, and it sets first-party cookies with names beginning _ga and receives the usual browser request information. Our own test sessions and the private comparison and sponsor tools load no Google Analytics. This paragraph reads the same setting the tag loads from, so it disappears if the tag does.
No ad tech. The site loads no advertising or remarketing scripts of its own, sets no advertising measurement cookies of its own, and sends no marketing events to ad networks. The YouTube player requests described above deliver video when a camera is visible or manually loaded, or when you choose to load a cabin tour. Embedded players may use their own browser storage and show ads under YouTube's policies. We ran a Google Ads measurement tag until August 2026 for ads we bought; it was removed. If we start advertising again this paragraph is replaced by one naming the tag, the cookie it sets and what it sends — automatically, because this page reads the same setting the tag itself loads from.
The conversion event payloads described here include no email address, full destination URL, free-form form values, ship, sail date, or terminal.
When you click a link to a partner such as Booking.com or Amazon, it passes through a redirect on our own domain and into our first-party click ledger. It records a random click ID, which page and section the click came from, the ad campaign when one was captured, and the time. We join this first-party click ledger to later merchant and affiliate-network reports about bookings and commission so we can measure campaign return. The ledger record contains no name, email, or IP address. Merchants do not receive our internal acquisition record or its advertising identifiers; their destination receives only the affiliate parameters required for the partner link.
YouTube player terms
These terms apply to the optional YouTube cabin-tour feature. By choosing Load YouTube tour, you agree to this privacy policy and to be bound by the YouTube Terms of Service. The creator's video plays in YouTube's own player, with its controls, branding, links and any advertisements intact. CruiseDayGuide does not download, rehost or modify the video. A tour records one creator's room and visit; it does not verify availability or the suitability of your exact room. Your comparison remains available without loading a video.
Who else handles your data
We use a short list of vendors, and only for the jobs described above:
- Resend — delivers every email we send.
- Upstash Redis — stores the reminder entries, share codes, hashed submission records, and rate-limit counters.
- Vercel — hosts the site and processes the requests your browser makes.
- Pinterest — our private publishing automation uses an OAuth token only to read or create the needed CruiseDayGuide boards and post owner-approved images, descriptions, and links to our own Pinterest business account. Production credentials are stored in encrypted GitHub Actions secrets. We do not collect Pinterest account data from visitors.
- Google — supplies the interactive maps and place photos. It does not handle advertising measurement on this configuration.
- YouTube (Google) — supplies the privacy-enhanced webcam and optional cabin-tour players described above.
- Camera operators and hosting services — where offered, supply the authorized players and timestamped images identified beside each camera.
- Visual Crossing — returns the forecast for a port and sail date. It receives the place and the date, not you.
- GoatCounter and Sentry — pageview counts and server error reports. Our error reports are scrubbed of email addresses, tokens, and passwords before they are sent.
- Affiliate networks — CJ Affiliate, Amazon Associates, and Viator see the click when you follow one of their links, under their own privacy policies. Which programs are live is listed on our disclosure page.
We do not sell your data, rent it, or hand it to a data broker. We have never run a newsletter list and don't plan to. The one post-cruise note is tied to the sailing you gave us and is never repeated.
Stopping the emails
Every email we send carries a working unsubscribe link. Using it adds you to a permanent suppression list — stored as a hash of your address, so honoring the opt-out doesn't require us to keep the address itself — and no further scheduled email goes out. You can also just reply and ask, or write to help@cruisedayguide.com.
Getting your data deleted
Most of what we hold deletes itself: reminder entries go three days after you sail, the post-cruise note's record three days after that note is due, submission records after 90 days, share links after 30. If you want something gone sooner, or want to know what we hold for your address, email us and we will handle it by hand — there is no form to fight with, and we don't ask you to prove anything beyond replying from the address in question.
Children
This site is for adults planning a trip. We don't knowingly collect anything from children. The kids' ages a parent can enter are used to choose recommendations and are never stored.
Contact
Questions about any of this, or about a change to this page, go to help@cruisedayguide.com. CruiseDayGuide is operated by Thingvalla Technology.
CruiseDayGuide • PO Box 540633, Merritt Island, FL 32954