Royal Caribbean shares the biggest danger for cruise ships
When a fire breaks out on land at a hotel or a restaurant, people can simply leave the building. That's not the case on a cruise ship where an evacuation would involve lifeboats.
That's something that rarely happens, but every cruise ship prepares for. When you board a ship, no matter how many times you have cruised before, you must see a safety demonstration and visit your muster stations (the place you go to in the event of an emergency).
The actual process varies by cruise line. Royal Caribbean, Celebrity Cruises (RCL) and Carnival Cruise Line (CCL) use virtual musters where you can watch videos on your phone and then check in at your station.
MSC Cruises has a much less pleasant version of the muster drill: All passengers go to watch the safety videos in their cabins. They they check in at their muster station at the same time (which crowds people together on the stairwells as the elevators are shut down).
In addition to making passengers do a safety drill, crew members regularly drill to handle everything from a fire to dangerous weather. That's especially relevant during hurricane season — June 1 through November 30 — as high-level crew members and shore personnel are making decisions designed to maximize safety.
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Really bad weather can force cruise lines to close the pool deck. Image source: Dukas/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
How do cruise lines keep passengers safe?
Every cruise line has an operations center that tracks weather using a variety of services. Royal Caribbean actually employs two full-time meteorologists.
No matter how they do it, cruise lines prioritize the safety of their passengers and ships above all else. They also work to deliver the best weather experience possible.
Sometimes, that's as simple as sailing a route away from rain. When you are sailing from Florida to the Caribbean the actual distances sailed are relatively small.
That gives the cruise lines a lot of flexibility to avoid bad weather and still make their port stops. In some cases, however, cruise lines will change itineraries, skip a port, or even sail someplace that was not anywhere close to the original plan.
It's not wildly uncommon for a sailing from New York to the Caribbean to be diverted to New England and Canada in certain weather situations. A cruise ships departure or return can also be delayed for weather-related reasons.
Cruise lines don't like changing plans as they know passengers have booked excursions, planned travel, and made other arrangements. Still, their most important job is keeping passengers, crew, and their ships safe.
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What is Royal Caribbean most worried about?
Royal Caribbean Group Chief Meteorologist Craig Setzer has been busy as this hurricane season has started early and is expected to be one of the biggest ones ever.
Mark Sudduth of Hurricane Track interviewed Setzer on a YouTube series called Hurricane U. Setzer, who has been working for Royal Caribbean for about 10 months, called tracking all the moving pieces involved in keeping the cruise line's ships safe during inclement weather "slow moving chess."
"You're anticipating, where's the storm going to be? Where's my ship going to be? What am I going to do with my ship?" the Royal Caribbean Blog reported.
Trackable weather events, Setzer shared, can be avoided or at least ships can be positioned where the impact will be lessened. The biggest danger, he shared, are "unforeseen weather events."
These are storms and other weather-related issues that don't show up on models.
"These events can be a microburst of air or a gust front of wind that wasn't visible on the forecast," Matt Hochberg wrote on the Royal Caribbean Blog, which is not affiliated with the cruise line.
Most of the time, however, Setzer and his team are well ahead of the weather.
"You're not going to be impacted [by a hurricane] on a cruise ship because we're getting away quickly," Setzer said."The one thing that might happen is your itinerary might change."