wahooker

If I can work a self checkout at walmart, pretty sure I can pour my own drinks for an afternoon if the bartenders need some time off. Just give me keys to the liquor cabinet, and we are all good. 🙂

I'm on Sky for their Jan 21'st sailing. I was able to set our checkin for 9:30-10 AM, but my edocs boarding pass says - Boarding begins at 12:00 PM. From what I understand, the ship will not have any departing passengers, because it is undergoing some maintenance immediately prior to this cruise. Does anyone have experience with a situation like this? I'd like to get on board early, but If arriving early means just sitting in the terminal for 2 hours, I might change my checkin time.

All of us share the same last name, not a blended family. We have 3 Biological sons, and one adopted daughter of a different race. I did mention blended families earlier as another example of how someone could end up with a multiracial family without adopting, but that was just an example to show how weird it was to single out someone of a mixed race family, as those situations are probably more common than adoption.

I did just above yours, probably while you were typing.

Regarding your questions - She was in a room with one of her 17 year old brothers, directly adjacent to mine and my wife's room. All of us went to the same agent as a group at checkin. About the higher sensitivity because of current events, Why did they ask "Is she adopted?". We could have just as easily said no, and explained there was a previous marriage. We had no idea that telling the truth would put us under extra scrutiny - not that we would be inclined to lie in the first place. I don't know that a documentation officer was involved - someone else mentioned that and I have never heard of a documentation officer. Certainly nobody was introduced to us as a documentation officer during all this. I have never heard of a minor travel consent, not even sure what that is. In any case, none of the staff mentioned it.

With our adopted daughter, my standard answer to that was "Less than her Brother spending 2 days in NICU." Multiples yield stupid questions, and adopted kids yield stupid questions, and we got the best of both. 🙂

The initial agent was a 25-30ish female who appeared to be Hispanic, while some of the supervisors appeared to match the snowbird description. However, all were wearing Celebrity uniforms and name tags, so this is obviously some being paid either directly or indirectly through Celebrity, and the responsibility for making sure that the issue is taken care of is Celebrity, whether it is an employee or a contractor they hired. And yes, I was specifically told that we may be sex trafficking. When I asked "When we have all the documentation that celebrity asks for on their website, why are you singling out one of my children and demanding more documents we have never been asked for in previous cruises. The answer was "For all we know, you could be trafficking her".

For the record, I am white, and my daughter is Asian. Not that that should matter regardless of the races of parent or child. I guess statistically more adoptive parents are white - but there are many many more multiracial families and blended/remarriage families where parents have a different skin color than one of their kids, and this could happen to a lot of families of all combinations of skin colors.

Why was my family singled out? The only answer that I see is because the boarding agent saw my daughter was of a different race than her parents, and asked us "Is your daughter adopted?". I saw no other families being asked if their kids were adopted, and this has never happened before. I suspect this is more because the boarding agent was poorly trained rather than malicious intent on her part or official policy of Celebrity. What do I want? An Apology and a much better effort on training their staff to handle things correctly, and not pull random requirements out of thin air that are not documented anywhere on any website. Also, being accused of being potential sex traffickers by a second boarding agent was WAY the F*** over the line. That definitely deserves an apology all by itself.

It does not on the passport itself. However, parents names and information,(Even for adults) must be listed on the application and it is verified by the state department prior to issuing the passport.

Then what does? If following all the currently listed rules as written doesn't qualify us to board the ship then what does? I'm all for measures to prevent trafficking. Arbitrarily singling out one kid among hundreds of families and demanding paperwork that is not mentioned anywhere is not the way to handle it.

We followed every rule posted on their website regarding required documentation. This wasn't a rule, it was made up BS on the spot.

THat's the thing, they never apologized, and most of that time they just told us to sit and wait while they got a manager. They eventually just said "You can go ahead" with no explanation. Being in a TSA-like situation where speaking up could have them take disproportionate action and even make us miss the cruise, we just went ahead, and decided to deal with it when we got back via official customer service channels.

Oddly enough, I don't think comedians would be as big an issue for us. With the last name Hooker, we all have a huge amount of self deprecating humor, and can make jokes about all kinds of things including our last name, our family structure, etc. My Daughter has some hilarious jokes about the differences in race within our family that of course she can throw out just to make her friend's jaws drop. 🙂

She is absolutely my own daughter - as much as my biological children. I'm not traveling with someone else's kid in this situation.