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.

Second Marriages and Blended families are a thing. Especially with 3 17 year olds, I would have expected a second marriage to be a more likely factor than what we have - Adopted daughter and Biological twins all the same age which is much less common.

A public apology, and a promise to ensure that the staff (Whether Celebrity or contractors employed by the port) is properly trained to avoid this in the future would be a great starting point.

Same last name, same address. However, they never even looked at the Driver's license that my daughter tried to show them. Once we said she was Adopted, they wouldn't look at anything except to demand the original adoption paperwork.

Yes, my 21 year old son was pulling up their website and quoting this exact passage to them. It was nice seeing all 3 boys come to their sister's defense.

We had 3 minor children, all 17 year olds. Why were the other two not asked if they were adopted? Why was only a multiracial family singled out? No other family we spoke to was asked about whether their kid was adopted.

In order to get a US Passport, we have to provide all required paperwork, including her original adoption records. If the US State Department isn't a good enough witness that the paperwork is in order, I don't think some random lawyer would be any better.

They had on Celebrity Uniforms. They did not call for any ship's documentation officer that I am aware of. They had me talk with 2 supervisors but neither were introduced as a documentation officer.

We went to Mexico (Cozumel), Falmouth Jamaica and Grand Cayman - All of these are locations that my daughter has been to before with us. No other families we talked to were asked to produce this kind of documentation for their kids on the cruise, including several multiracial families and one adoptive family.

Note - This was also sent to Customer Service at Celebrity, and 3 Executive email addresses that I could find publicly. I reached out to them on Twitter during the cruise as well with no response, but this was my first chance to get Internet access and research everything and write up a full email after getting home from the cruise. I'm posting this as a warning for any other multiracial or adoptive families that might run into this situation, I'll follow up if I get a response. -------------------------------------- To Whom it may concern, This is involving a recent cruise on Reflection, that set sail from Fort Lauderdale on 12/22. Our reservation # was 212635. and we were sailing with all 4 of our kids, in 3 rooms. At check in your employees singled our 17 year old daughter out, and asked us "Is your daughter adopted?" Our Adopted daughter is a different race than my wife and I. She is 17 years old, a US Citizen, with a US Passport and North Carolina Drivers License. She has been with us on multiple cruises with us on Disney, Royal Caribbean and Carnival. She has also flown internationally with my wife. Not once in any of those trips were we asked to provide her original adoption paperwork - her identity was proven when we originally got her passport, and that has been sufficient for any and all situations in her life, not just travel but for school purposes and everything else. Since we have all of her paperwork proving she is a citizen, we have never needed to bring along paperwork proving her adoption. This would require us to bring a binder full of documents over an inch thick with us wherever we go, which absolutely no adoptive family would do almost 17 years after the adoption is finalized. We were delayed a good 30 minutes having to talk to multiple staff, including supervisors, and they were telling us unless we produced that documentation, we would be prohibited from getting on the cruise ship. Keep in mind, this is documentation that we keep locked in our fire safe at home, not something we have ever needed at a moment's notice like that. One of the staff even said that without us having that documentation, we could be suspected of sex trafficking, merely because our daughter is of a different race than we are. This is 2023, and multiracial families and blended families and adopted families are extremely common. A US Passport should be sufficient to prove her identity by itself. There is absolutely nothing on your website telling adopted families they are going to have to jump through this hoop that multiracial or blended families following a remarriage might also bump into. Never in her life has my daughter ever wanted to hide the fact that she was adopted. But after this, she said she wished that we had just said "no" to the question about the adoption. As one of her brothers said, "Who is to say that I'm not adopted?" Just because he's the same color as my wife and I he could just as well be adopted, but he wasn't singled out to prove who he was born to. If this is the official position of your company, you should be ashamed of yourselves, and if it is not, you need to completely retrain your staff on how to deal with the situation with multi-racial and adoptive families such as ours to avoid stigmatizing them. William Anthony Hooker Proud Father of an adopted daughter.

I have had people say "I didn't know you were Jewish" after mentioning our traditional Christmas meal. But no, ours isn't religious based, and while it might be an easy way to get what I want I'm not going to go down that road out of respect to those who seriously do need religious dietary accommodations to hold true to their faith.