Many cruisers depend on mobile apps for cruise planning before setting foot on the ship. Passengers also use cruise apps throughout their voyage to continue to manage their vacation and see important notifications about their sailing.
Cruise line apps allow passengers to book shows, make dining reservations, and purchase excursions or drink packages.
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But the app also contains essential information such as the cruise itinerary and deck maps that help cruisers find venues on the ship. They can also view their onboard account/charges in the app.
Cruisers tend to opt to leave on notifications from cruising apps because they want to know about any changes, deals, and announcements. Yet it could be a bit unsettling if the app is not working smoothly.
On the App Store, Royal Caribbean’s app earned 4.8 out of 5 stars with close to one million ratings.
The app is not immune to errors, however, as customers experienced on May 29, 2025.
Image source: Royal Caribbean
Royal Caribbean cruisers receive a slew of notifications from mobile app
Cruisers woke up to a surprise from Royal Caribbean — and not the kind the cruise marketing team intended. On the morning of May 29, Royal Caribbean’s mobile app began inundating users with a series of push notifications containing nothing but placeholder text like “test segment.”
Instead of useful cruise updates, passengers saw a rapid-fire stream of nonsensical alerts. The bizarre glitch quickly had thousands of loyal cruisers buzzing on social media and message boards, turning a routine day into a viral moment for the cruise line.
What happened? According to Royal Caribbean, an internal testing error caused numerous dummy notifications to hit the live app. From early morning into midday, many users on X, Facebook, and Royal Caribbean’s community on Reddit reported receiving anywhere from 15 to 40 repetitive alerts in just a few hours.
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Later in the day, Royal Caribbean International’s CEO, Michael Bayley, personally apologized for the mishap and shed more light on the cause.
He explained that the company implements “endless upgrades and small changes made to the app on a constant basis. Normally the changes are placed in a test mode and when signed off by the engineers as ok, they are ‘migrated' in the actual app.”
In this case however, Bayley wrote: “One of our team accidentally migrated a test message into the live app,” likening the rogue alerts to digital “gremlins” making mischief. He even posted a funny image on Facebook featuring gremlin characters using computer keyboards to hijack the technology.
Royal Caribbean passengers respond to app glitch
Social media responses to Royal Caribbean’s app glitch expressed mostly humorous sentiments but also ranged from confused to opportunistic tones.
One Reddit member, CaptGoodvibesNMS, said, “I thought I was going crazy. Now I know it’s RCI losing their marbles.”
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One Facebook user responded to the CEO’s apology jokingly: “I figured y’all let Rover & Sailor into the IT app department.” Rover and Sailor have been appointed Chief Dog Officers for Royal Caribbean's Icon of the Seas and its soon-to-debut sister ship, Star of the Seas. respectively.
By owning up to the mistake and clarifying the cause of the problem, the CEO seemed to reassure customers that the glitch was not a breach or major tech failure, just human error.
One Facebook user responded with relief to Bayley's post: “Glad it was a mistake on Royal’s part rather than a hacker getting to all of us with the app.”
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The apology from the top underscores how seriously Royal Caribbean International takes even small blunders in its digital infrastructure.
But some cruisers half-jokingly wondered if they will get compensated for this blip.
“I think we each deserve 5 extra points added to our account,” one person responded to the CEO’s apology.
“I ran and looked for the $18 drink packages again,” another Facebook user joked, which referred to a drink package offered in 2019 that was mistakenly priced at a much lower price than the usual $55-$65 per person, per day.
At the moment, the apology from the CEO seems to have appeased most cruisers. As one Facebook user put it, “Cute post and love how you ‘own it' — even when things go wrong.”
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