October 1, 2009.  By Dave Beers – Editor, CruiseReviews.

There was much hubbub recently over Royal Caribbean Cruise Line CEO Richard Fain’s call for reasonability when it comes to muster drills.  Mr. Fain used more colorful language on his blog, but let’s just say he questioned the value-add of requiring passengers to retrieve life jackets, don them, and then stumble up and down stairways en route to their muster stations, hating every moment of it. Instead, the idea is to store life jackets at the muster stations if practical.  Obviously some older ships may not have the space at the muster stations for storage.  Earlier this year I received reports of Royal Caribbean testing jacket-less drills on various ships and recent reports indicate Mr. Fain’s wishes are being rolled out to other ships.   A reader today informed me that on his Freedom Of The Seas cruise last week they didn’t wear life jackets, but still lined up at the muster stations and did all the usual steps.   When the Oasis Of The Seas starts sailing, passengers will be accounted for by scanning their cruise card when they arrive at the muster stations.

For years I have praised Princess for their muster drill procedure.  On Princess you don’t put your life jacket on and solemnly line up in modified sardine can formations on deck.  Instead you go to a nice air-conditioned public room carrying your life jacket.  You sit down and listen to the procedures, then stand and demonstrate you know how to don the jacket, then you remove it, and the drill is over.  The thing about this process is that people will actually pay attention and not tune out and wait for the all clear to be announced.  NCL does their drill in a similar fashion, and on the Celebrity Equinox naming ceremony cruise in July, we also did our drill in this manner.

I’ve had variations on the theme when cruising with Carnival.   It has depended on the ship mostly, but on the Holiday we’ve had one cruise where they had us don and remove the life jackets, and on a subsequent cruise we had to wear it for the whole drill as we wilted in the heat.

Wilting in the heat is not a good environment for instruction of passengers.  I have had two cases where someone near me fainted – one time on Royal Caribbean and another on Carnival.

Not all of the recent debate has been supportive of the no life jacket approach.  Many experienced cruisers are concerned that this lessens the drill and could create havoc in a real emergency.  My response is that if you drill someone to return to their cabin and retrieve a life jacket, what happens in that real emergency?  Will there be chaos in the hallways?  Will people take the opportunity to grab luggage while in the cabin?  In this day it is highly unlikely that a ship is going to be in imminent danger of sinking.  The more likely scenario is a fire at sea, where mustering the passengers for accountability reasons is the primary concern.  There is going to be time to don life jackets at the muster station.

I don’t understand why there isn’t some standardization between the cruise lines.  I suspect that in many cases it is simply a “that’s the way we’ve always done it” policy.  Stagnation of policy often leads to complacency.    I encourage all the cruise lines to take the jacket-less approach to the drill.  You’ll get bonus points for mustering inside the ship.  You’ll be glad you changed.

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