Are you going to need a different form of ID to sail on a Carnival cruise in the near future?
If you’re on social media you might have been under that impression with the roll out of new REAL ID requirements. However, Carnival says that this is simply not true and wants to put a stop to claims otherwise.
According to Carnival Brand Ambassador John Heald, the mix-up stems from a Facebook page that posted passengers will be required to have a REAL ID in order to cruise.
REAL ID is an updated form of identification that has new standards for issuance. The REAL ID Act was put into law in 2005 as a response to the 9/11 attacks. According to the Department of Homeland Security, it “established minimum security standards for state-issued driver’s licenses and identification cards and prohibits certain federal agencies from accepting for official purposes licenses and identification cards from states that do not meet these standards.”
While this act was put into place 20 years ago, it’s been delay after delay until a REAL ID was actually required. Now the deadline is finally here as of May 7, 2025. As of that day, every person traveling by air will need a compliant REAL ID to fly domestically. (You can also use a passport or enhanced driver’s license if you have one instead).
How do you know if you have one of these new REAL IDs? If you look at your license or ID card, it should have a yellow star on the face to indicate it is compliant.
With this new requirement, a picture was posted from a Carnival terminal showing the required documents for a cruise. It shows the requirement as a boarding pass and then passport or a birth certificate and state identification.
That picture of the identification shows a large yellow star that you’d find on a REAL ID. Hence, it seems to imply that a new ID would be required to board the cruise.
That’s not the case.
“I think it is very important that we get this message out as there are some people determined to post false news,” John Heald said on a Facebook post.
“It appears we have a very special Facebook page posting that everybody, or guest now need a real ID when they cruise. They are posting photos of this sign saying that we have announced that everybody must have a real ID.”
“This sign has been at embarkation for almost 2 years,” he added. “It is not anything new. So just to reiterate, you do not Real ID to cruise.”
You can see the full post below:
Sure enough, we’ve noticed this sign before and even took a photo of it more than a year ago (see the first image in this article). But we can see why there would be confusion as the REAL ID star seems to be highlighted in the image. And with the ID being required for flights, it seems only natural that a cruise might require it as well.
Still, Carnival is clear — you don’t need a REAL ID to cruise.
That said, you can avoid the issue altogether simply by traveling with a passport instead. With a passport you don’t need to worry if your ID is compliant or not. As well, if anything were to happen during your cruise and you need to return home, it’s much simpler with a passport than with a birth certificate and ID.
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