Long name in my reservation..

[egvra76]

I recently posted this at the First time cruisers but was advised to address this issue at this forum.

 

so here it goes: family of 5 and currently booked on Oasis this coming October. I'm concerned about my kid's long name on her passport, that given the limitation on Royal's reservation system, they simply didn't match. So I end up booking over the phone where i only got a verbal assurance that it won't be an issue come boarding time, but going thru the fine print, RCI made it clear that the names on the reservation and the legal doc has to be a match. Should i just take the rep's word for it? Has anyone have a similar experience? thanks anyone

[mspmcpie]

I've never had this experience, but I will say that anytime I'm unsure if a rep is correct and want reassurance I ask for an email indicating what they have said. If you can't find it on their site/policies I would request it in email.

 

 

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[BekkaW]

I had a similar experience. My sister has a hyphenated first name (think Mary-Jane) which is how it shows on her passport, but the reservation system didn't capture the hyphen. When we checked in the lady just changed it. They could tell that it was her and what had gone wrong. It wasn't an issue for the security manifest.

[mollyeilis]

My son is hyphenated on BC and passport, but almost no travel site allows it. So he's either Smith Jones or SmithJones on airlines and on Royal. And no one cares.

 

It's not like you put Smith and now it's Jones. It'll show as Smithjoneswhitesmy instead of Smithjoneswhitesmythe. They'll understand it.

[Thoie]

My surname never matches, because Royal doesn't realise it's 2016, and we've known how to avoid SQL injections for decades :rolleyes:

 

It's not quite the same situation, but let's say my surname is O'Flynn, it's on their records as Oflynn. PITA when you're trying to pay for something on the site and it insists "enter your name as it appears on your credit card", but then doesn't accept that!

[Snit13]

I have not had an issue with RCCL even though their online system will not take my legal name as it appears on my passport. The problem I encountered in the past was with Homeland Security. They didn't want to let me out of cruise terminal because name on passport didn't match name on ship manifest. It took over 1/2 hour to get thru immigration.

 

Would suggest you insist it is corrected when you check in for the cruise. RCCL just enforces rules of the government.

[gagirl7143]

My husband is a JR. List as such on his passport. We make sure on airline and cruise tickets that it shows SmithJR as one word so it actually gets printed. The space or hyphen is not as important as the actual letters. We have traveled world wide in the last few years and this is the way to solve the problem.

On another note. In the world we live in the hyphen does cause other problems as in health care. I worked in a medical office where critical tests were lost or had to be repeated on children with hyphenated name as they were confused about the correct filing of last name. Good luck.

[egvra76]

I'm grateful for all the responses, all these scenarios gave me a very useful tool on how to tackle this head on leading to the day of the cruise.

So I called them this morning, spoke to an agent then agent spoke to his supervisor, unfortunately they can't do anything "as of now" as the name really "won't fit it the box" ., But they might be able to correct this once I check in online, when would that be, no idea I forgot to ask and while i'm on the phone with an agent, I was getting an incoming call which turns out to be.. from Royal(save for another thread).

[johnjen]

I recently suggested a change in a database field for this specific reason: that some names can be very long and were reported to sometimes exceed even the 69 character limit, so we doubled it just to be safe. I'd have thought that RCL's IT staff would've picked up on this by now, especially the hyphen, because that should be an allowable character in any data field.

[jimmyzwei]

called them this morning, spoke to an agent then agent spoke to his supervisor, unfortunately they can't do anything "as of now" as the name really "won't fit it the box"

 

Bottom line is it will never fit not now nor at check in nor at the terminal when boarding. the system just won't take it. No different than the Hyphen problem. (my wife has one) it is either a space or pulled out and names run together - that can vary by company and can be controlled generally. Never had a problem boarding a plane or getting back in the country. really is a pretty common occurrence. JMHO

[Brittgrrl]

My son's given name is a double-barrelled with 14 letters (not my fault-family name), and although his passport and license are correct, RCCL, BA, Virgin, and even his university have never accommodated the hyphen, or even the complete name, due to available space. But it's never been a problem. He has sailed a dozen times and they've never batted an eye. Enjoy your cruise! :D