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Editorial standard

This directory has one asset: that you can believe an unflattering sentence about an operator who pays us. These are the rules that protect it. They are enforced by the way the site is built, not only by intention.

1. Nothing is listed without a source we can link to

An operator is listed only when at least one of the following is verifiable from its own published material: it accepts orders for a named cruise terminal, it names the specific hotels used by embarking passengers, or it documents a ship or pier delivery process.

This is enforced at build time. Every record must carry at least one source URL paired with the exact text taken from it. A record without evidence does not fail review, it fails to compile, and the site does not deploy.

2. Deadlines are quoted verbatim

Ordering cutoffs are reproduced word for word from the operator that published them, with a link and the date we last read it. We do not round them, translate business days into calendar days, tidy up the phrasing, or summarise. The exact wording is frequently the whole story: "four business days" and "four days" are different instructions, and only one of them is what the operator wrote.

3. When a source contradicts itself, we print both

This happens more than you would expect, and on the biggest lines. Royal Caribbean states on one page that gifts can be ordered up to 24 hours before embarkation and, in the next paragraph, that flowers need four business days. Holland America publishes a two-week prepayment deadline and a two-working-day card deadline together. Norwegian says five days at the top of a page and one week further down it.

We publish both statements, label the conflict, and say which one we would order to and why. We never silently pick a winner, because doing that would hide the single most useful fact on the page: that the operator's own guidance is unreliable and you should give yourself margin.

4. Unverified means unverified

Where we cannot confirm something from the operator's own material, the listing says so in plain words and is tagged unverified. Princess sells flowers and publishes no flower deadline we could find, so its listing carries no deadline at all rather than a plausible guess. Celebrity's only published figures sit on an order form it has since replaced, so we say that too.

An empty field is information. An invented one is damage.

5. No rankings, no reviews, no superlatives

There are no best-of lists here, no star ratings, no invented customer reviews, and no copy written in the voice of a customer. We describe what an operator does and what it publishes. Where we make a judgement, such as saying the hotel drop is the strongest fallback at Port Everglades, it is our judgement in our own voice, based on stated geography, and it is labelled as such.

6. Examples are labelled and excluded

If an entry exists only to demonstrate how a listing of that type is structured, it carries an "example only" tag on its own page, and the code removes it from the finder and from every recommendation surface. It cannot be mistaken for something we are pointing you at.

7. Money never touches the copy

Some operators listed here may pay us a referral or affiliate fee. Every listing carries a machine-generated relationship label, so the disclosure cannot be forgotten on a page: the field is required by the schema and a record missing it will not build.

Compensation does not affect whether an operator is listed, where it appears, how it is described, or what its cutoff says. Competitors are listed on the same terms as partners. An operator that pays us and publishes a bad deadline gets the bad deadline printed. See the disclosure page for the current state of every commercial relationship, which today is none.

8. What gets a listing removed

• The source page disappears or stops supporting the claim, and no replacement source exists.
• The operator turns out not to perform the delivery it advertises.
• The operator is an order-gathering front presenting itself as a local shop at a port.
• We cannot re-verify a material claim and cannot reach the operator to confirm it.

A removal is not a punishment and we do not editorialise about it. The listing goes, and the port page says what it now lacks.

9. Last-read dates are honest, not decorative

Every quote carries the date we last read the source. That is a statement about when we looked. It is not a promise that the operator has not changed the page since, and we will not pretend otherwise. Operators move deadlines without notice and without announcement. Before you commit to a date, follow the source link and check it yourself. That link is on every listing for exactly this reason.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, we would rather hear it than keep it. Corrections that come with a source get applied. Corrections that come from the operator itself get applied faster, and get no editorial credit in exchange.