Outrageous or Legitimate: Are you Allowed to Bag Cruise Ship Food?

Created: 09/29/2022, 15:05

By: Franziska Kaindl

Many cruise passengers take food from the buffet with them to stock up on shore leave.

For some, this upsets them.

Delicious dishes, bread, fruit and vegetables: the buffet on cruise ships leaves nothing to be desired.

With all the abundance of food, many guests are toying with the idea of ​​packing a small snack for later - for example for a shore leave.

After all, this is an easy way to save some money.

But is that even allowed?

Take food from the cruise buffet: criticism from users

A cruise traveler recently asked himself this question — and decided to raise the matter on the

discussion forum .

“May we fill our personal plastic containers with food from the buffet?” he asked the other users there.

"We're going to disembark and explore, but we want to take food from the ship and pack it for later in the day when we're underway," he explains his plan.

Food from a cruise buffet on a plate overlooking sea.

© Inna Talan/Imago

However, the hungry cruise passenger could run into a problem with his idea.

As a rule, nobody would say anything if you took food with you from the buffet - in moderation - according to one user.

However: "At many cruise destinations, it is not allowed to take food from the ship ashore, especially fruit, seeds, nuts, etc.", according to the note.

Various rules and customs regulations for the import of food can apply locally, as the online portal

writes.

That said, food at the cruise buffet isn't typically for takeout , notes

, a distribution brand of Aida.

Most cruise lines would discourage packed lunches because excursions aren't part of the package tour — and legally speaking, a cruise is exactly that. "In other words, eat a buffet as much as you like, but only at certain times in the restaurant."

Also not allowed: bringing groceries onto the cruise ship

Conversely, no food may be taken on board from land.

At the cruise line

, for example, according to the on-board regulations, it is "basically not permitted to bring food (in particular all meat, poultry and fish products, dairy products, fruit and vegetables) on board." There are only exceptions for dry goods industrially packaged by the manufacturer, spices or sweets.

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Cruise passengers should therefore find out from their shipping company which goods and groceries can be taken on board and off board.

Depending on the duration, some shore excursions already include a meal – so read the itinerary carefully.

If this is not the case, you will have to provide your own food on land.

However, many shipping companies also offer a special packed lunch for an additional charge, as

writes.

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Cruise: Why take-out buffet food is problematic

From a moral point of view, too, some Reddit users find the idea of ​​taking food from the buffet ashore to be reprehensible.

"Wow, I honestly can't think of anything more tasteless," writes one of them.

"Feel free to take a box of granola bars with you when you're hungry and there's no food in sight, but such practices are precisely the reason Venice no longer allows cruise ships to dock in its ports.

Passengers disembarked, brought picnics, sight-seeing, dumping their junk in town, spending as little money as they could, and set sail again, leaving the town even more worn down than before, without really contribute a lot.”

In fact, large cruise liners that exceed certain emission standards have not been allowed to dock in the center of the lagoon city for over a year.

This measure narrowly prevented the historic old town of Venice from being classified as a threatened world heritage site by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee.