Guests disembarking from a Carnival cruise ship got welcome news at another U.S. port after the cruise line added facial recognition technology.
Carnival Cruise Line added facial recognition to their terminal at Norfolk, Virginia. Earlier this month, Carnival recently started sailing year-round from the port after offering seasonal cruises from there for years.
With the addition of Norfolk, Carnival Cruise Line now offers facial recognition at the following ports in the U.S.:
- Miami
- Tampa
- Port Canaveral
- Jacksonville
- New Orleans
- Galveston
- Long Beach
- New York
- Baltimore
- Mobile
Facial recognition dramatically speeds up the debarkation process for guests who cruise with a passport. There is pretty much never a line and allows guests to clear customs in under 30 seconds.
All they have to do is walk up the scanner, have their face scanned, and then walk through when the light turns green. The technology matches their face with their passport photo to speed up going through customs.
Guests who cruise with a birth certificate and government I.D. will still need to through the regular customs line after their cruise.
The technology was needed in Norfolk now that Carnival Sunshine is based out of the port year-round.
Carnival Cruise Line is expecting 150,000 cruise passengers a year to pass through the port as the ship sails six- to eight-night cruises to the Caribbean, Bermuda and The Bahamas.
