What it means
A muster drill is the mandatory pre-departure safety briefing on every cruise, required by international maritime law (specifically, the SOLAS — Safety of Life at Sea — convention). The drill teaches you where to go in an emergency, what your assigned lifeboat is, and how to put on a life jacket. It happens before the ship can leave its embarkation port.
The word “muster” comes from the verb meaning “to gather” — your muster station is the place you’d gather in an emergency. Each passenger is assigned a specific muster station printed on their cruise card and posted on the back of their cabin door.
What’s changed since 2020
This is the most important thing for first-timers to understand: the muster drill in 2026 is not what most pre-pandemic articles describe.
The legacy muster drill (pre-2020) required every passenger to gather at their muster station at a specific time, stand in close quarters with their life jacket for 20-30 minutes, watch a safety demonstration, and listen to instructions from the crew. It was famously tedious and a universal first-day annoyance.
The modern muster drill (“eMuster”) is much shorter. On most major cruise lines today, the process is:
1. Watch a short safety video on your phone via the cruise line’s app, OR on your cabin TV. This covers life jacket use, evacuation procedures, and general safety information. Usually 5–10 minutes. 2. Physically visit your muster station — walk to the location printed on your cruise card. A crew member will scan your cruise card to confirm you’ve been there. No standing in a crowd, no demonstration, no waiting.
The whole process now takes 10–15 minutes total and can be done at your own pace anytime between boarding and 30–60 minutes before sail-away.
Royal Caribbean Group pioneered the eMuster format (Muster 2.0) in 2020 as a COVID-era social-distancing measure, and lines like Celebrity, Carnival, Norwegian, MSC, Holland America, and most other major operators have adopted similar systems. (A notable exception is Disney Cruise Line, which reverted to traditional in-person drills). A small number of lines (notably some luxury and expedition lines) still run a traditional in-person muster drill, but on mainstream cruises it’s the exception.
Why this matters for first-timers
Three practical points:
1. Don’t skip it.
The cruise line’s computer system tracks which passengers have completed the muster drill (both the video and the physical station check-in). If you haven’t completed both by the deadline — usually 30-60 minutes before sail-away — you can be paged, escorted by crew, or in extreme cases removed from the ship. The deadline is firm because the ship literally cannot legally sail until 100% of passengers have completed the drill.
2. Do it early in your embarkation day.
As soon as you board, while your cabin isn’t ready and you’re killing time, walk to your muster station. The line is shortest in the first hour after boarding. By 3:00 PM, every passenger who waited until “later” is showing up at once and creating a queue.
3. Make sure the video plays.
The cruise app sometimes has a glitchy first-time setup. If you start the video and the system doesn’t register completion, you’ll need to do it again. The safer move: watch the video on your cabin TV (which is auto-tracked) rather than the app.
What to bring (nothing, basically)
Modern muster drills don’t require you to bring your life jacket or wear closed-toe shoes or any of the older requirements. Just walk to your station with your cruise card. The crew member there scans your card, marks you as complete, and you walk away. The whole interaction takes about 30 seconds.
The cabin emergency card
The back of your cabin door has a small printed card with three pieces of information you should glance at on your first day:
1. Your muster station letter and number (e.g., “Station C, Deck 4”) 2. The route to that station from your cabin 3. Your lifeboat assignment
You don’t need to memorize any of it, but knowing where your station is — and that you can find it without thinking — is the entire point of the drill. If a real emergency happened, you’d find your way there even in chaos.