Royal Caribbean has rolled back the rule requiring children to wear masks in the supervised programming areas of the cruise ship.
When Royal Caribbean dropped its mask requirement for vaccinated cruisers in late February, the only area of the ship that still required mask wearing as in Adventure Ocean, regardless of vaccination status.
As of this weekend, it appears the mask rule in Adventure Ocean has been changed.
RoyalCaribbeanBlog reader AshleyDillo posted a new posted rule on Oasis of the Seas that says masks are now optional for kids in Adventure Ocean.
"Mask wearing is optional for children participating in Adventure Ocean. However, masks are recommended for unvaccinated children 2 and up."
"Children under 2 do not need to wear a mask at any time."
Adventure Ocean is the kids camp on Royal Caribbean ships, where parents can drop their children off.
The updated mask rules for Adventure Ocean matches the general guideline for masks on ships made last week, in which Royal Caribbean said masks are optional for vaccinated guests and recommended for unvaccinated children onboard.
The change in mask wearing for Adventure Ocean tied in with the cruise line relaxing mask rules in cruise ship terminals.
Masks on a cruise are virtually non-existent
Over the last couple of months, mask requirements are greatly eroded away to point now they are all but gone from cruise ships.
As cruise ships restarted operations in 2021, masks were a cornerstone of new cruise ship protocols.
It looked as though masks might have gone away as required in summer 2021, but a combination of the Delta and Omicron variants required Royal Caribbean to keep the requirement in place for much longer.
A combination of Covid cases dropping dramatically on land and Royal Caribbean opting into the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) highly vaccinated program has enabled the cruise line to progressively remove mask requirements.
Face masks are among the most visible signs of the pandemic, and the need to wear them has been a major pain point for cruise fans who want to get the cruise experience back to a sense of normalcy.
In late February, Royal Caribbean dropped the requirement to wear masks while indoors.
Just last week, the cruise line announced masks are optional in cruise ship terminals.
Now with masks not needed in Adventure Ocean, the only time you would need to wear a mask potentially on a cruise is due to local regulations, such as in a port of call the ship visits or in some cruise ship terminals as mandated by local requirements.
