In this age of modern-day cruising, several cruise lines require that guests upload a photo of their face before their cruise begins as a security measure.
Virgin Voyages is very strongly app-based (even though their app kind of sucks, but that’s its own story), and before you sail, when you’re preparing to check in for your cruise, the first of seven things they require you to do is send them a photo of your face for them to have on file for security.
Unfortunately, Kate Goodwin, a human resources worker from London, England, wound up sending Virgin Voyages more than they bargained for.
She had done all of her pre-cruise app work (like paperwork, but on the app) a week or two before, when she got an emailed notification she definitely wasn’t expecting:
“Your security photo contains nudity”
Wait, what???
And then it all came back to her.
Like many pages that require a selfie, Virgin Voyages sends you a page on the app that you have to fit your face into. Your face goes into an oval shape, and then there’s a box centering your head and shoulders.
You’d think that the rest of the picture gets cropped out, right?
Turns out, maybe not so much
When Goodwin snapped and submitted her security photo, she had just come out of the shower. She didn’t think that the person who checks the pic would be able to see…everything. And they did.
“I thought it was being used as AI to verify me against my passport photo—not for human viewing or other use on the ship,” Goodwin said. “I was naked because I had just showered and laying around on my phone as you do—but didn’t think it mattered because that part of the photo was not inside the guideline frame and only my face was.”
Um…surprise!?
So a few weeks later, she got an email from Virgin Voyages, warning her that her photo was inappropriate. It read, in part:
We apologize that somewhere along the way, a snafu occurred that’s preventing your Ready to Sail to be ‘officially’ complete.
(“Ready to Sail” is what Virgin Voyages calls the 7-part online check-in I mentioned earlier. It all has to be completed before arriving at the cruise terminal.)
In order to avoid any issues at the port, log into the Virgin Voyages app to complete check-in and correct the following issues(s).
And that’s when they let her know they couldn’t use her photo because she was nude. Or, as she put it, “…and my ta-tas were down here, which I didn’t think was being submitted.”
Whoopsie!
Goodwin took the whole thing in stride and even posted about it on TikTok:
@katesdaysss Sorry @Virgin Voyages #travel #solotravel #cruise #virginvoyages
So let this be a warning to y’all! 😉
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