Frequently Asked Questions
What is Departure Day?
Departure Day is a travel planning and cruise research platform for people who travel seriously. It organizes flights, cruises, ground transport, hotels, and experiences into a shared day-by-day timeline. Travelers see the plan. Family following along stays informed. What you paid stays private.
Is Departure Day free?
Yes. The Basic plan is free and includes up to three trips per year, group travel for up to ten travelers, twenty documents per trip, and free Cruise Intelligence. Paid plans start at $15 per month for travelers who need more.
How does the cruise research work?
Our cruise data comes from the same distribution feeds cruise lines use to share inventory with travel industry booking systems. You can search and filter across nearly every major cruise line by itinerary, port of call, duration, ship tier, and target market. There are no booking links and no affiliate relationships. The data is there to help you make a better decision, not to push you toward any particular line or sailing.
Why are you giving away all this cruise intelligence for free?
We think it is helpful. Modern travelers are more self-directed, and getting involved in booking or commissions is not our strategy because it would affect our impartiality.
We hope you will consider using Departure Day to organize and manage your trips. When you manage a cruise with Departure Day, you can get alerts and guidance from our Cruise Intelligence system for that sailing.
Why would I search for cruises that sail with or avoid certain lines or ships?
The reasons are personal. Maybe something went wrong on a previous cruise, and you would rather not see that line or ship again. Maybe you want to avoid very large ships. Maybe you want to see a ship, such as the largest new ship at sea, without actually sailing on it.
For example, our founder was married on Marella Explorer 2 back when it sailed as Celebrity Century. He added the sail-with feature so he could book a cruise with a chance of seeing that ship again. And he's still married. Their last cruise was on AmaSonata.
How do itinerary deviation scores work?
Itinerary deviation scoring is experimental, and the methodology will evolve over time. We are starting simple so the signal is easy to understand before we tune it for more types of cruise operations.
For now, the score is the percentage of missed ports on a sailing. If a scheduled port is missed on its original day but appears somewhere else on that same itinerary, we count it as half missed instead of fully missed.
Deviation scores are computed against the last public version of the itinerary before sailing. Cruise line operations teams may also send us non-public operations information, which we call operations updates. Only cancelled sailings are exempt from deviation scoring; other operations updates are not considered in the score. If a submitted operations update includes a ship swap, we score the itinerary against the swapped ship, but still compare it to the original itinerary.
We do not currently score arrival and departure time changes. Those should be compared against historical norms from observed position reports, not just against the published schedule. Arriving an hour early or departing 15 minutes early usually has little guest impact.
The long-term goal is to help travelers understand whether a deviation materially affects the guest experience. Some factors are already measured but not yet included in the score; for example, we independently compute the minimum ground transfer time for ship swaps. Other context still needs more tuning. A mid-itinerary ship swap with a ground transfer may affect guests very differently than a high deviation rate on an Antarctic expedition itinerary, where weather and ice conditions are part of the expected operating environment.
What is your policy on operations updates?
Operations updates are non-public operations information submitted by verified cruise line operations teams. They can cover cancellations, ship swaps, port changes, timing changes, and other informational updates.
We treat operations updates as controlled corrections, not public announcements. Cruise lines can provide attribution and release timing for travel advisors, affected passengers, and public display. Embargoes can be immediate, set to a specific date and time, or scheduled relative to the sailing. Advisor release lets travel advisors know when their client has invited them into a Departure Day itinerary that includes the impacted sailing. Passenger release informs Departure Day users directly when the sailing appears on one of their Departure Day itineraries. Public release alerts people watching the sailing or cruise line and makes the operations update discoverable in the public Cruise Intelligence database. Different audiences can have different release times. Unless a cruise line specifically requests public disclosure, we do not publish the underlying operations update. Disclosure is limited to the audience requested by the cruise line's selected embargo policy.
Who can see my trip?
You control exactly who sees what. Travelers you invite have access to the shared plan. Family or friends following along can be added as watchers with read-only access. Financial details stay private unless you choose to share them.
What can my advisor see?
Travel advisors are free to use Departure Day. An advisor can see a sailing or itinerary only when a Departure Day user invites them to help manage or watch that itinerary.
Users can also send cruises they are interested in to an advisor for further research and booking. Departure Day does not charge advisors for this.
Departure Day is primarily built for travelers and households, not advisors. Advisors can still collaborate inside the trips their clients choose to share with them.
What is the Voyager plan?
Voyager ($15 per month, or $99 per year) adds unlimited trips and group size, more document storage, flight and cruise schedule change alerts, and live expense tracking via Plaid. It is built for travelers who take several trips a year and want real-time visibility into what they are spending.
What is Privé?
Privé ($100 per month) adds private flight and yacht charter planning, document intelligence for reviewing full contracts, and access controls for assistants and family office staff. Priority support is included. Subscribers to the Twin Ledger household platform have full Privé access at no additional charge.
Is Departure Day available on mobile?
Yes. Departure Day works in any modern browser. Native iOS and Android apps are currently available to beta testers only, and are expected to be generally available in the fall of 2026.
Do you use AI?
Yes, in two specific places. We use AI to help identify and classify document uploads, and to estimate travel expenses on request. Both run on isolated private instances of Claude Haiku and Sonnet from Anthropic.
Your data is never used to train models and is not monetized in any way. The AI features are tools we run on your behalf, not a pipeline that feeds your information back into a shared system.
Why is there a Plaid integration?
So you can track trip expenses without manually entering every transaction or uploading receipts. Connect a card or account through Plaid and Departure Day can match transactions to the trips and segments they belong to automatically. No spreadsheets, no scanning.
The Plaid integration is completely optional. Your financial data is not shared with anyone, and connecting an account has no effect on anything outside of expense tracking within your trips.
What is the founder's favorite ship?
Still have questions?
Reach us at contact@twinledger.com.