@Tom do you mean that if I put the luggage tags on my carry on someone at check-in will take my bag for delivery? Or are you saying if I carry off the plane, I have to keep the bag no matter what?
I'm not 100% sure what you're asking. If you put a purple DCL bar-coded sticker on your carry-ons, and get off the bus with them on your shoulders, they're not going to wrestle them away from you. But they WILL take them if you want them to (see quote below).
What we do is pack for embarkation before we leave home (er, well, we never fly in on embarkation day - too risky - so we've only traveled over from a Disney resort). Almost everything goes in the checked bags, and the bare necessities go in the carry-on. They x-ray the carry-on when boarding the ship, but it's nothing like TSA rules.
Something to keep in mind is timing. It worked out perfectly for us in November. We bused from POR over to the port on Magical Express. By the time we got on the ship, it was 1pm, which meant rooms were ready. So, we dropped all our carry-ons in the room then hurried down to Cabanas for lunch. By then, all the early boarders were done eating and off to the pools. So, the dining rooms were pretty empty, and we had no bags to deal with (just a baby). Couldn't have worked out better.
In summary, if you can time it to board around 1pm, you get the best of both worlds.
When we cruised in March and we took DCL transfers, the driver advised us as we pulled into the terminal that if anyone had any last minute items, they would get you a tag and give it to a porter. One family took them up on that as they had a lot of carry-ons.
Right. When you get off the bus as the terminal, they WILL allow you to "check" additional bags that get sent through the behind-the-scenes system and end up in your room a few hours later. If you're arriving during a big rush of inbound guests, this can bog things down, but it's possible.
