Summer Is Coming, Are You Ready To Cruise?
As frequent cruisers, we are members of several cruise groups on Facebook. Many cruisers had planned to sail away this summer, and eagerly await news on the future of cruising post COVID-19. The future of cruising remains unclear, but today Carnival announced their plans to phase in resumption of service this summer.
The plan is to resume cruising on August 1 with a total of eight ships from Miami, Port Canaveral and Galveston. In this phase, Carnival will continue to pause operations in all other North American and Australian markets through August 31.
Key elements of Carnival Cruise Lines plan include:
- All North American cruises from June 27 to July 31 will be cancelled.
- Beginning August 1, we plan to resume cruises on the following ships:
Galveston: Carnival Dream, Carnival Freedom and Carnival Vista
Miami: Carnival Horizon, Carnival Magic and Carnival Sensation
Port Canaveral: Carnival Breeze and Carnival Elation. - Other than the above referenced service from Galveston, Miami, and Port Canaveral, all other North American and Australian homeport cruises will be cancelled through August 31.
- All Carnival Spirit Alaskan cruises from Seattle will be cancelled, as well as the Carnival Spirit Vancouver-Honolulu cruise on September 25 and the Honolulu-Brisbane transpacific cruise on October 6.
- All Carnival Splendor cruises in Australia from June 19 to August 31 will be cancelled.
- Impacted guests and their travel advisors are being notified by email. Options for a combined future cruise credit (FCC) and onboard credit (OBC) package, or a full refund. Booked guests can make their selection online, alleviating the need to contact Carnival’s customer service center. Customer service is still operating in a work-from-home status due to locally-imposed office closures in South Florida.
UPDATE: 1:20 PM 5/4/2020
Some of the media reports have not fully conveyed the contents of our previous media statement and why certain itineraries were not being cancelled. Carnival reiterates that this is our current plan contingent on a number of factors.
Any resumption of cruise operations – whenever that may be – is fully dependent on our continued efforts in cooperation with federal, state, local and international government officials. In our continued support of public health efforts, any return to service will also include whatever enhanced operational protocols and social gathering guidelines that are in place at the time of the resumption of cruise operations. We are committed to supporting all public health efforts to manage the COVID-19 situation and will continue to keep our guests, travel agent partners and other stakeholders informed.
Carnival says in a press release:
We are committed to supporting all public health efforts to manage the COVID-19 situation. We are taking a measured approach, focusing our return to service on a select number of homeports where we have more significant operations that are easily accessible by car for the majority of our guests.
We will use this additional time to continue to engage experts, government officials and stakeholders on additional protocols and procedures to protect the health and safety of our guests, crew and the communities we serve. We appreciate the understanding and support of our guests and travel agent partners and look forward to welcoming them on board as the environment for travel and tourism improves.
Questions that remain to be answered include: what will Carnival require for passengers to be able to board? Will the cruises be shorter? How will life on the ship be different?
