The Carnival Horizon will be out of service longer than anticipated to fix a propulsion problem with the ship now set for a drydocking in Palermo for repairs.
This means sailings on the Horizon are cancelled until January 22 and Carnival is responding quickly, with the Liberty and Sunshine re-entering service to pick up the Horizon’s guests and itineraries from Miami.
Both those ships will sail from Miami in place of the Horizon for the Dec. 19, Dec. 26 and Dec. 31 departures. The Sunshine will then move north to Charleston for a Jan. 13 restart, while the Liberty will pick up the Horizon’s Miami-based Caribbean itineraries that sail on Jan. 8 and Jan. 22.
During a media briefing Thursday aboard the soon-to-be-christened MSC Seashore, Ruben Rodriguez, MSC Cruises North America president, revealed the line’s next EVO-class ship will now be officially deployed to the U.S. upon completion in 2022.
“MSC Seascape is the sister ship to MSC Seashore. It’s currently under construction in Italy, to be launched at the end of next year,” revealed Rodriguez. “And we will be deploying Seascape in Miami as its homeport come winter 2022-2023.” He added that the ship will bring “new experiences, new amenities and new features”.
MSC Seascape is scheduled to be delivered from Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri in November 2022. The 5,877-passenger ship will offer 11 dining venues, 19 bars and lounges, and will feature six swimming pools. Rodriguez’s announcement coincided with the float-out of MSC Seascape at Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri on Thursday.
MSC’s decision to deploy its newest vessel Stateside isn’t exactly a surprise. The Swiss-based, Italy-owned cruise line has been making big investments in the U.S. to stake a place in the highly competitive U.S. cruise market. These initiatives also include its three-year Ocean Cay MSC Marine Reserve project, which saw the line completely renovating and restoring an industrial island in the Bahamas into a thriving marine reserve with over 75,000 individually-planted plants, over 80 different species of marine life, and a coral restoration project.
MSC Cruises will also begin ground-breaking on their own dedicated terminal at PortMiami, designed by Miami-based Arquitectonica, the global architecture firm responsible for several buildings found in the Miami skyline as well as across the world.
Carnival Cruise Line has extended the availability of coronavirus testing at its homeports through the end of December 2021. This was announced in a Facebook post by the cruise line’s brand ambassador John Heald.
The testing is available for vaccinated guests who sail from Galveston, Baltimore, New Orleans and Long beach through DocGo and for vaccinated passengers sailing from Miami, Port Canaveral and Tampa via Rapid Cruise Testing.
Appointments must be made online and are non-refundable at the price of $100 per person.
Heald asked Carnival guests to use the homeport testing services only if they “exhausted all other ways to get tested such as tests by your local pharmacy, monitored home tests etc.”
“This will be more affordable plus most importantly it will give you peace of mind knowing you already have your negative result 48 hours before your fun starts,” Heald explained.
Any appointment made with the testing centres and not taken will not be refunded in December, according to him.
“The reason for this is that we had people not show up and then ask for a refund which in turn meant that people who wanted appointments could not get them. So, for December there will be no refunds made,” Heald explained.
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