Tag Archives: Miami

Carnival ships Fantasy and Imagination depart fleet

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The Carnival Fantasy in Mobile, Alabama, in 2017. Photo Credit: Alabama Cruise Terminal

Carnival Cruise Line has sold two Fantasy-class ships and will put two others in a layup.

Carnival also will bolster deployment throughout its network of homeports in mainland U.S. drive markets.

The Carnival Fantasy and Carnival Inspiration have been sold and are headed to Turkey. The ships were sold to undisclosed buyers, but they are en route to Izmir, home of one of the world’s largest shipbreaking yards.

The Carnival Fascination and Carnival Imagination will move into a long-term layup with no timeline identified for their return to service.

The line also made changes to its ship deployment in order to leverage its U.S. homeports.

The Carnival Sensation will move from Miami to Mobile, Alabama, and assume the itineraries that the Fantasy and Fascination had been sailing. Passengers on those ships are being rebooked on the Sensation.

The Carnival Sunrise will move from Fort Lauderdale to Miami, assuming the Sensation’s itineraries. The change puts a larger, upgraded ship (the Sunrise received a $200 million upgrade in 2019) on short itineraries out of Miami. Passengers booked on the Sunrise’s four- and five-day itineraries from Fort Lauderdale will be automatically moved to sailings from Miami.

Itineraries for the Imagination and Inspiration from Long Beach, Calif., were cancelled through April. The Carnival Panorama will continue to operate seven-day cruises from Long Beach while the Carnival Miracle will operate shorter itineraries from San Diego to Baja, Mexico.

The Carnival Radiance will go directly from Europe, where it is scheduled to undergo a $200 million upgrade, to Long Beach in April, to assume the short Baja Mexico itineraries previously served by the Imagination and Inspiration. Passengers will be rebooked on the Radiance, which will have new features including Shaq’s Big Chicken Restaurant and an expanded waterpark.

Carnival cancelled the Fascination’s sailings from San Juan and Barbados this year and next and will not replace them.

Carnival president Christine Duffy said that the line will continue to invest in its four remaining Fantasy-class ships.

“[They] work so well for shorter itineraries from smaller ports that cannot accommodate our larger ships,” Duffy said. “With our future fleet plan resolved, we are focused on ensuring we are ready to return to operations once it is determined that the time is right to resume cruising in the U.S.”

A rendering of Carnival's second Excel-class ship, sister to the Mardi Gras.

Carnival also confirmed that the sister ship to the Mardi Gras will arrive in November 2022. Under construction at the Meyer Turku shipyard, the ship will sail out of Miami as previously announced. It will be the Carnival’s second ship to be powered by liquefied natural gas.

August cruise resumption played down by Carnival Corporation chief

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How Carnival Corporation is bringing people together

Hopes of an August 1 restart of Carnival Cruise Line sailings have been played down by the boss of the company’s parent company.

Carnival Corporation president and chief executive Arnold Donald described the fallout from Covid-19 as “devastating”.

Ships would only sail when “it will be no greater risk, or even lower risk, than other forms of social gathering”.

Carnival Cruise Line announced a month ago plans to resume services from three US ports from the beginning of August at a time when other operations were being cancelled.

But Donald told The Telegraph that the August 1 date should not be taken as concrete as the situation is “constantly evolving and changing”.

He said: “Those we didn’t cancel [was] in hope that we would be able to cruise at that time and the ships would be positioned properly to honour the cruise, so on and so forth.

“We’re not trying to predict when we’ll open up but we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to. But it’s obviously dependent on what’s in the best interest of public health, not about the cruise but about broad social gathering… if people are in restaurants, hotels, airport terminals and subway stations, if a social gathering is happening, then it’s a condition for the cruise.

“But if we’re still in a state of highly constrained social gathering then it’s not the right situation. So we’ll see where society is at that point.

“We’re aware that people are anxious to get their economies going again, people are definitely anxious to cruise.

“We continue to get bookings and so on. So we’re anxious to go, too. But we only want to do it when the time is right so I think that there is a broader societal metric that we have to look at – we can’t just look wholly at cruise.”

His comments follow UK brand P&O Cruises further cancelling sailings until mid-October.

Donald added: “Our highest responsibility and our top priorities are, and they remain, compliance, environmental protection and the health and safety and wellbeing of our guests, our crew and the people and the places we go,” he said.

“So I want people to know that we will do everything to make certain that they are not taking a far greater risk by being on a cruise than other forms of social gathering – we don’t want that, we’re not going to let that happen. It will be no greater risk or even lower risk than other forms of social gathering.”

Looking forward, he said: “I don’t think there will be any issue filling the ships initially because the reality is that there’s not going to be that many ships and that many itineraries, [and] there will be plenty of people wanting to cruise.

“Over time, we’re going to eventually need to get back to where we were which was attracting people who haven’t cruised before.

“That job has been made, short-term, more difficult because people who haven’t cruised are hearing lots of stories and read stuff in the news, and now in their mind, they have another reason not to cruise.

“We’re going to have to, over time, chip away at whatever myth they happen to hold about a cruise, and help them see that that’s not the case.”

Many Governments Failing Cruise Crew Repatriation

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Crew Transfer Between Vessels

“The challenges in repatriating seafarers on cruise vessels around the world have highlighted the shortcomings of many governments in this worldwide crisis,” Lena Dyring, director of cruise operations for the Norwegian Seafarers Union, told Cruise Industry News. “These shortcomings have caused a toxic, compounding domino effect for seafarers who were and still are stuck on cruise ships around the world and caused a lot of human suffering.”

Dyring said that first of all she wanted to highlight how the Bahamas has acted.

“They have not allowed repatriation from their territory, thus failing their obligations under the Maritime Labor Convention (MLC). They boast that they have ‘allowed’ the ships to anchor in their waters and have crew members transferring between vessels so they can sail them home. They also boast that storing and provisions have been done in the Bahamas. But to my knowledge, most of these vessels still sail to Miami or Port Everglades for storing and provisions.”

According to Dyring, had the Bahamas allowed charter flights out of their territory from day one, there would not have been so many seafarers stuck at sea and a lot of human suffering and uncertainty could have been avoided. To her knowledge, she said, the Bahamas has even denied medical evacuations from vessels registered there.

There are many governments that have failed both their own citizens and their obligations under the MLC, according to Dyring. She said there is a pattern of “overreactions” caused by what she called fear and not facts.

“I also have to highlight the situation in the Philippines where thousands of seafarers have been stuck either on a ship in Manila Bay or in some kind of quarantine situation in Manila for weeks and sometimes months for no apparent reason.

“The Philippine union AMOSUP has done a great job in the middle of all of this, but it is difficult when you have to work against all of these other forces.”

Some governments have stepped up and taken responsibility. Dyring mentioned that Barbados, for instance, has taken a vastly different approach to the challenges and have invited the cruise lines to operate charter flights out of their country.

Some countries in Europe have also taken their obligations seriously. Dyring said that the UK has stepped up, as well as Germany, Spain and Norway.

Read the full article in the Cruise Industry News Quarterly Magazine Summer 2020 edition, due out at the end of June.