July Cancellations

[TestingH2O]

CDC released the next phases of the Conditional Sailing Order including the rules for test cruises if a company doesn’t want to do vaccinated cruises.

The CDC would need to be notified a minimum of 30 days before the first test cruise. Trail cruises would also have testing requirements before and after the sailing.

With those timelines in mind, it seems impossible that the July 3 fantasy cruise will happen. I question if anything will happen in July. So, when does DCL announce those cancellations? It has to be tomorrow or next week, right? If they wait any longer, they will be hitting their call center with both refund requests and new bookings. That would be a disaster.

 

[sabrecmc]

We have a July 2 cruise. June cruises were canceled April 6. I'd love to have that cruise cancelled in time to book the Wish with the FCC. If they wait until after Wish bookings, that's like May 28, I think. That seems way too close to sailing. But, who knows?

 

[JWG]

Other than the maiden voyage, does anyone know which Wish dates are blocked out from using a FCC?

From Disney Cruise Line:

Q.
Can my Future Cruise Credit be used on any sailing?

A.
Select Disney Wish block-out dates apply. Otherwise, Future Cruise Credits can be applied to any sailing and stateroom category, including holiday sailings before September 30, 2022.

 

[kathi]

Why are you assuming that DCL won’t start first with 95% vaccinated? They have not announced yet. It would get them sailing sooner.

 

[jrapps]

Why are you assuming that DCL won’t start first with 95% vaccinated? They have not announced yet. It would get them sailing sooner.

I assume they won't because, you know...kids! Until kids can get vaccinated, there is no way DCL does 95% vaccines and maintains their family friendly image. I can see them mandating vaccines for 18+, but that won't hit 95%, hence a test cruise.

 

[mcd2745]

It will be interesting to see what the next batch of cancelations is. Do they cancel all of July, or if they think there is any shot of a mid-July return do they start canceling one sailing at a time? Whenever they stop canceling a full month's sailings in one shot could yield clues to the time frame when they think they might possibly be able to resume.

 

[Southern Pirate]

Reading over what the CDC wants seems very over reaching. How can a US government agency dictate what goes on outside the US. Once a ship enters international waters, does the US still have jurisdiction? When a ship enters a foreign port does the CDC still maintain jurisdiction? What about the country that the ship visits, does it have any say? What about the country the ship is registered, does it have any say as to what it requires of it's flagged ships? If the US has that kind of reach, why do I need a passport?

 

[Sykes]

It seems to me like there's absolutely no hope of revenue cruises in July. Even if they go the 95% vaccinated route, the time it would take to get the ships fully crewed, vaccinated, etc. and get the voyages approved by the CDC just seems like too much.

Reading over what the CDC wants seems very over reaching. How can a US government agency dictate what goes on outside the US. Once a ship enters international waters, does the US still have jurisdiction? When a ship enters a foreign port does the CDC still maintain jurisdiction? What about the country that the ship visits, does it have any say? What about the country the ship is registered, does it have any say as to what it requires of it's flagged ships? If the US has that kind of reach, why do I need a passport?

International maritime law is complicated, but an over-simplification of the matter is that US agencies assert that they can regulate certain aspects of any operation to, from, or via the United States. Cruise operators can escape US jurisdiction by not touching the US, which is what some operators have done. Each port the ship visits can also impose some requirements as well, and the vast majority of operations are regulated by the flag country.

 

[kathi]

I assume they won't because, you know...kids! Until kids can get vaccinated, there is no way DCL does 95% vaccines and maintains their family friendly image. I can see them mandating vaccines for 18+, but that won't hit 95%, hence a test cruise.

If they take that route, they would have to run test cruises for 60 days with non-paying passengers 18 years and older. Seems to make more sense to sail with paying customers 12 and up who are vaccinated and get sailing sooner. I don't see this hurting their image - it's a pandemic and children under 12 aren't getting on any sooner regardless of which route they take. Guess time will tell - they are going to have to make a decision and announce it soon.

 

[kathi]

It seems to me like there's absolutely no hope of revenue cruises in July. Even if they go the 95% vaccinated route, the time it would take to get the ships fully crewed, vaccinated, etc. and get the voyages approved by the CDC just seems like too much.

Sadly - I agree with you. If they go the test cruise route, they might as well just wait for the 10/31 conditional sail order to expire. After getting the ships crewed and trained/retrained then doing 60 days of test cruises (with only adult, non-paying passengers) - it's probably almost Halloween anyway. If they go the vaccinated route, it just depends how long it takes to get the crews back and we don't really know the status of that huge undertaking.

EDITED - I didn't realize the 60 days of test cruises had been reduced to one test cruise. That makes a huge difference on timing!

 

[Southern Pirate]

It seems to me like there's absolutely no hope of revenue cruises in July. Even if they go the 95% vaccinated route, the time it would take to get the ships fully crewed, vaccinated, etc. and get the voyages approved by the CDC just seems like too much.


International maritime law is complicated, but an over-simplification of the matter is that US agencies assert that they can regulate certain aspects of any operation to, from, or via the United States. Cruise operators can escape US jurisdiction by not touching the US, which is what some operators have done. Each port the ship visits can also impose some requirements as well, and the vast majority of operations are regulated by the flag country.

So which rules do the ships have to comply with? I.E. If the cruise ship is registered in Antarctica and they say all passengers are required to have mittens on while on board and the US prohibits mittens on a ship that leaves a US port, who do you comply with?

 

[AZMermaid]

Can they ask for vaccine proof and sail from Florida? I havent been following super closely but didnt the Governor just forbid any FL business from requiring vaccine proof? So if they want to go the vaccine route, do they need to move embarkation Ports?

 

[Sykes]

So which rules do the ships have to comply with? I.E. If the cruise ship is registered in Antarctica and they say all passengers are required to have mittens on while on board and the US prohibits mittens on a ship that leaves a US port, who do you comply with?

All of them. In your scenario (ignoring for a second that Antartica isn't a sovereign state), if there's a conflict between Antartica law and US law then they can't enter the US--each country has a sovereign right to decide who gets to operate within the country and under what conditions. There are basic ground rules and a number of areas where by treaty or other agreement we've (most countries) agreed that it would be untenable for each port country to try to regulate (e.g. the US generally doesn't assert most of its labor laws on foreign-flagged vessels), but outside of those areas each country gets to set its own rules.

 

[jrapps]

It is not 60 days of test cruises. They need to complete one test cruise. There are a whole lot of things that have to happen before and after that cruise, but you are talking a few weeks total, not 60 days.

That said, there are so many moving pieces to this still that I am going to assume that there will be no revenue cruises in July, and August and September look doubtful too. They need to decide if they are requiring ANYONE to have vaccines. Obviously this is a political landmine, although can you imagine if the FL Governor sued the Walt Disney Company? That isn't a great image when you are trying to get the economy moving.

They need to decide if they are sailing with kids. I can't image DCL of all the lines deciding that they are going only 5% kids. It's not an image thing, its their demographic. If you say no kids under 16, what percentage of the cruise cancels? It isn't realistic

You can't count on the vaccine for 12-15 year olds. It isn't even approved in the US yet (might be next week) then kids first need to get their 1st shot scheduled, wait 3 weeks, get the 2nd shot, wait 2 weeks for full coverage. So the 12-15 won't be fully vaccinated until early/mid July AT THE EARLIEST. It is not realistic to have families decide if they are keeping their cruise or not in July (or even august) with that narrow of a window. What happens if you don't get the 2nd shot in time, are you past your cancellation date?

They need to crew up the ship, get THEM vaccinated, restart agreements with all their vendors, ports of call, etc.

DCL of all the cruise companies can afford patience. Other cruise lines, that is their whole business. For Disney, they can afford to wait it out a bit more. Believe me, not an opinion I want to have...I have the Dream scheduled for September, but I am not (yet) holding my breath. My gut tells me they do adults vaccines, kids just a PCR test. They crew up, and do test cruises. Puts them at sailing revenue cruises between early August and mid/late September depending on how fast they can crew up.

 

[tidefan]

It is not 60 days of test cruises. They need to complete one test cruise. There are a whole lot of things that have to happen before and after that cruise, but you are talking a few weeks total, not 60 days.

That said, there are so many moving pieces to this still that I am going to assume that there will be no revenue cruises in July, and August and September look doubtful too. They need to decide if they are requiring ANYONE to have vaccines. Obviously this is a political landmine, although can you imagine if the FL Governor sued the Walt Disney Company? That isn't a great image when you are trying to get the economy moving.

They need to decide if they are sailing with kids. I can't image DCL of all the lines deciding that they are going only 5% kids. It's not an image thing, its their demographic. If you say no kids under 16, what percentage of the cruise cancels? It isn't realistic

You can't count on the vaccine for 12-15 year olds. It isn't even approved in the US yet (might be next week) then kids first need to get their 1st shot scheduled, wait 3 weeks, get the 2nd shot, wait 2 weeks for full coverage. So the 12-15 won't be fully vaccinated until early/mid July AT THE EARLIEST. It is not realistic to have families decide if they are keeping their cruise or not in July (or even august) with that narrow of a window. What happens if you don't get the 2nd shot in time, are you past your cancellation date?

They need to crew up the ship, get THEM vaccinated, restart agreements with all their vendors, ports of call, etc.

DCL of all the cruise companies can afford patience. Other cruise lines, that is their whole business. For Disney, they can afford to wait it out a bit more. Believe me, not an opinion I want to have...I have the Dream scheduled for September, but I am not (yet) holding my breath. My gut tells me they do adults vaccines, kids just a PCR test. They crew up, and do test cruises. Puts them at sailing revenue cruises between early August and mid/late September depending on how fast they can crew up.

My guess is that "crewing up" depends on how they want to restart. If they restart with only one ship, it could probably happen fairly quickly as they could take crew from the other 2 ships in the area (Magic is in Europe). Now, if they want to start all 3 from the US at the same time, then you are talking a longer timeframe. I am of the opinion that all cruise lines would rather start earlier than later. Any revenue sailing is better than what they've been losing. If they sail a month or two with only vaccinated passengers on a single ship that is 50-60% full, that is still probably better for them than nothing going on at all...

 

[jrapps]

My guess is that "crewing up" depends on how they want to restart. If they restart with only one ship, it could probably happen fairly quickly as they could take crew from the other 2 ships in the area (Magic is in Europe). Now, if they want to start all 3 from the US at the same time, then you are talking a longer timeframe. I am of the opinion that all cruise lines would rather start earlier than later. Any revenue sailing is better than what they've been losing. If they sail a month or two with only vaccinated passengers on a single ship that is 50-60% full, that is still probably better for them than nothing going on at all...

I agree with some of this. They will likely stagger the restarts, begin with Dream since the 3/4 day itineraries are easier from a Covid perspective and they make more profit from those. If they do only vaccinated passengers, I think they will be far less than 50% capacity. Maybe that is a good thing to start, but if it costs them more money to run the cruise than they make, might be more worth it to just wait. I wonder what the break even point is?

At this point, it's all a guessing game until they tell us their intention.

 

[TestingH2O]

Obviously this is a political landmine, although can you imagine if the FL Governor sued the Walt Disney Company?

Yes. This is definitely another piece that makes me wonder about vaccinated cruises. If they try to do that and Florida dues them, then a judge can order them to stop sailings until the case goes to court and everything goes right back to waiting.

It’s interesting that there is speculation that disney is going to move corporate offices to Florida after they had such a hard time during the pandemic with California. Depending on how far DeSantis chooses to go with this style of COVID response/recovery, I don’t know that Florida is going to look that much better. At least California isn’t threatening to sue them for doing business.

 

[Sleepyluke]

The other big question, and honestly it may be in the CDC order, is that does the 98% crew vaccine only allow the 3 that are US approved right now. With most of the crew being non-US based, there is a percentage that is vaccinated from their home country that could literally come today. There are vaccines being given at Port Canaveral and Miami that one report showed that they can give 2500 ish per day between them. For the companies with a presence out of these ports or close, this gets several ships eligible pretty quickly, just for the crew portion. For DCL, it is a matter of if the entertainment folks have been practicing at all, or if they have truly been off. Shot/rehearsal for several hard weeks and the ship is ready for folks by July pretty easily IF it makes sense to do. The fight then becomes the attorneys reading into the 95% passenger portion. I am not an attorney but deal with them alot and know there is someone out there ready to challenge the wording even if they know they are going to lose. If someone is not eligible to get the shot, it can not be required. And in talking to a few, it is questionable at least in theory that you can require something that is still in testing and Emergency usage stage. BUT - having said that the fall back answer is that the CDC/bright idea club whoever it may be comes back and says it can require it because it is testing phase of cruises...... Anyway, lots of thoughts and at least moving in a direction, but the control over a global industry has become a crazy topic to say the least, no matter what side of the isle you land on.

 

[DisneYE]

DCL should just go ahead and cancel all of July
There is no way on earth they can start cruising in July with all the re-crewing, vaccinating, re-training, rehearsing, test sailing that needs to be done. They can't do all that in less than 90 days.
Just ducking cancel so ppl can move their plans/funds/fcc's to other sailings.
They're just being ridiculous at this point.

 

[wideeyedwonder]

They need to decide if they are sailing with kids. I can't image DCL of all the lines deciding that they are going only 5% kids. It's not an image thing, its their demographic. If you say no kids under 16, what percentage of the cruise cancels? It isn't realistic

Speaking *only* on the kids issue, I do know that on our Panama Canal repositioning of the Wonder, since it was a 2 week cruise and it happened during “school days”, there were very few kids on board. We brought our kids, but we had to come up with a “learning contract” for them, to demonstrate that they were learning on board.

The point being, I would estimate the percentage of kids vs. adult passengers was probably 10-15%...the characters on board were practically begging people to take pictures with them as there were so few kids. Therefore I would guess that they would be able to manage a cruise with only 5% kids.