Pre-planed backup itineraries....

[jfs9900]

I think that Disney (and all the other cruise lines) should setup a set of alternative ports for it's ports of call for when weather prohibits a normal sailing. Having this information would allow people to plan ahead and look into alterative excursions and activities if the ship can not stop at the normal ports. Obviously such plans would not be able to include 'backups' for the current situation with hurricane frances.

 

[allears]

That sounds like a great idea on paper, and I'm even trying to do a little of that myself, in the event our ports of call get changed. And it's looking like CC very well might be out even by the 9/25 sailing.

However, as with most things, there is a lot more pieces to that kind of plan that one might consider at first. One is, how can you plan ahead of time where to go differently when you don't know where a weather situation is going to occurr. Next, depending on the day of the week that you need to make a change, each port of call would already have ships scheduled to dock. Add to those logistics the fact that if your ship is changing destinations to avoid weather, so are other cruise ships that are sailing to the same region. Now they need docking space at different ports of call. Then they have to make sure the distances they travel match the rest of the schedule and they can get to where they need to be next on time.

I am a retentive planner and like back ups as much as possible. But some situations just can't be planned that closely. They obvioulsy have plans in place on how to execute changes, but they just are going to be detailed enough to inform passagners ahead of time. Sometimes you have to just be creative and go with what works best at the time.

I've been very interested in how all of this has transpired as we sail in three weeks. And Disney's done a fine job considering the constantly changing circumstances.

But, as I said, I'm doing some back up planning on my own. Based on what changes they've made this past week, you can kind of get an idea of which other ports are possibilities. If they are ones that DCL frequents, like St Thomas, look at the shore excursions available for St Thomas and pick a couple that appeal to you, so that you already have an idea of what you would like to do. If the port is not a usual one, like Costa Maya, go to the web site and look at what is availble at that port. Like I said, I'm doing this now, just to get a leg up if I have to make last minute decisions because of changes in our schedule.