twangster

I guess we should thank NCLH for being the sacrificial lamb, or guinea pig in trying this approach with the CDC. At any rate their "freeze" clearly wasn't a cancellation plan but possibly a means to figure out how to stop new bookings for unvaccinated including kids. This will be very interesting to follow.

"By requiring full and complete vaccinations of guests and crew, the Company believes it shares in the spirit and exceeds the intent of the CDC’s Conditional Sailing Order (“CSO”) to advance mutual public health goals and protect guests, crew and the communities it visits. " Full and complete sounds pretty absolute. Guess we need to see the CDC submission to know for sure.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. The CDC may not have legal grounds to mandate a vaccine. A cruise line submitting a plan that requires them is another matter. Now the question becomes... does NCL requiring vaccinations violate Florida's no vaccination passport executive order?

Looks like NCLH is going to require vaccinations in a bid to convince the CDC to let them sail in July. https://www.nclhltdinvestor.com/news-releases/news-release-details/norwegian-cruise-line-holdings-ltd-submits-plan-cdc-and-will-be By requiring full and complete vaccinations of guests and crew, the Company believes it shares in the spirit and exceeds the intent of the CDC’s Conditional Sailing Order (“CSO”) to advance mutual public health goals and protect guests, crew and the communities it visits. Norwegian trusts and is optimistic the CDC will agree that mandatory vaccination requirements eliminate the need for the CSO and therefore requests for the lifting of the order for Norwegian’s vessels, allowing them to cruise from U.S. ports starting July 4. The Company looks forward to its continued partnership with the CDC in recommencing operations with 100% vaccinated guests and crew aboard and reduced capacity initially as part of a phased-in launch.

Carnival's president took a cheap shot without naming Royal by suggesting how they aren't looking to move away from US ports as if it is somehow un-American. Realizing she was painting herself into a corner she then added "...unless we have to".

When they cancelled May on March 9 it was 53 days to the first day of May. Not that this is some sort of magic number that is always the lead time, but using 53 days as an example, that would be April 9th relative to June 1st.

For sure. However they offered three alternate dates. They can't hold cabins on all them not sure if guests will stay on the new 5 night, request a refund or pick one of three other sailings. Have you to talked to them?

I'm not sure anyone here would ever be able to know if they are holding cabins but my gut says they aren't. The first several cruises had strong sales before they changed the Nov. 11 cruise so I suspect it's just a sign that some are moving their booking to other dates and consuming whatever cabins were left.

Sort of. Precheck is for the traveling public. TWIC is for workers, not passengers and involves deeper background checks.

The June 10 "inaugural" LA cruise date is one I've heard before. If you do the math with April 25 being the last turn around day in Miami it yields 46 nights. That is the exact length of time Mariner took to go around Cape Horn in 2009. I wonder if they weren't ready to announce South America cruises, or maybe they plan to cut Navigator's height and get her through the canal so they needed to delay while they figure that out and possibly add some more LA cruises. The other thing that comes to mind is possibly telling the deployment team to drop everything and find another non-US port to launch a ship from pronto.

We are in phase 2a. Phase 2b is the simulated voyages. CSO introduced: Oct. 2020. CSO phase 2a details provided: Apr. 2021. I'm sure the phase 2a approvals leading to phase 2b simulated voyages will be approved promptly. By CDC standards prompt is between six and eighteen months.

There's always local LEOs. I'm also TWIC card holder. That's my favorite ID to use when returning to a ship at a US port. Works good at TSA as well, since it's their program ?

Latest agent I spoke with said an internal announcement went out announcing the delay. The announcement doesn't mention a new release date but he said there are rumors it will be closer to the end of April. Interested in what other experience when calling.

And USCG.

Rumors circulating that Royal booking agents can see and book Navigator from LA but travel agents and the public can not. I struck out calling a couple times. YMMV.

Can you provide an example of the port workers who are federal employees?

Welcome to the message boards! You'll have to come back and give us your impressions when you do.

This is the effect that CDC was hoping for. It seems they have succeeded. They are saving you. You can thank them later.

There are approved vendors who can drop them off and pick them up from the ship. You can rent from them.

I think we all should exercise a lot of caution with respect to sharing personal health choices and information with any private business. If a sports venue or movie theater starts building a database with my health information that may seem innocent enough for this particular virus but where is this going? Will information be used to target sales and promotions? What about discounts? Will my health information be shared or sold to other businesses so a different unrelated business can target sales to me? It's one thing for a government to request vaccine data when someone arrives for entry into a country. It's another matter when private business begins requiring this data as a condition to enter a business or purchase a service. I avoid many social media platforms for this reason - they are really just trying to gather a lot of personal details about you. What they do with that information is the real danger.

It's almost like you read the minds of the CDC team who authored the update.

This new guidance from the CDC is consistent with what many developed countries are thinking or doing. Vaccinated equates to lower risk. You don't have to look very far to find evidence of many developed nations trying to figure out the vaccinated passport concept, if it can be done, if it should be done, how to do it, etc. If it is right, or not, is a valid question and I'm not trying to advocate one way or the other in this response. Many would be travelers are faced with vaccination requirements to travel and have been for a long time. This is particularly evident when a would be traveler isn't from a developed nation. They may face a list of vaccination requirements to travel. No vaccination? No travel VISA. Most of us haven't been subject to these requirements but they have long been there. Some popular vaccination requirements for international travel include yellow fever, meningococcal disease and Poliomyelitis (Polio) for example. Some countries list these vaccines as "recommended" and some countries have vaccine "requirements" depending on one's travel history and not their actual citizenship. A major difference when looking at our current situation rests in the emergency use approval of the vaccines in question. Fast forward several years into the future and presumably some of these vaccines will be fully approved. The issue then becomes how do we move forward from where we are today with emergency use vaccines into the future 5, 10 or 30 years from now when presumably there will be fully approved mainstream vaccines available? In the 14th century it was common during times of mass disease for arriving ships to be placed in isolation for 40 days. The ship remained off shore and If the disease wasn't evident after 40 days the ship was then allowed to arrive. The word "quarantine" has roots in maritime use meaning forty days, the length of time for isolation required for arriving ships. Technically a 14 day quarantine is an oxymoron since quarantine by definition is/was 40 days. How would have the world behaved in the 14th century if a passenger on a ship could prove they had been given a vaccine for the bubonic plague? "Here's my bubonic passport, let me in" while the rest of ship remains in quarantine for 40 days. There were no vaccines in those days so it's a hypothetical scenario. In some ways we've come a long ways merely by having an emergency use vaccine available to us. In other ways we are no better off than travelers in the 14th century facing travel restrictions should we choose to travel by ship. Six hundred years later and not much has changed.

This update is your classic... Let me translate this latest update. You really shouldn't think about trying to sail before Nov. 1st but if you are that stupid here is the first mountain you'll need to move to do so. We'll let you know about the next mountain you'll need to move in the next update once you are finished moving the first mountain, or you could just wait until Nov. 1st, wink, wink.

Welcome to the message boards! Royal Caribbean has not provided any details for a launch date or initial sailings at this time.