JeffB

I'm going to add this as an extension to the line of thought above wrt HHS having it's backs against the wall. I'm advancing the thought that HHS/CDC had to put something out publicly demonstrating that they had a pathway to return to cruising. HHS/CDC were getting crushed from multiple directions. On a careful reading of that portion of the CSO, it's laughable. It's inconsistent with even their own recent guidance. One cannot take the thing seriously ...... and I don't think the cruise lines are taking it seriously. They have other plans. It's possible that the CDC has told the cruise lines that the public release of the phased return and all the outdated protocols that go along with it is window dressing. "We'll have an update soon," the CDC is telling the industry . Thus, the silence. If the cruise lines were actually going to apply to the CDC to conduct test cruises, I think we'd know about it. If specific ships were approved for test cruises, we'd be hearing about sign-ups for volunteers ....... cricketts. Suspicious - something is up that isn't public knowledge. What we're seeing instead is oodles of cruise ships making quick turns in FL and Texas ports. Vaccinations are getting done for crew members on these port stops. I suppose a hybrid start-up is possible - test cruises for some ships and "restricted" revenue sailings for others. But all signs are pointing toward global level sailings, including re-starts from US ports, with "reasonable (now proven) infection control measures" implemented by the cruise lines not directed by the US government via the CDC/HHS/DHS.

May 12th. I'm betting the cruise lines know that FL has a strong case and is hopefully standing by. If the hearing gets postponed (HHS just submitted thousands of pages of documents to the court demonstrating they have a plan via the CSO protocols) or the judge rules unfavorably on the FL claim, they'll get to work on dismantling the CSO to the extent they can.

Well, the judge may take these docs as prima facia evidence that the CDC has a plan and FL should just wait as it unfolds. I don't know if his clerks have the depth of knowledge about this to actually understand how outdated and absurd the restart protocols are and then impart that view to the judge. I suspect the claimant's legal team does. Hope they get a chance to argue that HHS is stalling and what they submitted is invalid.

I think it should be understood that when the CDC made the initial announcement publicly a few weeks ago and then provided more information publicly yesterday, the cruise lines/CLIA had advance information ahead of both announcements. I think it's also a good guess that the lines have been preparing for a restart well before the press got wind of the CDC's recent public airing of restart protocols. Having said that, I simply cannot imagine what RCL's & Celebrity's Operations Departments are dealing with trying to build into their operations the protocols the CDC is requiring. Or, maybe they're not. On careful reading, it's obvious that the CDC protocols just released were developed months ago and don't reflect current pandemic circumstances. I have to believe that operators at the cruise lines are in contact with counterparts at the CDC and are being updated in accordance with the CSO proviso that states protocols and guidelines will change based on evolving pandemic circumstances. What we know of the restart protocols just can't be right. They are laughable. I'll say this: I have no doubt that HHS knows it's back is up against the wall with respect to the potential that the CDC's CSO is going to be declared unlawful in less than a week. Throwing the stuff out there yesterday that they did, clearly dated and without regard to facts on the ground, was a move to convince the Federal judge that will be ruling on FL's request for an injunction that the CDC has a plan to get cruise lines going again .... but it has to be done safely. Never mind that the restart protocols contained in the CSO have no basis in the current science. The CDC may actually think that the Judge won't look at the CSO's details passing on that daunting task and just accepting that they have a plan. This is a classic bureauocratic legal maneuver. Throw thousands of pages of gobble-de-gook into the court's lap hoping the judge will delay the hearing to review the documents.

People! You are trying to understand and make sense of this CDC stuff? STOP. Pray for a favorable Judgement in State of FL v. HHS on May 12th. If that doesn't happen here is my plan: Volunteer for a "test cruise" as soon as I can do that. Quietly board as if I'm playing along. Find a CDC monitor and laugh in his face. I'm booked on Apex out of Athens, 8n Greek Isles. Enjoy that cruise from a country that doesn't have to deal with the idiocy of the CDC. Wait for this to sort itself out and sail on Equinox out of PEV in August.

This is the stupidest of stupid stuff going on with the CSO. Restaurant's and bars have been doing fine with no masking while eating or dinking the entire dining period without any problems for at least 6 months. I'm confidently waiting on the Federal Judge hearing FL's request for a preliminary injunction against the CDC enforcing it's Conditional Sail Order (CSO) on the cruise industry ruling that it is unlawful. May 12th!!! If it's granted the bull-shit walks and the CDC's house of cards along with it's stupidity involving all manner of stupid COVID mitigation measures and guidance all comes crashing down.

"CDC Guidance for US cruises- 98% Crew, 95% Pax vaccinated. Are you OK with that?" I'm fine with it, in fact I prefer it but I'm also OK with the alternative the CDC has laid out. Given a choice, I'd choose a sailing where vaccination is required to board.

There's a distinction between "volunteers" for test cruises and pax on revenue cruises. Volunteers on test cruises have to be fully vaccinated with proof or get a letter from your PCP that "the volunteer passenger has no medical conditions that would place the volunteer at a high risk for severe COVID - 19 as determined through CDC guidance." A pax on a revenue cruise will be following one of the two pathways to restart..... and we don't yet know how that is going to play out. Frankly, for revenue cruising I think this, again, is unworkable. Confusion will reign supreme among management, ships officers and crew and passengers. Hoping the Judge rules this craziness unlawful. Back in March of 2020, we debarked on a Friday in PEV from one ship, planned to go home for the weekend and sail again on Monday. To do that because I was 72 at the time and per "CDC Guidance" I was high risk. I'm perfectly healthy but have had my entire life what amounts to a insignificant heart arrhythmia and I take a cholesterol lowering drug. My primary wouldn't write the letter and neither would a local doc-in-the box. The cruise got cancelled on Sunday before embarkation anyway. Unless you are in the under, or there about, 40ish group and don't take any medications, docs aren't going to risk the liability. They may not write one under any circumstance related to your health and age. Basically, forget abut volunteering for a test cruise unless you're vaccinated and can prove it.

Desantis sees the requirement for vaccination to board a cruise ship as "unnecessary." That's it at this point. He's not crossed the bridge yet of saying he will or will not hold the cruise lines operating from FL ports to the no vaccine passports required to get service law in FL. Keep in mind it is the the CDC that has put up all the barriers to a restart and then defined two restart pathways: Vaccinated and skip the test sailing protocols or unvaccinated and do the test sailing protocols. Props to 0_0 who notes the importance of May 12th. All of this discussion will be moot if the federal Judge that is hearing the case issues an injunction invalidating the CSO. Fingers crossed.

We've been cruising since 2001 and have sailed most lines. Our preference is Celebrity but cruise line choice is a personal matter and reasons for a particular preferences are going to vary widely. I thought the post above that associated cruise length and pricing with passenger behavior was pretty accurate. Did a one night cruise to nowhere out of Sydney (between B2Bs) on Celebrity Solstice that was worse than anything I have ever experienced on any ship in terms of drunkenness, fights and general bad behavior. Sailed on a 5n Carnival Breeze in a Captains Cabin suite that was a super deal and loved it - great food and a nice crowd. The industry, at one time proper, staid and rarely changing through probably the late 90s early 2000s, is now changing rapidly, almost year to year, to adapt to a rapidly growing, generally more money to spend cruising clientele. I've not liked the industry wide trend to exclusivity but there's nothing I can do about it. That's what cruisers are looking for and will pay for so, I don't blame the cruise lines for adapting their ships to accommodate that crowd. Importantly, it's been my experience that I'm not treated any differently on any of the lines that offer exclusivity as an amenity if I book the lowest priced cabin I can find.

From what I'm keeping track of, I have no doubt that RCL and Celebrity ships are quick-turning in Port of Miami and PEV. These are not likely to be provisioning or fuel stops although those could be a secondary reasons for the stop. The primary is more than likely boarding crew members to go through the companies quarantine and vaccination process. I think the movement of crew from their homes to board a specific ship on which they are going to serve as crew for the restart has been detailed somewhere in this message board. Here's a link to an article describing the re-crewing process from an interview that appeared in Cruise Industry News (forget the file photo that headlines the interview article. Has nothing to do with current crew movement). The article lays out the technical aspects of crew movement - its complicated and time consuming: https://www.cruiseindustrynews.com/cruise-news/24849-happy-to-have-a-job-crew-excited-to-return-to-cruise-ships.html Equinox and Edge will be sailing out of PEV when the re-start commences. Equinox has a quick-turn at PEV on 5/06/21 from 0700-1700. I believe one of the most productive ways to get a feel for what RCG is doing and when a restart is likely, is to follow cruise port schedules. I'm about 90% positive RCG knows precisely when they are planning each ship's restart. Given the 60d time frame from warm storage to revenue sailings, RCG has probably already identified start date windows for the ships that will be involved in the first phase of the re-start. They have to have done that in order to plan for ramping up ship's crew manning levels, completing quarantine and conducting crew training. https://pevvesseltraffic.broward.org/webx/

Kaitlyn ...... there's an extensive discussion of this in a specific thread dealing with this question. Have a look here:

Details are scarce. Tea leaves aren't. Royal is doing something unique with their dry-dock schedule. There will be 4 RCL ships in Cadiz over the next 6 weeks, Symphony is one of them. The reason for this accelerated dry-dock schedule is to get these ships ready for continuous revenue sailings this summer without interruption, and attendant loss of revenue associated with dry docking. The press is on to get crews and ships ready. The chatter about crew movement, vaccinations being given to crews in most FL ports and the widespread re-openings going on in FL and nationally, all point to a return to pre-pandemic activity in the coming months. July seems about right to me given the President's comments on get togethers on the 4th. A late July sailing on Symphony seems almost assured, given the tea leaves. I think as far as the actual restart date, it is hard to identify which ship will sail out of a US port in the first 2 weeks of July. I'd say the second two weeks sailings are solid.

Just about everything discussed in this thread regarding mitigation measures we may or may not see on board cruise ships and in the terminals during boarding is addressed in this piece (linked below) by Charles Cook who writes for National Review and lives in FL. The take away from the article is that what is happening now is a result of "COVID Zealotry." Charles Cook (I've edited his post to make it less political): I do not believe that the initial panic over the coronavirus was driven primarily by cynicism or by expedience. But I do think that there is something both cynical and expedient about the glacial pace at which this country is being permitted to return to normal. ....... (some seem) to wildly misjudge how dangerous the virus really is — the chance that somebody with COVID must be hospitalized is between 1 and 5 percent, and yet (some groups) believe that the number is more than 20 percent, and 41 percent believe that it is more than 50 percent — and you have a recipe for disaster. That recipe is still being followed . . . well, well past the point of being overdone. I think this describes the CDC and how they have clung needlessly to their "rampant safetyism." regarding the pandemic and, without any question, their approach to cruise ships. So, we have to put up with it for now and I think the only thing that is going to realistically kick them off their position is a Federal Judge ruling the CSO is unlawful ..... their entire house of cards comes crashing down if that happens and I'm pretty sure they know it. https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/enough-with-the-covid-zealots/

Not saying either of you are wrong - everyone of us is speculating - but, just wondering, what are you basing this on? For months, posters have been echoing cruise line execs saying 60d from warm storage to operational. As far as we know, the ships that I mentioned in my post above that have first week in July sailings from Texas/FL ports are in a warm storage circumstance and, again as I pointed out are milling about smartly near those ports from which they are scheduled to sail first week in July. With CDC restart guidance seemingly shaping up last week in April, a first week in July restart seems entirely possible.

Desantis was asked about cruising from FL ports if cruise lines require vaccinations today. His response was, "I don't think its a very good idea for people to have disclose health information." A non-answer if there ever was one. Moreover, we've had this discussion already. Proving you were fit-to-sail using one of those forms from your PCP a year ago when the pandemic was just getting underway was deemed to not be disclosing personal health information publicly as that information was being collected by people authorized to collect it and held by health care personal on the ship. Proving that you've been vaccinated to board a cruise ship will be addressed in the same way and I feel pretty confident that Desants' people have already prepared statements for the Governor that will allow cruise lines to obtain and hold vaccination information privately and legally once there's calrity on if and when this will actually take place. No reason to start a fire-storm over this now. It will work out regardless of which path the cruise lines take on this issue. Desantis is not going to put barriers in the way of a cruise ship restart. If anything, he's removing them as we speak.

My take is that things are so fluid right now, so many moving parts, that it is really tough to predict sailings by ship/date. I feel reasonably confident that ships will sail in July out of US ports but the first ship out of the gate in July is extremely hard to predict. Galveston and the four Florida ports list the following July Sailings ..... Galveston will have sailings. Liberty of the Seas is on Galveston's schedule to depart July 4th. 2 Carnival ships go on the 2st and 3rd. Port Canaveral will have sailings. Mariner sails on the 2nd preceded by two Carnival and one Disney sailing. Port Everglades will have sailings. Celebrity dominates sailings there with 9 cruises between Edge and Equinox. Miami: Navigator and Symphony have multiple sailings scheduled in July Tampa: Brilliance has 5 sailings in July. I got these port schedules from the link below. I follow Celebrity closely. If you look at the cruise mapper function I can see Edge and Equinox right about where I would expect them to be to begin preparations for sailings from PEV in July. You can do the same sort of detective work for your favorite RCL ships. I took a brief look at RCL because they have more ships scheduled from TX/FL ports and I see the same thing. They are where I'd expect them to be in preparation for revenue sailings. https://www.cruisemapper.com/ports-in-east-coast-usa-and-canada-new-england-6 I'm thinking that there is no way these ships would be milling about close to the ports where there are scheduled sailings if RCG didn't have a pretty good idea that these July sailings were going to happen. I also think that Bailey's "two paths to a restart" - or with/without vaccinations required weighs heavily to the vaccinations required pathway. That is because if RCL and Celebrity require vaccines, they avoid non-rev test sailings required by the CDC. I'd think those would be something to be avoided if revenue generation is a top priority. I could also see a hybrid schedule where some ships will do the test sailings then sail w/o vaccine requirements and some won't and by default require vaccines to sail. Also having an impact on port operations in FL, just today Governor Desantis rescinded all his EO's issued under the authority he obtained by declaring a PHE. What this does is essentially cancel state mandated mitigation measures fully opening schools, parks and recreation facilities and freeing venues to operate as they choose. Businesses can still mandate mitigation measures such as spacing and masks but what will happen is that businesses that continue to do that won't have customers when people can go elsewhere without having to deal with them. We may not see masks required during boarding in FL under this action by Desantis but I'll be surprised if mask requirements working your way through the cruise terminal are waived. I feel pretty confident July sailings are happening with a slowly expanding schedule for more and ore ships as proof of concept is obtained. From the looks of the port scheudles I investigated, I'd say RCL/Celebrity will be sailing from US ports in the first week of July ..... caveat, if everything falls into place. I think it will.

Right. If it were not for the fact that influenza has essentially disappeared, not for the fact that the world experienced COVID, we'd be reporting on minor outbreaks of influenza in Oregon ..... that is an important distinction re SARS2. REGIONAL OUTBREAKS. Look at reports by state. Plenty are reporting no new cases or only limited numbers and within states the new cases are by counties. IOW .... REGIONAL. In FL, its the tri-county S. FL region with the most cases and even then, Broward, home of PEV and Miami, home of POM, the 7w rolling average decline in new cases, hospitalizations and deaths, even with vaccine rates dropping, is obvious. Let's get back to work, socializing and cruising. The MSM has got to stop reporting national stats

This is as good of a place to put this than any on this forum. I've searched the literature for a graph that compares number of vaccines administered versus new cases, versus, new hospitalizations versus new deaths and haven't found one. The point it would make is how blitheringly obvious vaccines work in subduing SARS2 such that the virus will soon no longer be circulating at a rate exceeding 5% positivity among tested individuals. Admittedly, collecting this kind of data and displaying it in the fashion I suggest has the potential to be misleading and subject to error. So, what's new. The CDC has been doing that anyway. Something like this would help change the narrative of predominantly negative messaging because ...... you can overlay in your mind's eye these two graphs and come to a similar conclusions as mine: The battle v. SARS2 is being wagged and won becasue of the miraculous success of vaccines. One noteworthy point from the graphs below: new cases took an uptick in mid-march and we started hearing dire consequences predictions of a 4th wave. It didn't happen. Vaccines? This should surprise no one. Recent history of disease caused by infection with viruses is replete with big wins for vaccines. What is a surprise is that PH officials haven't recognized that there appears to be a predictable endpoint because of the vaccines. At some point, not too far away, I would think, the likelihood of becoming infected from SARS2 and developing any symptoms let alone symptoms requiring hospitalization or worse causing death are remote. I could display a graph of weekly new hospitilizations and death but that would be even more startling. If that is the case, why are PH officials so reluctant to tell vaccinated people they can resume pretty much normal activities by simply taking a few basic mitigation measures that the human race should have been taking all-along? It is that sort of guidance that I've been advocating for for months ..... tell us how to get safely back to normal recognizing that the risk of becoming infected with something is never going to be eliminated. At some point, that risk is acceptable and, IMO, we are very close to that. I'm not an epidemiologist or virologist but modeling could reliably predict that date and we should be gradually moving toward it. Along with that should come concrete steps which entail the relaxation of most of the current level of mitigation measures being imposed by state and county governments. 7 DAY ROLLING AVERAGE WEEKELY VACCINATIONS SEVEN DAY AVERAGE WEEKELY NEW CASES

I agree with this but think it will be earlier. Two reasons: (1) The need for the cruise lines to start generating income is a significant drive of corporate plans and policy making on the mechanics of restarting. Getting crews back to ships is a routine evolution for them. The scale of the operation is just larger but the mechanics are tested and in place. (2) The actual numbers of ships that are going to pass through CDC's gates and start sailing in July, all things considered probably won't exceed 20% of all fleet capacity. That reduces the problems of (1) above and, I would think make the restarting, operation each line will be facing a lot simpler. On the increase in infections within countries the lines rely on for labor, I've not dug into this as thoroughly as I might but it's been my experience from the start of the pandemic that reporting of it's impact has been exaggerated and can frequently be misleading. I think this is probably the case in both India and the Philippines. My thinking here rests on the belief that RCL, for example, would not have stopped crew members of Indian origin from returning to work without a careful analysis of labor needs given restart plans. They've matched labor needs with availability carefully, I think. They can get to what they need from Eastern Europe and Asia. I also think that there is a tendency to take national COVID data and apply it as if every region in the country is experiencing the same level of new cases. That is never the case. Regionality is the hallmark of SARS2. I suspect that is true in the Phillipines and probably in India although India is a different beast. Some of that behavior is explainable, a lot of it isn't. The bottom line is that the cruise lines, having measured labor needs v. availability will get what they need to restart at some lelel that they calculate will be profitable. At first, the margins will be small so that proof of concept is obtained. As we move forward into late summer and fall, I can see 20% capacity moving to 50% and then 75%.

This may have been posted elsewhere but not in conjunction with crew vaccinations. On Friday, FL's Surgeon General stated masks are no longer required for vaccinated persons in FL .... ANYWHERE. That's indoors, outdoors, gatherings, e.g. concerts and sports events. The same sort of caveat applies however that @JLMoranposted above. Counties can impose stricter measures (with limits in FL) as long as they are consistent with Governor Desantis' EOs or guidelines published under this authority granted in PHEs. I was in a Costco and Publix today and there's no change in masking policies in either of those Broward Co. retail operations. I think a no-masking required approach makes sense and the state's Surgeon general cited several factors weighing in on his guidance: (1) FL's positivity rate has been well below 10% for weeks. This is the gate required to meet requirements of the state's reopening plan to move from Phase 1 to 2 and 2 to 3. That metric has actually been hovering just at or slightly below 5%. There counties where it's higher than 5% but none above 10%, namely the Tri-County region of S. FL and a couple counties around Orlando and Tampa. (2) FL is hitting above 40% of state residents on vaccinations and (3) above 90% in high risk populations.

There are 5 elements to FL's law suit. Irreparable harm ..... is one of them. That is probably the weakest if it were to stand alone. That's not the case. IMO, the strongest arguments with case law cited to support them are the ones that allege that the CDC does not have the authority to impose the kind and length of restrictions to commerce that they have imposed through the NSO and by extension the CSO. That falls under the responsibility of Congress to enact laws to that effect. Even in a declared PHE, which does authorize the Secretary of HHS broad powers, the NSO and CSO are discriminatory in that they target one business and, as they should apply broadly, they don't The maritime law that is involved in this case is complex but fundamentally it boils down to one section within this area that allows HHS, on the recommendation of the maritime arm of the CDC to coordinate with DHS to prevent persons or cargo that are shown to provide a risk of spreading infectious disease from porting and off-loading such passengers or cargo in a US port. Note that this authority implies an ongoing and existent threat. There is no such on-going threat. It is a presupposed threat and even in the broadest application of the law, current cruise ship operations since the middle of last year and demonstrably effective infection control protocols blow this presupposition out of the water. We can't know how this will turn out but the FL law suit has way more than just a chance of succeeding. We'll know on the 12th. I still feel a ruling by the judge hearing the case that results in an injunction against enforcement of the CSO/NSO simply eliminates most of the complexity and questions about restarting. It's a best not a worse case outcome.

This describes the mess that is the unreadable list of pandemic mitigation measures the CDC has recommended since the WHO labeled it as such in late January 2020. The same thing goes for federal, state and local pandemic policy that was born of the bad advice from the CDC and the WHO. While the Trump administration does have some responsibility for creating this mess, it is largely the CDC that holds the lion's share of it.

I'm in that group but not fuming and no, I'm not sailing on either Princess or HAL any time soon. The price of a cruise vacation has gone up, no doubt but, it still remains a remarkable value. What I don't welcome though is the industry wide drift to exclusivity and the up-pricing that goes with it. So far, that hasn't fully filtered down to, what is for me, affordable cabins. I also don't feel like I'm treated any differently on a Celebrity ship itself because I booked an OV cabin on deck 4. I think it's coming though.

Interesting on your SS comments and the reason Luttoff-Perlo ditched Azamara. I've often thought that Lutoff-Perlo was overly aggressive in changing the culture of the Celebrity brand - got rid of a ton of stuff I liked, holdovers from the Chantris ownership era. One of them was the golden age of cruising themed restaurants on the M class ships. Also downplayed Celebrity's X for excellence and substituted it for an E for expensive.... not really the X is still on the stacks but you get the point.