dswallow

Just because you're clueless and/or inconsistent about one thing doesn't mean you're not an expert at others. ?

Cape Liberty is now specifically listed for protocols: Getting Ready to Cruise | Healthy & Safe Cruises | Royal Caribbean Cruises But to summarize, things are basically the same out of all US ports, except for a few sailings left to depart Florida in August, and a couple sailings possible out of Florida ports at the end of of October. After that, nothing is really completely certain yet.

No, it's generally that you are told to wait a bit after recovery.

True. But my post said it didn't visit The Bahamas during the affected time period in which the Bahamas requires ships visiting ports to have all passengers 12 and older be vaccinated. It visits CocoCay on 11/5.

Maybe the timing wasn't quite right, but you really should've done Alaska. Avoiding the flight and that commitment ends up putting the rest of it on pretty safe ground. If any of you tested positive before sailing, Royal would handle refunding everything, and you'd basically have been local anyway so no or at least far less exposure in airfare costs, too. I suppose warm vs cold might've entered into it, but there's just awesome things along Alaska's sailing route to do, too.

It would appear there are just 5 of 69 sailings departing before November 1 and not back in port before September 3 from Florida ports that don't visit a port in The Bahamas between September 3 and November 1. Odyssey, 10/23/2021, from Ft. Lauderdale, 8 Night Southern Caribbean Cruise | Royal Caribbean Cruises Serenade, 10/25/2021, from Tampa, 5 Night Western Caribbean Cruise | Royal Caribbean Cruises Serenade, 10/30/2021, from Tampa, 5 Night Western Caribbean Cruise | Royal Caribbean Cruises Symphony, 10/30/2021, from Miami, 7 Night Eastern Caribbean & Perfect Day | Royal Caribbean Cruises Odyssey, 10/31/2021, from Ft. Lauderdale, 6 Night Western Caribbean Cruise | Royal Caribbean Cruises There are 9 more sailings from Florida ports that aren't affected by this protocol change because they end before September 3.

Requirement added: Are there any instances where proof of vaccination would be required? | Royal Caribbean Cruises

I draw the conclusion by actually looking at the numbers of people at most that are involved.

I get the impression from other numbers I have that a huge number of Royal Caribbean's North American employees are reachable via 1-800-327-2056 x8nnnn.

You should pay attention the news in The Bahamas. Everything they are doing is working towards getting the population vaccinated, encouraging vaccination, and tying reopening of things to vaccination. The latest messaging is about getting hundreds of thousands of vaccination doses just recently and completing nationwide vaccination plans soon. It is a consistent, repeated message. This change is just one more part of that to provide a cohesive, consistent protocol going forward, especially through the current spike of infections that appear to be coming from the Delta variant right now. And seriously what do you really believe this change is going to do? This change is going to make Royal Caribbean and other cruise lines remove unvaccinated people who could other get vaccinated; they're not going to move a ship to a different port; for shorter cruises, there isn't another port in most cases that's a practical alternative. And there's really nothing like CocoCay either, in which Royal Caribbean has a big investment, and certainly must have a profit motive too because every single thing they sell there or sell to do there is a Royal Caribbean product. No way they want to go to St. Maarten instead, or any other port. By Royal Caribbean's own admission there can't be more than 10% of passengers in total unvaccinated right now if as they claim all ships are in practice sailing 90-95% vaccinated anyway. If we're talking a 30% occupancy, we are possibly considering 10% to represent 200 people in total aboard an Oasis Class ship at first. No idea how many of those are under-12's, or even under-18's. But it's likely not representing 200 adults. So maybe they can't accept 25 or 30 adults; maybe even 50 adults. So boo-hoo they have to sail with 1,950 people instead of 2,000. This change simply has no practical financial effect. And if anything, it's likely welcomed if in any part the requirement from The Bahamas provides an actual out on the Florida state law that NCL is fighting and other lines are kinda/sorta/mostly working around by making it highly inconvenient to sail unvaccinated if you could be vaccinated anyway.

Sure, but we're talking about how to deal with large numbers of visitors; you try to get the most bang for the buck and minimize entry of infectious people; you may not get them all, of course, but this approach likely gets more than not having this approach does, with pretty minimal impact, even. Just because a few problems could still get through doesn't mean you just toss your hands in the air, close your eyes, and let them all through.

Just a guess, but The Bahamas requires a negative test to enter the country from non cruise ship visitors. Whereas they're agreeing to the cruise ship visitors entering the islands without a separate test, just whatever up front test was required by the cruise line to board; thus those visitors are exposed within the cruise ship to other passengers, and they're likely concerned about that level of potential transmission with non-vaccinated passengers otherwise eligible for vaccination and then the lack of testing immediately prior to the visit.

FYI, the Bahamas Emergency Order does permit exceptions based on medical contraindications for vaccination.

Emergency Powers (Covid-19 Pandemic)(Management and Recovery)(No.2)(Amendment)(No.8)Order, 2021 - Office of the Prime Minister (opm.gov.bs)

This is excellent news, and likely exactly what several of the cruise lines were hoping would happen in other countries after St. Thomas made their announcement not too long ago about the requirement. Plant the seed, watch it take root and grow.

There's innumerable places to get a free email account with domains that are similarly common and fine and with domains most people would never have heard of before. When I was aboard in June doing a few B2B's the first testing signup period nobody really knew what was going to happen for B2B's, AND the signup step had other problems, like not even showing up on phone browsers consistently or even on laptops. So the front desk was signing people up when they had a problem. And then later we discovered B2B's don't need to schedule an appointment as we'd be tested on turnaround day and we all just show up in a small window of time. But I'd had an appointment scheduled; they just said to ignore it and no-show. I guess they had no way to cancel it. But the TrustOne app it uses for things otherwise worked well, including it providing a notification on the phone about the test result as long as it was running in the background well before anyone walked over to where we were waiting for results. But everything worked out; I think everyone was way too happy just to be there to sweat these sorts of details. I go back in a few weeks for the last 2 sailings. I'm sure there'll be a completely different set of problems. And I'll still be happy to be there sweating it out. ?

You have no idea what you're talking about when you're calling this sort of thing "discrimination." And nobody said people who are medically unable (including those not of age yet) to get vaccinated would be excluded. You're just trying to create unnecessary panic, too. Right now, coming from outside the US, one must present proof of a negative test for COVID taken in the prior 3 days. This would simply create a requirement for proof of vaccination or proof of being unable to be vaccinated for a qualified reason. We are in a pandemic and people are dying or suffering significant medical trauma that could last a lifetime right now. And it is necessary to use all available tools to put a stop to it while we can do so.

Like closing the barn door after most of the horses have already disappeared. But I still think it's a long-overdue and necessary step.

They still had to complete check-in before arriving at the pier, so there was no way they were completely ignorant of what was going to happen to them when they got there.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around how Yale, Harvard and Stanford would choose a color scale for such a map that goes from brown/deep red for NO infections through blue-ish white for 1,000/100K infections or higher. It's backwards for any normal human expectation where red=bad/worse. And I am not sure it offers an easy way to show no data available versus actual 0 infections, either. ?

Thanks for the docket number, @CGTLH. As the documents for the appeal Florida files become available I will be keeping this up to date. It may not be instantaneous after each filing, but not too long after, generally. Included is a link to PACER if you want to watch for it yourself, but it'll potentially cost a small amount of money if you accumulate more than $30.00 in charges over a quarter. ?US Court of Appeals, 11th District, Case 12729, NCLH v. Florida (2150.com)

The Preliminary Injunction enjoining Florida from enforcing Section 381.00316 against NCL has been granted by the court. Full order: https://www.2150.com/files/cc/1-21-cv-22492-KMW-CMM/43_051023674708_OrderGrantingPreliminaryInjunction.pdf Everything: Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd et al v. Rivkees, M.D. (1:21-cv-22492) (2150.com)

Abbott's ID NOW which is commonly found in use at Walgreen's is acceptable. You'll find it and basically every other type of NAAT or Antigen test approved for COVID-19 among the pages at the link Royal Caribbean now provides to the list of FDA-approved tests. That category of tests that is not accepted is Antibody tests. In Vitro Diagnostics EUAs - Molecular Diagnostic Tests for SARS-CoV-2 | FDA ID NOW has been specifically called out before as acceptable, though previously it's been via communication with Royal Caribbean whenever someone has had concerns, which means it falls in that "good luck getting the person handling check-in to agree." ?

Just for fun, I created an account and tried to initiate a test session. Could be worse, I suppose. That article seems to imply a family would be doing this serially via a single computer or smartphone, but I would expect everyone likely has access to multiple devices, and there's no reason you couldn't use every device you have to begin testing sessions and get through them more quickly. It's still a decent option for people in more out-of-the-way areas. And even someone like me in an area with plenty of places to go would be looking at 30-40 minutes round trip travel time plus any waiting for the process to begin once getting somewhere that can do it, then the same wait for results.