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When RCI starts sailing again, which ships and itineraries will be first?


steverk

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We also have to consider that no itinerary will sail as it is set and that when cruises resume they will cancel the scheduled ones and open up a new altered itinerary for booking much like they did in Europe.  If anything sails in 2020 it could come down to those lucky enough to book them quickly.  On a related note it would be a nightmare trying to decide who got to sail on an existing itinerary and who got force cancelled.  I know some would volunteer not to go (for refund or FCC) but probably not enough.  

  

Full disclosure I have a Dec 6 Oasis 7 nighter with a stop in Labadee so I'd be okay with that one sailing only to Labadee and 6 sea days ; ) 

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I am sailing in 36 days on November 1st.  Last Sunday I received my guest vacation documents by email which lists my itinerary as intact from when I booked.  Am I really going to sail?  I wish I knew.  We got off Anthem on March 15th (last pre-shutdown cruise) and are scheduled on Harmony (first post-shutdown cruise).  I have not received any documents which describe any restrictions for my up coming cruise.  Very strange...

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I wish they would publish the proposed actual sailing schedule so that those of us that are willing to be guinea pigs could get in line.

I get why they cant/wont ... still no certainty from the CDC side so it would only be the plan not final and massive refunding and bad press in a time when they can ill afford it due to all the currently scheduled cruises getting cancelled but it would be nice to have a dream that might actually happen rather than just futilely throwing deposits (and final payments at this stage) on ships that Royal (and other lines) know arent going to be sailing no matter what.

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41 minutes ago, jticarruthers said:

I wish they would publish the proposed actual sailing schedule so that those of us that are willing to be guinea pigs could get in line.

I get why they cant/wont ... still no certainty from the CDC side so it would only be the plan not final and massive refunding and bad press in a time when they can ill afford it due to all the currently scheduled cruises getting cancelled but it would be nice to have a dream that might actually happen rather than just futilely throwing deposits (and final payments at this stage) on ships that Royal (and other lines) know arent going to be sailing no matter what.

Agreed! 

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53 minutes ago, jticarruthers said:

I wish they would publish the proposed actual sailing schedule so that those of us that are willing to be guinea pigs could get in line.

I get why they cant/wont ... still no certainty from the CDC side so it would only be the plan not final and massive refunding and bad press in a time when they can ill afford it due to all the currently scheduled cruises getting cancelled but it would be nice to have a dream that might actually happen rather than just futilely throwing deposits (and final payments at this stage) on ships that Royal (and other lines) know arent going to be sailing no matter what.

^^^^THIS^^^^

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52 minutes ago, jticarruthers said:

I wish they would publish the proposed actual sailing schedule so that those of us that are willing to be guinea pigs could get in line.

I get why they cant/wont ... still no certainty from the CDC side 

Not Even when CDC say " ok you can sail" will they be able to say whats happening fully. 

1st cruises will in my opinion be to private islands as they can control everything, after that cruiselines will have to see which countries are not only open to visitors but more importantly willing to guarentee that ships can dock to disembark those in need of medical attention or who may need to self isolate. 

Guess it will only be once this is worked out that any new schedules will be released.

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I wonder how Alaska sailings will be handled. No private islands and port intensive. Maybe they'll skip Canada and ding each passenger a charge for Jones Act? For that matter, Alaska will need to open up, too. As I've said on other posts, I just hope they figure this out 90 days before the first May sailing.

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1 hour ago, Ray said:

1st cruises will in my opinion be to private islands as they can control everything, after that cruiselines will have to see which countries are not only open to visitors but more importantly willing to guarentee that ships can dock to disembark those in need of medical attention or who may need to self isolate. 

Gee I wish I knew!  My Nov 1st Harmony cruise is scheduled for Perfect Day and Western !!!  Here is a snip of the email RCL sent me last Sunday...

Harmony.jpg

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3 hours ago, Baked Alaska said:

I wonder how Alaska sailings will be handled. No private islands and port intensive. Maybe they'll skip Canada and ding each passenger a charge for Jones Act? For that matter, Alaska will need to open up, too. As I've said on other posts, I just hope they figure this out 90 days before the first May sailing.

I think I recall someone saying that the fine for not abiding by the Passenger Vessel Services Act was right around $800 per person.  Maybe some people would be willing to suck that up, but I'd guess not many.

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18 minutes ago, ehw51 said:

I think one of the first signs will be re manning the ships, I haven´t seen any news on this yet. 

Prior to crew call back, I would expect the CDC no sail to expire (3 days) and the health plan to be approved.  Big cost if they call everyone back too early and can put them to work.

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44 minutes ago, cruisellama said:

Prior to crew call back, I would expect the CDC no sail to expire (3 days) and the health plan to be approved.  Big cost if they call everyone back too early and can put them to work.

I think the probable outcome will be that the CDC doesn’t extend the no-sail order in practice, but puts an indefinite delay of “until health plans are reviewed and approved”

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15 hours ago, YOLO said:

I am sailing in 36 days on November 1st.  Last Sunday I received my guest vacation documents by email which lists my itinerary as intact from when I booked.  Am I really going to sail?  I wish I knew.  We got off Anthem on March 15th (last pre-shutdown cruise) and are scheduled on Harmony (first post-shutdown cruise).  I have not received any documents which describe any restrictions for my up coming cruise.  Very strange...

You got your tags in the docs - that's a warm fuzzy.  Fingers crossed for expiration of the no sail in 3 days

 

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1 hour ago, SpeedNoodles said:

I think I recall someone saying that the fine for not abiding by the Passenger Vessel Services Act was right around $800 per person.  Maybe some people would be willing to suck that up, but I'd guess not many.

Yeah I can’t see them cutting a check for 4 million dollar a week per ship just to visit Alaska. 

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4 hours ago, cruisellama said:

You got your tags in the docs - that's a warm fuzzy.  Fingers crossed for expiration of the no sail in 3 days

 

After pondering, its still too early for the cruise doc's to show updated protocols.   The plan was submitted 21 Sep and until the CDC approves, we don't know what recommendations will be implemented.  Would imagine a separate doc being issued that's focused just on the adopted protocols.  Lets watch to see if the CDC no sail expires in 3 days. If so, the wheels deciding which plan recommendations are adopted will start turning.  Lets get to 1 Oct and watch.

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first  7 day itinerary - pick your favorite Florida port of departure

embark - Coco Cay - Day at sea - Labadee - Day at sea - Coco Cay - Day at sea - debark

embark - Labadee - Day at sea - Coco Cay - Day at sea - Labadee - Day at sea - debark

embark - Day at sea - Coco Cay - Day at sea - Labadee - Day at sea - Coco Cay - debark

you get the idea, all kinds of possibilities and all the money goes in RCI's pocket so to speak

 

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20 hours ago, YOLO said:

Gee I wish I knew!  My Nov 1st Harmony cruise is scheduled for Perfect Day and Western !!!  Here is a snip of the email RCL sent me last Sunday...

Harmony.jpg

Looking forward to your trip report. I was also booked on this cruise but chose to L&S it a few weeks ago.

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22 hours ago, Ray said:

Not Even when CDC say " ok you can sail" will they be able to say whats happening fully. 

1st cruises will in my opinion be to private islands as they can control everything, after that cruiselines will have to see which countries are not only open to visitors but more importantly willing to guarentee that ships can dock to disembark those in need of medical attention or who may need to self isolate. 

Guess it will only be once this is worked out that any new schedules will be released.

Yep i was almost exclusively booking the itineraries that were 5 night out of Florida to Labadee/CocoCay in the Sept/Oct window hoping those would be the first to restart ... no such luck.

Thats my point though, if they listed these are the three ships we hope to sail in Nov and the itineraries we hope to sail, I would be happy to put money down ... not really interested in putting down money on a 7 nighter to St Thomas, etc. fully knowing that its not going to go there even if they do get the green light.

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9 hours ago, Ent said:

I thought I saw that Florida has opened up everything. If so I'm assuming the Florida ports and ships will be the first to sail?

Hello from Florida! The home of *RCCL headquarters! We are in phase 3 so restaurant capacity has been lifted. The snow birds are showing up in full force. Most are arriving in our neighborhood anyway and staying indoors probably by choice for a week or so. 

We are still wearing masks pretty much everywhere. Before you enter any establishment there are signs requiring masks. You wear your mask inside the restaurant and can take off once at the table. Servers all still wear masks. 

Social distancing marked everywhere on floor and with signs. The kids have been back in school, the classes are smaller than expected as some chose to distance learn. They wear masks in class, not at lunch but are distanced while eating all is well. 

Hand sanitizer and signs to wash hands everywhere.

While we are excited to be in phase 3 we are very respectful of it and are being very cautious. We believe this phase will allow the CDC to see it can be done and not extend the no sail order so maybe we can start to *cruise. 

Edited by Neesa
updated thought
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10 hours ago, Ent said:

I thought I saw that Florida has opened up everything. If so I'm assuming the Florida ports and ships will be the first to sail?

We are open but the cruise ships arent governed by Florida ... thats the CDC. Florida politicians are starting to get very vocal about the CDC needing to get in gear though. Got the Unions protesting now too ... so i tend to think the no-sail is ending this week.

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10 hours ago, Ent said:

I thought I saw that Florida has opened up everything. If so I'm assuming the Florida ports and ships will be the first to sail?

It's irrelevant that the governor in Florida opened up the state more, because the ports were already open for cruise traffic.

The No Sail Order has been the issue.

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We also need a destination to sail to.  

One cruise line with one ship was given approval in the July 10 CDC order but with the Bahamas closed that ship couldn't sail. 

If a more distant Caribbean nation is allowing cruise ships to arrive then a 3 night cruise may not be enough time to get there and back from Florida.   

It's a combination of factors that will dictate the early itineraries.  

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53 minutes ago, Matt said:

It's irrelevant that the governor in Florida opened up the state more, because the ports were already open for cruise traffic.

The No Sail Order has been the issue.

 

54 minutes ago, jticarruthers said:

We are open but the cruise ships arent governed by Florida ... thats the CDC. Florida politicians are starting to get very vocal about the CDC needing to get in gear though. Got the Unions protesting now too ... so i tend to think the no-sail is ending this week.

 

Ahh, I see! I had been comparing Florida to NJ and Baltimore ports but I didn't really take anything else into account besides the state itself opening up. Good to know!

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Well, I finally called the C&A department at Royal looking for updated info concerning my Nov 1st Harmony cruise.  It is pretty much what @Matt has written about - No One Knows.  While I have received my "Guest Ticket Book" pdf file, Royal has not yet published any documents describing the requirements or rules for me to follow on my sailing.  In addition, they cannot provide any information on port status or my itinerary.  Their best advice is to wait to see what happens.  I hope they publish some guidelines and/or make some sort of announcement soon... 

image.png

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My guess is the first sailings we'll see will be Symphony/Harmony doing modified itineraries, likely two private island stops and maybe Cozumel starting early/mid November and then joined by Oasis/Allure early/mid December with the same.

That's not really based on anything other than my desire to keep my b2b on Harmony this year and prices jumped 30-50% on those sailings for non suites while bookings are still pretty light.  So, basically the delusional hope of a moderately insane person.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 9/26/2020 at 7:38 PM, Neesa said:

Mariner, Navigator, Indy. All have short itinerary's and stops at RCCL Private Island. Just my guess but they need to control everything they can when cruising so I would go with them, also many guests can drive to those embarkation ports. Here's hoping we cruise RCCL soon!

 

cruise ship GIF

We agree and hope we will get to go on our cruise in December on the 14th. We had a transpacific cruise booked from Australia to the french poly islands and then to Hawaii in April that was canceled. We canceled it before we had to make the final deposit because of the fires in January in Australia not knowing that the covid would end all cruising anyway. We finally made it to Diamond on our last cruise and that was suppose to be our first cruise as a Diamond but it wasn't meet to be. So we booked a short cruise back in February for this December from Port Canaveral which is near our winter house so we could drive to the terminal which is only 15 minutes away, again not even knowing what Covid was at that time.  Well as luck would have it, the White House Trumped the CDC on extending the No Sail Order into March, no pun intended. The Mariner of the Seas is out there in the Bahama's right now, crews are getting ready to come back, the Bahama's are allowing ships again and we have a Balcony, the stars may be all lining up for us. It's not the 18 day cruise we had booked earlier in the year, but just walking onto the deck of any cruise ship for any length of time is fine with us. Will be smiling ear to ear walking down the promenade deck. :0)  Fire up them boilers, it's time to go sailing......

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6 hours ago, SWORN TO FUN 321 said:

We agree and hope we will get to go on our cruise in December on the 14th. We had a transpacific cruise booked from Australia to the french poly islands and then to Hawaii in April that was canceled. We canceled it before we had to make the final deposit because of the fires in January in Australia not knowing that the covid would end all cruising anyway. We finally made it to Diamond on our last cruise and that was suppose to be our first cruise as a Diamond but it wasn't meet to be. So we booked a short cruise back in February for this December from Port Canaveral which is near our winter house so we could drive to the terminal which is only 15 minutes away, again not even knowing what Covid was at that time.  Well as luck would have it, the White House Trumped the CDC on extending the No Sail Order into March, no pun intended. The Mariner of the Seas is out there in the Bahama's right now, crews are getting ready to come back, the Bahama's are allowing ships again and we have a Balcony, the stars may be all lining up for us. It's not the 18 day cruise we had booked earlier in the year, but just walking onto the deck of any cruise ship for any length of time is fine with us. Will be smiling ear to ear walking down the promenade deck. :0)  Fire up them boilers, it's time to go sailing......

Good luck.  I hope it happens for you.

Welcome to the blog !

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