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Port Canaveral Thinks July is Worst Case Timeframe


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Like many ports, Port Canaveral realizes a good amount of revenue from cruise ship traffic.  Port Canaveral benefits from both being a home to a number of ships and Port Canaveral also functions as a port of call for some ships departing from the U.S. Northeast.  

Like many companies and organizations impacted by the pandemic they need to deal with the financial impact the virus has caused. 

When they last prepared their budget this past summer they had estimated that cruise lines would begin sailing in January with one ship each.  Under that projection the loss was projected to be around $37M.  With the date used in that projection proven to be unattainable they've had to revise the budget projection.  Under the new projection the loss is now estimated to be around $43M for the current budget year.

The good news, if there is any of that to be found is that their projection is based on what they now foresee as a worst case scenario.  Under this worst case scenario they are estimating cruise lines will each have at least one ship sailing by July even though current data suggest ships will sail before that.

The revised dates were arrived at independently and are not based on any cruise line statements.

 

  • In projecting that the major cruise lines would not resume sailing from Port Canaveral until July, “we decided to rip the bandage off” in projecting a worst-case budget scenario, Port Canaveral Chief Executive Officer John Murray said.
  • But, based on their most recent announcements, Carnival, Norwegian and Royal Caribbean will not be sailing until at least May, and Disney will not be sailing until at least April.

    The port, though, now is taking an even more conservative view, projecting that those four cruise lines will resume sailing from Port Canaveral with one ship each in July.

https://www.clickorlando.com/news/2021/01/26/port-canaveral-now-projects-43-million-loss-for-current-budget-year/

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They could have hired me to help prepare their budget...lol...I could have told them months ago there was no way in hell cruises would be happening in Jan......I have serious doubts about even one ship in July to be honest....

 

I really don't think that's the WORSE case senario.....no cruise ships till fall or winter is probably more likely and a BEST case scenario!

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Looks like Disney is now projecting a staggered start in late Aril/early May based on their latest cancellations.

Interestingly they actually project each ship to start a week later than the previous one so at least one of the lines is starting to give an indication of which ships they think will sail first, etc.

Would be nice to see some of the others start to do the same ... i would be much more likely to gamble on another "likely" to be cancelled cruise at this point if i thought it was a priority ship for line.

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With the cruise lines cancelled through April, at this point it seems like July might be a best case, not worst case, scenario.  Currently the CDC seems to have little interest in helping out the cruise lines and there seems to be little movement by the cruise lines to attempt to satisfy the current CDC requirements.  It seems like the cruise lines have decided to run out the clock and hope that things can return to "normal" now that the vaccinations are picking up some steam.

I'm not sure how it is elsewhere but in Illinois they have stated that at the current vaccination rate it will take 10 month to vaccinate all those over the age of 18.  Certainly the rate of vaccinations should increase but how much remains to be seen.  Also keep in mind that it will take 5-6 weeks to become fully protected once you have your first vaccination.  All I know is that everyday that passes makes it feel less likely that I will be on my September cruise,

 

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Worst case is ships never sail if you really want to be extreme.

1 hour ago, WhiteSoxFan said:

It seems like the cruise lines have decided to run out the clock and hope that things can return to "normal" now that the vaccinations are picking up some steam.

I think that is the outcome that the CDC has always meant to be the goal post.  Politicians and lobbyists tried to move the goal post but failed.

It's been no secret that vaccines would not be widely available right now.  That's been known since before the first dose was put into an arm.

It's a dynamic situation.  If more vaccines come to market like the J&J May might be best case but July may be more realistic for the one ship per port outlook (not the full fleet).  

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2 hours ago, twangster said:

I think that is the outcome that the CDC has always meant to be the goal post.  Politicians and lobbyists tried to move the goal post but failed.

 

Yep i think the CDC played their game just right ... appear to be changing the story while not actually changing anything but the title on the no-sail order.

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The CDC is now the Biden administration's CDC. I don't see any reason for Dr. Walenski, the new CDC Director, to back off the Safe-To -Sail protocol. This is an onerous bar for the cruise industry to rise above. If the NCL move to repatriate most of it's crew members is an accurate reflection of corporate survival strategy to reduce costs, that. seems to me to be a white flag. I think there is going to be some political pressure to not see cruise lines that are operating from US ports to fail. There is too many jobs associated with the travel and leisure industry, especially in Florida, that any idiot can make a good case that these jobs out to be protected/ saved. To save them, cruise ships have to sail.

RCG, out of the gate was in a better cash position than NCL but that doesn't mean troubled waters aren't ahead. Divesting Azamara was a red flag. I've argued elsewhere that a corporate survival strategy may be to hope that the EU and Asia, despite the apparent problems with vaccine roll-out in Western Europe, will feed revenue needs before North America. The cruise lines going in that direction would hurt us.

The one wild card is the actual, not fantasy facts, circumstance that the vaccine brings sero-prevalence rates in North America, primarily in FL's ports, below 5% by early May. This might allow the cruise lines to work toward and actually meet the CDC's stated bars to cross. If that actually happens a late June, early July restart is possible. 

I'm not optimistic.  

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The CSO is an interesting dilemma for the CDC.   The NSO was all or nothing.  All ships sails or no ships sail.  The CSO represents 1000x the amount of work for everyone involved especially for the CDC.  Each ship within each cruise line is distinct and must be processed independently.  The CDC isn't staffed for that.  They can't handle it while they are still saving Americans.

So while I do think the bulk of ships will sail only after the CSO expires, the one ship per fleet projection remains possible based on data known up to this point.  New variants, vaccine distribution and availability issues notwithstanding of course.  

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On 1/28/2021 at 8:21 PM, twangster said:

The CSO is an interesting dilemma for the CDC.   The NSO was all or nothing.  All ships sails or no ships sail.  The CSO represents 1000x the amount of work for everyone involved especially for the CDC.  Each ship within each cruise line is distinct and must be processed independently.  The CDC isn't staffed for that.  They can't handle it while they are still saving Americans.

So while I do think the bulk of ships will sail only after the CSO expires, the one ship per fleet projection remains possible based on data known up to this point.  New variants, vaccine distribution and availability issues notwithstanding of course.  

Yes the CSO is a lot of work for the CDC (bureaucrats don't like work, but like making others work) - not manned sufficiently to oversee across the number different lines at the same time.   Could allow "self policing"  - NOT, hire contractors?   Interesting web to navigate.  Maybe too onerous that no company wants to go the pain at this time?

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How much power does the CDC have?  Meaning can the CDC mandate all crew members and passengers be fully vaccinated before working or boarding a cruise out of all US ports?   Is there anything that would either allow or prevent the CDC from passing such a mandate while leaving it to the cruise lines to enforce said mandate?  

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1 hour ago, JasonOasis said:

How much power does the CDC have?  Meaning can the CDC mandate all crew members and passengers be fully vaccinated before working or boarding a cruise out of all US ports?   Is there anything that would either allow or prevent the CDC from passing such a mandate while leaving it to the cruise lines to enforce said mandate?  

Great question and I'm not sure we know. 

The power of any government agency, especially a federal agency isn't documented precisely to the point anyone knows when they have approached or crossed their limits.  It would need to be challenged and go before a court.

The CDC is testing the limits of it's authority with the mask requirement on all public transportation they passed this week.  

So far I'm not aware of a proper legal challenge to a CDC order beyond griping and complaining in the media. 

A vaccine requirement by regulation requires they establish an acceptable validation that someone is or is not vaccinated.  The US has no national vaccine database.  There is no official record of what vaccines people may have taken such as polio, mumps, chicken pox, measles, tetanus, etc.  If a vaccine is required how will people furnish proof they have a vaccine?  A piece of paper?  An app on a smartphone?  Does each vaccine site maintain their own database (Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, etc)?  If it is a piece of paper what happens if someone loses their paper?  Will every vaccine site use the same piece of paper or app? How easy is it to be faked?

It's easy to say vaccines should be required to go on a cruise or go to a movie theater or baseball park but implementing it is another matter.  A mask requirement is easy - does the person have a mask on right now?  

Ideally the period between initial vaccination availability and when it doesn't matter as much is short, measured in months.  Ideally by this time next year no one will need a vaccine passport.  So how much effort goes into creating the vaccine passport knowing it hopefully won't be needed for very long?

All good questions.

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9 hours ago, JasonOasis said:

How much power does the CDC have?  Meaning can the CDC mandate all crew members and passengers be fully vaccinated before working or boarding a cruise out of all US ports?   Is there anything that would either allow or prevent the CDC from passing such a mandate while leaving it to the cruise lines to enforce said mandate?  

I'll answer your question without all the unnecessary bells and whistles.  IF the CDC did not have the power to do what has already been done in the past 11 months, would we still be here having this conversation instead of sipping a Mojito on a cruise poolside? 

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I think the CDC has the power primarily because the media is already looking for a reason to crucify cruise lines ... can you imagine the screaming if a cruiseline said "we dont think you have the authority and are preparing to sail without your approval".

Personally i would be packed and on the dock waiting to go but pretty sure the outcry would be unbeilevable.

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29 minutes ago, jticarruthers said:

I think the CDC has the power primarily because the media is already looking for a reason to crucify cruise lines ... can you imagine the screaming if a cruiseline said "we dont think you have the authority and are preparing to sail without your approval".

Personally i would be packed and on the dock waiting to go but pretty sure the outcry would be unbeilevable.

I'm with you on that!!

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9 hours ago, twangster said:

A vaccine requirement by regulation requires they establish an acceptable validation that someone is or is not vaccinated.  The US has no national vaccine database.  There is no official record of what vaccines people may have taken such as polio, mumps, chicken pox, measles, tetanus, etc.  If a vaccine is required how will people furnish proof they have a vaccine?  A piece of paper?  An app on a smartphone?  Does each vaccine site maintain their own database (Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, etc)?  If it is a piece of paper what happens if someone loses their paper?  Will every vaccine site use the same piece of paper or app? How easy is it to be faked?

This is such a good question and you would think our government would be working on this but I doubt it will happen.  There are electronic medical records but privacy laws don't provide easy access.  I do think vaccination records should be an important component of a passport.  

Another approach that covid would need is adequate proof of a positive test for antibodies.  Nobody really knows how long the current vaccines provide immunity. The natural way that one gets immunity is by having the infection --- that way of immunity should count too. That could necessitate an annual test for immunity if the vaccinations are shown to be ineffective for virus mutations. 

I don't see where this ends.  Government bureaucracy will not speed anything up.  Maybe a fast test for antibodies would be a better approach.

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29 minutes ago, Dad2Cue said:

This is such a good question and you would think our government would be working on this but I doubt it will happen.  There are electronic medical records but privacy laws don't provide easy access.  I do think vaccination records should be an important component of a passport.  

Another approach that covid would need is adequate proof of a positive test for antibodies.  Nobody really knows how long the current vaccines provide immunity. The natural way that one gets immunity is by having the infection --- that way of immunity should count too. That could necessitate an annual test for immunity if the vaccinations are shown to be ineffective for virus mutations. 

I don't see where this ends.  Government bureaucracy will not speed anything up.  Maybe a fast test for antibodies would be a better approach.

T-cells are apparently equally as important for immunity with COVID, and I don't think there's a reliable way to check for those that's readily available. 

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55 minutes ago, Dad2Cue said:

I don't see where this ends. 

It ends when the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths drop.  New case counts are an interesting metric that indicate trends and provide insight but at the end of the day it ends when deaths are within acceptable levels like anything else we accept in our lives.

Collectively between already infected individuals and vaccinated individuals they'll look for the risk of the virus to societies in general to drop.   When risk is low enough, movie theaters open, sports stadiums open, cruising starts.  At that point a vaccine passport doesn't matter and isn't required.

 

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38 minutes ago, twangster said:

It ends when the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths drop.  New case counts are an interesting metric that indicate trends and provide insight but at the end of the day it ends when deaths are within acceptable levels like anything else we accept in our lives.

Collectively between already infected individuals and vaccinated individuals they'll look for the risk of the virus to societies in general to drop.   When risk is low enough, movie theaters open, sports stadiums open, cruising starts.  At that point a vaccine passport doesn't matter and isn't required.

 

Come on down to Florida where apparently we already reached that stage because the only thing that isn't open on your list is the cruise terminal ... you might have heard about the Superbowl being played in a sports stadium this weekend for example ? Think that's the frustration is that in this state everything has been open since July but cruising is too dangerous to be allowed to restart.

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39 minutes ago, twangster said:

It ends when the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths drop.  New case counts are an interesting metric that indicate trends and provide insight but at the end of the day it ends when deaths are within acceptable levels like anything else we accept in our lives.

Collectively between already infected individuals and vaccinated individuals they'll look for the risk of the virus to societies in general to drop.   When risk is low enough, movie theaters open, sports stadiums open, cruising starts.  At that point a vaccine passport doesn't matter and isn't required.

 

Not so sure about that....thats based on how things were handled prior to Covid.....this had turned our norms upside down.

 

I hope you are right..but so far that has not been the case. There has always been the next big threat or worry or problem to keep us locked down and scared....maybe in 5 years things will be back to norm, but I have yet to see ANY indication of that(at least in Canada)

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3 hours ago, monctonguy said:

maybe in 5 years things will be back to norm, but I have yet to see ANY indication of that(at least in Canada)

Try to expedite the return to normalcy in Canada ... my cruise to Alaska now postponed to August 2022 hinges on that.  At the moment, we are relatively normal here in Iowa.  I'm starting to like the mask because it keeps my face warm.  My face gets sunburn on a cruise so I can see some positives there too.  I can't wait to get vaccinated if that is what it takes.

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3 hours ago, jticarruthers said:

 you might have heard about the Superbowl being played in a sports stadium this weekend for example ? 

There will be nowhere near a full house of fans for the Super Bowl. The game is happening and some people will be in attendance, but it's definitely NOT business as usual.

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On 2/2/2021 at 10:05 PM, JasonOasis said:

Is there anything that would either allow or prevent the CDC from passing such a mandate while leaving it to the cruise lines to enforce said mandate?  

I'm also curious about whether the responsibility will fall back onto the cruiselines to enforce any CDC required mandates.  Who oversees that they would do this correctly?

Having just flown back into the US from Aruba, it was actually the airlines that were responsible for checking our required negative test proof for entry into the US.  This happened at the airline check-in desk at the airport despite Aruba having the US customs facility onsite.   That was the only place we had to show our negative test results.  We didn't have to show them when we went through the US customs pre-clearance at the Aruba airport.  There wasn't another check when we landed in Ft. Lauderdale either.

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38 minutes ago, AshleyDillo said:

I'm also curious about whether the responsibility will fall back onto the cruiselines to enforce any CDC required mandates.  Who oversees that they would do this correctly?

Having just flown back into the US from Aruba, it was actually the airlines that were responsible for checking our required negative test proof for entry into the US.  This happened at the airline check-in desk at the airport despite Aruba having the US customs facility onsite.   That was the only place we had to show our negative test results.  We didn't have to show them when we went through the US customs pre-clearance at the Aruba airport.  There wasn't another check when we landed in Ft. Lauderdale either.

It starts with obtaining the certificate to sail.  

The process to certify each ship and crew under the CSO will be performed by the CDC.  The CDC will observe at various points the variety of qualifications items including test cruises that each ship and crew must perform.  Once the CDC is satisfied that a ship and crew will execute their regulations and mandates, only then will that ship be granted a certificate to sail.   

Once a ship has been granted a certificate to sail it's not known how the CDC will monitor the actions on board.  Presumably as we saw in Singapore, governments will monitor social media feeds.  A group of people in Singapore were flagged for taking a group picture without masks as an example.  It's possible the CDC will use observers on board to spot check and monitor enforcement. 

Honestly social media feeds are probably a great way to monitor with greatest effectiveness including live blogs on sites like this one where they can view pictures taken by people like us. 

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11 minutes ago, twangster said:

Once the CDC is satisfied that a ship and crew will execute their regulations and mandates, only then will that ship be granted a certificate to sail.   

I assume that's what they are doing with the airlines that have international flights to the US then.  Of course the airlines have none of the same hoops to jump through to be allowed to fly.  I just figured if there was a government mandate of such a serious nature that the government would take more responsibility of enforcing it.  

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21 minutes ago, AshleyDillo said:

I assume that's what they are doing with the airlines that have international flights to the US then.  Of course the airlines have none of the same hoops to jump through to be allowed to fly.  I just figured if there was a government mandate of such a serious nature that the government would take more responsibility of enforcing it.  

I flew back to the US during the first CDC attempt at doing something about arriving international passengers.  It was a disaster.  Dozens of us were placed in a small confined space and held for hours in the DFW airport.  There was no way to do social distancing, we were packed into a room with other flyers arriving from around the world.  After missing two consecutive connecting flights and watching numerous parties that arrived long after me be processed before me I eventually raised my objections and concerns.  

A CBP officer took pity on me and brought me forward to his station for processing without having the CDC representative process me first.  During my session with him I noted if I do get the virus I will most likely have become infected right here in this room having sat for hours with people arriving from China going through the same process.  His response was "you and me both".    With that I was clear to go.    Even CBP saw it wasn't working.

The CDC doesn't know what it is doing.  It is making it up as it goes.  This isn't what they do.  They may be excellent virologists, doctors and scientists but they know little about creating process and procedures.   If they were an outsourced business their contract would have been terminated for good reasons long ago. 

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1 hour ago, twangster said:

The CDC doesn't know what it is doing.  It is making it up as it goes.  This isn't what they do.  They may be excellent virologists, doctors and scientists but they know little about creating process and procedures.   If they were an outsourced business their contract would have been terminated for good reasons long ago. 

And unfortunately pretending they do know what they are doing, which means each time they "walk back" something they get wrong they lose even more credibility.

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