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Cruising this year in Europe?


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I know that things are changing by the day about the hopefully imminent cruise restart, but do we have any info about European cruises and their rules, regulations and restart? It seems like most of the info we receive concerns the US restart, understandably. Will the rules and regulations vary by country of departure or be uniform across all RCG ships?

Thanks

Happy Cruising!

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Months ago Michael Bayley said European protocols will be pretty much same as US. 
 

https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/2021/02/22/royal-caribbean-talks-vaccine-impact-cruises-europe-2021-cuba-and-more

I think what we're going to see is very similar to what we're going to see in the United States, which is as we continue to see infections decline and vaccines increase, then we're going to move to protocols that probably are some kind of hybrid between vaccines and testing."

"We imagine that they'll be very similar to the guidelines that we'll get from the CDC."

I wrote about this in today’s post, but Royal is using CDC rules pretty much across the board since I assume it’s easier to have one set of rules, rather than 3 or 4. 
 

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Europe seems to have been rather forgotten about in the furore over all the recent CDC changes affecting cruises out of the US. I was expecting to have had at least a tiny inkling by now as to whether or not my late September western Med Harmony cruise out of Barcelona might actually go ahead.

The only information I have been able to glean from the websites of the various ports is that Spanish ports are expecting to see cruises starting from mid-June but they will initially be "domestic" cruises, i.e. calling only at other Spanish ports. They are hoping to see a return to international cruising some time in July. 

That said, since MSC has been sailing out of Italy since August, the Italian ports they visit already have considerable experience of pandemic cruising.

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56 minutes ago, FionaMG said:

I was expecting to have had at least a tiny inkling by now as to whether or not my late September western Med Harmony cruise out of Barcelona might actually go ahead.

Sailing typical European cruise itineraries is very much up in the air. My take is we know more about what is going to happen in the US than we do in Europe. Part of that is the obvious bias in media coverage - I read less news about cruises in Europe and Asia than I do about the US. Still, there's plenty out there. We know they are on-going with hardly any outbreaks aboard ships sailing the med. Lot's learned there that can be applied to September sailings.

In February, I thought the best chance for a June cruise would occur in Europe and a restart from US ports would be messy - and it is. I chose Amsterdam as a starting port. Most of my pursuit of an earlier European restart was based on COVID data in February. The US was in a mess, the EU wasn't. Oh, how times change. Vaccines. The US has them and a great distribution plan. The EU? Nope. It's a mess although improving as vaccines get procured and rolled out.

Anyway, after the European surge in new case in the March time frame along with more friendly EU governments opening the travel and leisure sectors of their economies in Italy and Greece, I cancelled the Amsterdam booking and booked out of Athens in June. That's a Celebrity cruise, it's locked in, I've checked in and I know exactly what to expect. Everyone has to be vaccinated to sail, kids are no exception. 

Fine, good for me. What about you and Harmony in September? Well, Spain is doing a lot better (along with most EU countries) in getting jabs into arms (Close to 30% of Spaniards). As you'd expect, deaths and hospitalizations are trending sharply downward but there are still regional hot-spots and Barcelona is one of them - big city, lots of people in close quarters, etc. https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/countries-and-territories/spain/

Personally, I think your cruise is a slam dunk to happen. That is because if you look at what vaccines achieve in terms of a returns to normal in countries with vax rates above 30% and climbing, new cases drop precipitously right around that point. I expect that to happen in Spain overall and in Barcelona in particular.  Normal returns shortly after. See US, UK, Israel, et. al.

The EUC has announced that boarders within the EU will be "reopening in June" ...... depending!! ..... no hard dates yet. What EU country's public health officials are looking for is the exact kind of thing happening in Spain and other EU countries as vaccines are obtained and rolled out. I won't speak for port stops on your route. I expect there will continue to be restricted passenger manifests and if RCL embarks on European itineraries with a hybrid mix of vaxed and unvaxed like we are hearing they will do, I expect there will be plenty of inconvenient health and safety protocols and policies in place. Gird yourself. The cruise will go but I think most cruise lines doing European itineraries will have mitigation measures in place that none of us are fond of well into 2022 possibly earlier if vaccines continue to be the miracle they have been so far. But, hey, its cruising!

 

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@JeffB I really hope you're right and we do get to go. We've done this same route and been to all the ports before so I wouldn't actually care if the ship just sat out in the Med for the week! It would certainly beat sitting at home. 

Here in Portugal, we have about 36% "half" vaccinated and 17% fully vaccinated. I am in the latter group because I was lucky enough to be given the J&J vaccine. The others in my party will all be given their 2nd dose in time for the cruise. 

We aren't booking any flights though, at least until after final payment. If push came to shove we could drive to Barcelona. It'd be a 12-hour road trip, so not ideal but still doable.

Meanwhile, there is a poster over on CC who is on the same sailing and is desperate for it to be cancelled so he can L&S to next year and price protect his great price. This because he is travelling from the US on a first-time bucket-list trip to Europe and he knows it will not be the trip he has been looking forward to precisely because of the mitigation measures you mentioned. I totally understand his viewpoint and really feel for him. It's a no-win situation.

Your Celebrity cruise out of Athens looks great, by the way. I hope you will have an amazing time!  Maybe if you get the chance and are so inclined you could share some thoughts and pics with us all on the live blog board? 

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38 minutes ago, FionaMG said:

We aren't booking any flights though, at least until after final payment. If push came to shove we could drive to Barcelona. It'd be a 12-hour road trip, so not ideal but still doable.

Sorry if I'm telling you something you already know but I'd recommend booking through whatever RCL calls their air booking system that is linked to your cruise. I did that for my Celebrity Apex cruise out of Athens. If for some reason it gets cancelled, I get a full refund for air, pronto. How do I know this? When I cancelled my air from Miami FL to Amsterdam, it was refunded in about two weeks. I had a cruise booked in October of 2020, Translant from Barcelona to Fort Lauderdale and booked air separately with TAP. No voucher, no refund ..... along with 100s of others, complaining about TAP loudly, in the same boat when TAP stopped flying. I figure I'm out that money. It's why I'm booking through Flights by Celebrity. The rates are often subsidized to get passengers to book the cruise. That was the case Miami to Athens. Great price and decent connections. I'm not a United or American fan - that's what I'm booked on -  because they tend to cancel flights for lots of different reasons all inconveniently. No concern about paying passengers and these itineraries may not hold up. Fingers crossed   

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