We first told you about passengers who missed their Royal Caribbean cruise earlier this week when Royal Caribbean was forced to depart San Juan, Puerto Rico earlier than scheduled due to the impending threat of Hurricane Irene.  

Today, Royal Caribbean has denied any responsibility for leaving 145 passengers at port to get Serenade of the Seas of the way of the storm three hours early.  Royal Caribbean contends that port officials began to limit harbor traffic at 12:30 pm on Sunday, forcing the ship to depart early.

Of the passengers left behind, 15 had purchased their airfare through Royal Caribbean and were subsequently given a hotel stay for two nights and flown to Aruba to join the cruise on the rest of its voyage.  The other 130 passengers, however, were on their own.  The reasoning, according to Royal Caribbean is, "Independent guests were advised of hotel availability in the area, but the expense was on them given that it was a weather-related event."

Furthermore, Royal Caribbean says there was simply no way of contacting the passengers in time to alert them to the change, “There was no way to notify our guests of this change in departure time. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused our guests, but this decision was made by the Port of San Juan to ensure the safe transit of all guests and crew through the port.”

It turns out Royal Caribbean isn't alone in this.  Another 300 passengers missed their Carnival Cruise when Hurricane Irene prompted the Carnival Victory to leave port four hours early.

Royal Caribbean will offer options in the 2011/2012 season to perform weddings onboard their ships that sail from Brazil. The bride and groom may hold the marriage ceremony on the Splendour of the Seas or Vision of the Seas, with three different package options: the Royal Happiness, the Royal and Royal Romance Eternity.

The symbolic ceremony lasts approximately one hour and is performed by one of the officers while the ship is moored in one of the authorized ports - Santos, Rio de Janeiro or Salvador. In addition to the guests who may accompany them on the cruise, the couple can invite up to 40 guests not to attend the celebration and reservations must be made up to two months in advance.

The partners Bedaque Marina Barbosa and Tamara were responsible for all training of the crew that will perform the symbolic ceremony.  There is also the choice of suppliers - as a band, cake and favors - enclosed in the package.  

Hurricane Irene has altered the itinerary of two more Royal Caribbean ships.

Royal Caribbean's Monarch of the Seas will skip Cococay on Tuesday, its private island in the Bahamas.  Instead, the ship will spend an extra day at sea.

Majesty of the Seas will also skip her scheduled sotp at CocoCay on Wednesday and go directly to Key West instead.  Majesty should arrive at Key West at 4pm on Wednesday and stay there overnight until 6pm on Thursday.

These two changes are in addition to four other Royal Caribbean ships that had their itineraries altered already inlcuding Oasis of the Seas, Allure of the Seas, Freedom of the Seas and Serenade of the Seas.

In addition, Hurricane Irene has caused Royal Caribbean to secure and evacuate Cocacay.

Due to fear of Hurricane Irene impacting Serenade of the Seas, Royal Caribbean decided to leave San Juan, Puerto Rico earlier than the scheduled 8:30pm time.  The earlier departure time may have gotten the ship out of the path of the storm, but it stranded some Royal Caribbean passengers in San Juan after they claim they weren't made aware of the schedule change.

Passenger Nicole Washington of Baltimore, MD arrived at the docks Sunday shortly after 5, she found the gates locked and the ship gone.

“There was nobody there,” she said. “Everybody was gone and there was nobody there to tell me where the ship was.”

In a statement, Royal Caribbean spokesperson Cynthia Martinez explained the change, "On Sunday, due to the projected path of Hurricane Irene, and the weather forecast to reach San Juan, Puerto Rico that evening, authorities at the Port of San Juan limited traffic in and out of the port.  As a result, Serenade of the Seas was required to depart earlier than our originally scheduled time of 8:30 p.m.”

Washington did admit that she never checked into the cruise so according to Royal Caribbean, the line had no idea she was even in San Juan.

Martinez went on to say, “There was no way to notify our guests of this change in departure time. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused our guests, but this decision was made by the Port of San Juan to ensure the safe transit of all guests and crew through the port.”

Hurricane Irene is becoming the big story of the 2011 hurricane seas thus far and its projected path is veering east of where meteorologists originally had thought it could go, which is great news for those going on a cruise out of Florida.

While these projections are nothing more than educated guesses, they do give us an idea of the most likely path and the new path has Hurricane Irene moving east of Florida instead of the state taking a more direct hit, as was predicted earlier in the week.  For those embarking on cruises, this means the impact the storm will have on their cruises could be less than previously hinted at.

Royal Caribbean isn't taking any chances and has already altered the itineraries of four of its ships.  Oasis of the Seas, Allure of the Seas, Serenade of the Seas and Freedom of the Seas all are changing up the order in which they will be making their port calls to hopefully avoid the path of the storm.

The bad news is Irene has gone from being likely a Category 2 storm to possibly increasing to a Category 4 before belting Florida and North and South Carolina at the weekend.

It's important to note that the projected path doesn't mean Florida is "out of the woods" yet, but the further east Irene goes, the better it is for those looking forward to a Royal Caribbean cruise this weekend.

Royal Caribbean's partnership with Universal Studios Orlando is expanding to include cruises that go out of Tampa, Florida.

Royal Caribbean announced with Universal Studios that that they will start selling vacation packages that include a stay at Universal Studios Orlando along with a Royal Caribbean cruise.  The packages include three or four-night stays at Universal Studios along with four or five-night cruises on Royal Caribbean's Jewel of the Seas.

Royal Caribbean will be homeporting Jewel of the Seas in November out of Tampa.  

This new deal is in addition to the partnership the two companies already offer for cruises out of Port Canaveral.

For Royal Caribbean, the expanded deal with Universal is another move into Disney's lucrative family-cruise niche. The Miami-based cruise operator last year struck a separate deal with DreamWorks Animation to outfit some of its ships with characters from animated movies such as Shrek and Madagascar, much the way Disney Cruise Line features popular children's characters such as Buzz Lightyear and Donald Duck.

After a thorough agency competition shifts, Royal Caribbean Nordic has chosen Saatchi & Saatchi Norway to be their new ad agency. The Oslo agency will use the Nordic network in the operational work of the various markets. Royal Caribbean has previously been with agencies Shnel & Melnychuck  and Bates.

"We look forward to continuing collaboration with Saatchi & Saatchi. They are in the process convinced that they are the right agency for us now. We have big ambitions, both in Norway and other Nordic countries. Saatchis combination of excellent local agencies and a highly dense network is what we've been looking for", says Head of Marketing at Nordic Ellen Stebekk.

Agency Director Jon Fredrik Sand Engen at Saatchi & Saatchi is more than satisfied.

"This is great fun and exciting. We have all been cruise enthusiasts in a few weeks, and we have already become very fond of Royal Caribbean and its people. Being a developing Royal Caribbean and this market forward is a dream job. In Oslo, we are also proud to be chosen as the main agency for the Nordic countries", he said.

Royal Caribbean is the market leader in Scandinavia, with a market share of about 45 percent and, according to the company, a position in Norway that is stronger than in Sweden, Denmark and Finland.

"Cruise holidays that the form is growing rapidly, but has a lot to go on to take out the potential in all the Nordic markets. In the future we will do more local and regional initiatives. Therefore, we have a good strategic and creative master agency with a strong network, we have found in the Saatchi & Saatchi Norway," says Stebekk.

Officials of the Port Authority Ferrol-San Cibrao have confirmed that, as initially announced, Royal Caribbean's Independence of the Seas will return to the city of Galicia  on September 26 after docking for the first time on April 25.

The arrival of Independence of the Seas will, as happened in the time before a flood of tourists in just a few hours. This giant cruise ship usually bring more than 4,000 passengers on board, in addition to the compliment of crew members that can also descend upon the city

The September 26th is a Monday, so travelers will find all the retail and hospitality of the city open, which will make their shopping more comfortably than the previous occasion, which fell on a holiday.  This will also be an opportunity to give the tourists a good idea of what the city is really like. 

Tropical Storm Irene has caused Royal Caribbean to change a few cruise itineraries.  Oasis of the Seas will reverse its itinerary and now visit Cozumel first on Monday, Tuesday is a sea day, stop at Falmouth, Jamaica on Wednesday, stop at Labadee on Thursday, sea day again on Friday and return to Fort Lauderdale on Saturday

Freedom of the Seas will also reverse its itinerary and left port today to go to Cozumel first on Tuesday, followed by Grand Cayman on Wednesday, Falmouth on Thursday and Labadee on Friday.

Allure of the Seas will now stop at Nassau, Bahamas on Saturday instead of Monday. The rest of her scheduled stops at St. Thomas (Wednesday) and St. Maarten (Thursday) will take place as planned.

Finally, Serenade of the Seas will have its cruise order changed as well. It left from San Juan, Puerto Rico today and will  visit Aruba on Tuesday, Curacao on Wednesday, St. Kitts  on Friday and St. Thomas on Saturday.