Carnival Cruise Line has removed all December cruises from its web site just a day after a new CDC Conditional Sailing Order was announced.
Remaining 2020 Carnival Cruises Removed
The Miami-based cruise line has removed all cruises from its online booking engine for December 2020 which is the remainder of 2020. Now before everyone thinks Carnival has cancelled cruises until next year, that may not be the case which we’ll go into shortly.
This comes just a day after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced a new Conditional Sailing Order as Cruise Hive reported right here. The No-Sail Order has ended, and now the focus is on resuming cruises from the U.S., which won’t be that easy, especially for Carnival.
There were many cruises still available for booking for December departures out of just two Florida homeports. Carnival Conquest, Carnival Horizon, and Carnival Sunrise were scheduled out of Miami. Carnival Elation, Carnival Breeze, and Carnival Liberty were scheduled to depart out of Port Canaveral. All these cruises have now been removed.
Related: Carnival Cruise Line Cancels Miami and Port Canaveral Cruises in November
Why December Cruises May Have Been Removed?
We already know that the return of operations in the U.S. will not be easy. Not just Carnival, but all the cruise lines will need to make sure they can return safely. The CDC must be happy before any ship will begin sailing in U.S. waters, and there are protocols in place.
One health measure that cruise lines are putting into action is sailing at a limited capacity and making sure there are enough empty cabins if people need to be quarantined. It might just be that the cruises are booked up, and with ships not able to cruise at full capacity, they’ve needed to remove the cruises to stop further bookings.
Shorter cruises are the way forward, and these itineraries might be needed to be altered. The port situation is also very fluid, and with COID-19 cases up and down around the world, port restrictions may have been changed.
Also Read: Is There Any Hope of a Carnival Cruise This Year?
Cruise Hive posted in October that a Florida judge had ruled that Carnival will need to submit to be environmentally compliant 30-days prior to departing from a U.S. port. This may need extra time to arrange, and some ships may need more work to be compliant than others.
Nothing is set in stone and Carnival has not announced the reason why these cruises have been removed. Crew members are already heading back to join Carnival cruise ships and before any official cruise, there will need to be trial sailings first to stress test new health protocols.
Carnival was originally planning on resuming operations just from Florida from November, but the CDC No-Sail order put a hamper on that. It’s clear Carnival is not in a rush to re-launch cruises and has already asked for everyone’s patience while it reviews the new 40-page framework on the new CDC Conditional Sailing Order, which will remain in effect through November 1, 2021.
Worth Reading: The Next Steps Cruise Lines Need to Take on Resuming Cruises
Keep checking Cruise Hive for all the latest on resuming cruises from the U.S., and hopefully, we’ll know more from Carnival through next week. Carnival Cruise Line Ambassador Joh Heald said that the cruise line would be releasing further news next week.
