CARNIVAL ENTERS NEXT PHASE

With eight of its ships already in guest operations, and more restarting in September and October, Carnival Cruise Line has announced the next round of details about additional ship restarts for November 2021 and beyond.

• Carnival Valor will follow Carnival Glory in New Orleans with four- and five-night sailings starting on Nov. 1

• Carnival Legend will restart Nov. 14 out of Baltimore, replacing Carnival Pride, which restarts guest operations from Baltimore Sept. 12 and then moves its homeport to Tampa following a Panama Canal repositioning cruise

• Carnival Radiance will have a new maiden voyage date of Dec. 13 out of Long Beach (rescheduled from Nov. 5 due to a revised dry dock transformation plan)

• Carnival Pride’s new service from Tampa is scheduled to start on Nov. 14

• Carnival Conquest’s restart from Miami on Oct. 8 has been rescheduled to Dec. 13

• Carnival Sensation’s Oct. 21 restart from Mobile has been moved to Jan. 2022.

“We are very pleased with the progress of our restart which will grow to 15 ships sailing from seven US homeports by mid-November,” said Carnival Cruise Line president Christine Duffy. “We are making slight adjustments to our timeline to take into account supply chain realities and ensure that our destination and shore excursion offerings can meet the strong demand we are seeing from our guests… and manage all health and safety protocols.”

Carnival is also advising guests booked in November and December that it will continue to meet the US Centers for Disease Control & Prevention’s (CDC) standard of vaccinated cruises and that guests will need to present proof of both vaccination and a negative COVID-19 test at check-in (with a small number of capacity-restricted exemptions granted for children under 12 and other guests who cannot be vaccinated).

Carnival says it is working to set up mobile pre-cruise rapid testing sites at all of its homeports as a back-up alternative for vaccinated guests who aren’t able to make arrangements (details forthcoming). In addition, guests will be asked to wear masks in most indoor venues of the ship where people congregate.

With the extension of Carnival Sensation’s restart, five ships operating out of US homeports will be moved to 2022: Carnival Liberty (Port Canaveral), Carnival Sunshine (Charleston), Carnival Paradise (Tampa); Carnival Ecstasy (Jacksonville) and Carnival Sensation (Mobile).

Separate from its US operations, Carnival has cancelled four additional sailings for both Carnival Spirit and Carnival Splendor out of Australia. Cruises on both ships are now cancelled up to and including Dec. 16, 2021.