Carnival Cruise cancels July trips, might not sail from Charleston until Labor Day
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with information on canceled cruises out of Charleston.
Another delay to setting sail on a cruise out of Charleston arrived last week.
Carnival Cruise Line officially canceled all trips through July 31, including several trips on the Carnival Sunshine out of Charleston.
The only Carnival trips planned for July now are 14 sailings out of Miami and Galveston, Texas. Anyone who had their trip canceled is eligible for future cruise credit and onboard credit or a full refund, the company announced in a press release.
“We continue to have constructive discussions with the CDC but still have many questions that remain unanswered. We are working diligently to resume sailing in the U.S. and meet the CDC guidelines,” Carnival president Christine Duffy said in a statement. “We sincerely appreciate the continued patience and understanding of our guests and travel advisor partners and will share additional information as quickly as we can.”
The move is the latest in close to a dozen delays and cancellations for the world’s largest cruise ship operator since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The company has pushed back the date it plans to resume sailing almost every month for much of the last year. The South Florida Sun Sentinel first reported the change to Carnival’s bookings.
The next scheduled trip out of Charleston is not until Sept. 4, a five-day trip to the Bahamas on the Carnival Sunshine ship, according to the company’s website.
Hard recovery for aquatic tourism
Cruise lines have struggled more than any other part of the tourism economy to recover. Planes, hotels, beaches and restaurants have all been able to reopen back to full capacity throughout much of the country. Cruise ships have been stuck in the water without passengers.
In January, Carnival announced cruises would resume March 31, then delayed the restart to April 30, which resulted in the cancellation of at least one trip out of Charleston. The latest official delay — to June 30 — was announced in early April.
“We know that this is very disappointing to our guests who continue to be eager to sail, and we remain committed to working with the Administration and the CDC to find a workable solution that best serves the interest of public health. We are asking that the cruise industry be treated on par with the approach being taken with other travel and tourism sectors, as well as U.S. society at large,” Duffy said in a statement.
CDC rules for setting sail
At the start of the pandemic, cruise ships were breeding grounds for the coronavirus and served as intractable challenges for countries around the world that both needed to get their citizens home but also didn’t want those people to bring the virus back with them.
The CDC released a host of rules last fall for what cruise lines must do before they can set sail again. The guidelines, among other things, required ships to have onboard COVID-19 testing and quarantine facilities. They also had to do test runs where the ship stayed in port but hosted several hundred passengers to prove the ship could handle or prevent virus outbreaks.
The CDC has now relaxed some of those rules, in light of rising vaccinations. It will let cruise lines skip out on the test sailings if they can prove that 95% of passengers and 98% of crew members are fully vaccinated.
Meeting that standard could prove difficult, as fake vaccination cards have become more common in recent weeks and government officials, including S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster, have spoken out against so-called “vaccine passports” that would allow people to definitively prove their immunization status.
This story was originally published May 10, 2021 at 2:08 PM.
