Half Moon Cay Cancellations

Does anyone have statistics on how often Half Moon Cay is getting cancelled? I saw one post estimating that it seems like it's 50-50 on whether a Half Moon stop is cancelled. If it's anywhere close to that I think it's time to start demanding some stats from Carnival. I'm sure before they are done reading this sentence the Carnival defenders will be typing a reply that says "safety first". I will never understand the need to defend (like family) stock corporations whose #1 priority is always money. I'm not saying stock corporations are evil, just that we all should remember that they are for-profit and motivated by economics. Sure the employees care, but the management team of every corporation must answer to the shareholders who only care about profit.

Consider our experience. First, we have been to Half Moon twice before with no problems. It is, by far, our favorite port. I had never even considered the possibility that Carnival skipped this port (except for storms) until I started noticing recent posts and folks chiming in that it happens regularly.

On our cruise last week, we proceeded to Half Moon. There was definitely some roll of the ship but after 6 cruises and 30+ days at sea, it felt just a little above normal. When we got there (late) it was rather calm and the wind had died down. I saw the tenders coming out to meet the ship and they seemed pretty stable as they waited for the gangway to open. I felt pretty confident that we were going to have another great day at Half Moon. We proceeded to the theater and we were informed that do to weather the night before the local crew that handled excursions were unable to get there, so excursions were cancelled, but they were still planning to tender into port as the weather was better now.

I started doing the math as we sat there and realized that if you removed the profit from excursions and you have to bring food on to shore, it might not be worth it to Carnival to jump through hoops to make this work. Sure they sell alcohol, but I bet alcohol sales on Half Moon are way down due to the fact that so many are pre-buying the all you can drink plans on the ship. If you are forking out $65 (with taxes and tips) a person a day for all you can drink, are you going to spend another $30 in port?

Soon we heard over the radios that the crew was not to give any information to passengers for the moment. The next thing we knew the anchor was pulled as we attempted to "re-position" for a safer tender. I didn't run upstairs to see exactly what the re-positioning was. I do know that it didn't last long and the anchor was never redeployed. I can tell you that by the time they told us they were cancelling the port because it wasn't safe to tender, we went upstairs and the ship had already turned around and set sail for our next port as we were some distance from the island. We got $18 back each in port fees, so it did cost Carnival about $50,000 in refunds, but at least some of that goes to third parties and who knows what they make from having everyone on board another day (i.e. spa, shopping, casino, etc.).

I don't know if there's any conspiracy here. There could have been weather on the way, but I doubt that changed from the time we anchored and were told we would be tendering. There could have been miscommunication and the captain always had his doubts about the tender. The captain said there was 5 feet of movement on the tender. Maybe he tried everything (and it just seemed to go quickly).

However, I do suspect that the economics of Half Moon have changed. Newer cruise line owned ports (like Amber Cove), have their own food that you pay for, swim up bars, more excursions, on site staff (as opposed to tendering staff), no tender costs, etc. And I do believe that the all you can drink alcohol plans is eating into alcohol profits on Half Moon. If the economics have changed, I think it's reasonable to assume that this could have an impact on how much effort goes into making this stop. I would love to know if the tender rate has changed in recent years. Maybe it's completely seasonal. The only data I have is anecdotal.

As for us, this might be the end of Carnival for us. We just reached Gold status but we have enjoyed past cruises on Norwegian and Royal. Half Moon and Carnival's lower fares have driven our past decisions, but with Royal still offering last minute discounts and Half Moon in doubt and other cutbacks at Carnival (most visible to me in the menus and entertainment options), I think we'll move on. My one requirement for this cruise was that it had to include a stop at Half Moon. If I knew that there was even a 25% chance that we'd skip this port, I would not have given it so much weight in my decision.

Go ahead Carnival defenders, tell me how wrong I am.

It depends on wind and tides..weather can't be controlled! It is what it is.

A quick search around the board would reveal many discussions on the topic. Generally, the cancellation rate is between 15 and 20 percent, based on anecdotal evidence. Personally, we are 8 for 8 getting there, although our last stop was dicey.

Not being a qualified ship's Captain, I would never second guess the Captain's decision, particularly in regards to operating the ship, or safety.

Thank you both for your replies.

I agree that it's hard to question the Captain who's first priority is always safety. Having worked for 25 years in insurance, I definitely understand risk avoidance. But the captain is still an employee of the cruise line and he answers to superiors who are concerned about both risk and reward. We can assume the risk over the years has not changed, but I'm not sure about the reward. If management makes it known that the economics have changed at Half Moon Cay it can affect how hard a Captain pushes to make it work. There's no praise for a salesperson working hard on a sale that netted the company nothing.

My question is has the success rate changed? Because if the odds of actually getting to Half Moon Cay have gone down in recent years, it suggests that there's more to the story here.

I'll give up now because we'll never know the answer to my question.

First, based on the discussions here, it would appear the cancellation rate prior to the island based tenders was in the 25 to 30 percent range. Now with the island based tenders, which load easier, the cancellation rate has dropped to 15 to 20 percent.

Second, it seems to me, based on the reports here, November and December are the worst months for getting to HMC, due to weather, and most importantly, sea conditions in the area. By the way, current visible weather is only a small portion of the criteria. There are my other things...current and projected tides, winds and currents ( not visible to the naked eye, for the most part) to be considered.

Third, Carnival is a visitor there, HAL is the primary user, and always gets first shot. So HAL Captains have more experience getting to HMC. In any event, I would think their experience might somewhat exceed your 3 approaches.

Fourth, as a "private island", all revenue generated on the island goes to the cruise line. That is an incentive to get there. I don't know about Carnival, but HAL's drink plans don't work on the island, and HALs cabanas generate more revenue than Carnival's. They would still be honoring the plans on the ship if they skip the island, on both cruise lines. So don't see that as that great an incentive.

Lastly, as a directive from headquarters, I am very sure the first one would be "don't wreck a 400 million dollar ship and kill a few dozen people, if you can avoid it".

Celebrity Reflection had to skip Falmouth, Jamaica yesterday....It is Mother Nature, it is November. Today they are at (private) Labadee, and while docked, its pouring rain... friends on the 10 day Equinox have been rained out of both St. Thomas and Barbados this week. In April, we were able to make all these stops, and CocoCay, too.

Tender ports are fraught with risk of being skipped not only for how the weather is on arrival but for what it may look like later in the day. We once tendered into Newport, R I on a somewhat placid morning only to be tossed and turned on our reboarding later in the day. The crew said they never would have stopped if they had realized how the weather would switch.. it became very difficult for some passengers to reboard and we were significantly delayed in departing.

The drink plans don't work on HMC for carnival. It's one of the reason I decided not to buy it on our next cruise

I would think the "cancellation rate" would be seasonal as well. Certain times of the year bring rougher seas and more storms.

We are going at the end of May.

I would think the "cancellation rate" would be seasonal as well. Certain times of the year bring rougher seas and more storms.

 

We are going at the end of May.

It seems, again based on anecdotal evidence, the highest cancellation rate is November and December.