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At least all crew was tested in Genova upon arrival after the first cruise. And I´m pretty sure that all B2B passengers have been tested too there. There were several ports in Greece and it´s a requiry by Italy that when reentering Italy they need a new test after leaving Greece. I don´t think that there were - it at all - many passengers which haven´t left the ship in any Greek port. So pretty likely all have been tested on the seaday on the way back to Italy. steamboats

Nope, new crew member has been tested positive - that was MSC Grandiosa - also Malta, Costa does not go to Malta. steamboats

Nope, but the charter has it´s rules too. And it´s a closed group. If the charterer allowes B2B they might have been o.k. with that. Actually if I was the cruise line I had cancelled the charter in those days. steamboats

Nope, two of the ships do cruise out of Germany (Hamburg and Kiel) and don´t have any shore tours outside of Germany. On Monday the first cruise departs Hamburg with a shore tour but that´s in Bremerhaven. And no "bubble tours" but you can just walk off. Greece is still doing pretty well regarding the number of cases. So Mein Schiff 6 is still going on. AIDA announced that all passengers can have a free test in the port of La Spezia - which is the last shore stop of the cruise prior to returning to Civitavecchia. For Germany La Spezia and Naples are high risk areas (as well as Genova, Savona and Malta). Both MSC and Costa do cruise as scheduled (not regarding the Costa Diadema). steamboats

These were full charters... and over here in Europe there´s nothing prohibiting 14 days cruises. steamboats

New cruise line which is not operating yet. It´s owned by Mystic Cruises/Invest which is a Portuguese company. The German brand is nicko cruises. I have cruised on the World Explorer which is the first ship of the series Mystic is currently building. The World Voyager is second ship which is supposed to run for nicko cruises. The World Navigator (no. 3, currently under construction) and the World Traveller (no. 4) are supposed to run for Altas Ocean Voyages. nicko cruises is not operating on the luxus market. But the ship is pretty nice and the cabins have excellent features which are comparable to luxus brands. Our cruise was one of the first ones and they still had a lot of problems fixing all the stuff which hasn´t been done properly in the shipyard. But they have learned out of this. You can see my photos of the World Explorer here. The sister ships will be similar... They´ve changed a little for the World Voyager which won´t have a casino (Germans don´t gamble) and the spa is larger. steamboats

When RCI changed to Ravenna all those who had already booked were offered a free transfer from Venice to Ravenna. Ravenna has no airport. steamboats

No, not onboard. But Germancruiser was asking for those detected prior to boarding. Once onboard the passengers don´t get tested anymore - except those on the MSC Grandiosa who were on a shore tour in Malta (but that ended on the last cruise). steamboats

I´m pretty sure that this is something new! steamboats

@Germancruiser at least one made it into media. A French passenger was tested positive and he and the group which he was in (a total of 13 people) were denied boarding the MSC Grandiosa. So there are positive cases. I´d say the switch from PCR to Antigen regarding TUI Cruises is also because of the price. PCR tests are much more expensive than Antigen (you can get a test kit for app. 10 Euro - 25 are 250 Euro - but ordering the amount you need for a cruise ship the price might be even lower). A lot of people were not happy about Helios as in some cases you had a 200 or more km drive (single) and needed to take off another day just for the test. I saw a map in a video HL posted and you could see that there are wide areas in Germany where there´s no Helios hospital close by. Here in Bavaria there are two in Munich and three more in Franconia close to Hessen or Saxonia but nothing in the Eastern or middle part of Germany (nothing in the Nuremberg area). So being from Passau or Regensburg you had quite a drive to get a test. TUI Cruises did a test with crew in Hamburg - they did a mass test with app. 100 crew members to check how this works out (it was in BILD). Greece still requires a PCR test and the time slot is pretty narrow... for the Sunday departure you can go Thursday afternoon. But you still have to check your flight time as it has to be within less than 72 hours upon arrival in Greece (and don´t mix up with the one hour they are ahead of us). steamboats

When MSC started out of Miami they wanted to attract more US passengers. So they started the loyality status match (not just cruise lines but also hotels). This was for US passengers only when it started. A couple of months later this was extended worldwide. By October 2018 the changed the rules as they pretty likely got too many Blacks (now Diamond) via status match. Now you need the highest status (Zenith/X, Pinnacle/RCI) to match the highest status of MSC which is Diamond (previous Black). The status is valid for two years. If you don´t cruise with them in that time frame you lose your status. steamboats

TUI Cruises confirmed that a second test will be a Antigen test too not a PCR test (check here). The 70 min machine can only process 2 samples at a time. So it would take way too much time if you have more than two positives. steamboats

Unfortunately MSC has changed the status match more than a year ago... When I matched I still got Black for Diamond,RCI / Elite,X. And as I´ve cruised with them I kept the status. BTW, the MSC Grandiosa is a great ship. You can find more about the ship on my website. steamboats

Yes, I know... last Friday. So within two weeks they have delivered two cruise ships. So hopefully this will take a little stress off the financial situation of the shipyard. steamboats

Exactly, they want to avoid crowds right now and therefore they did not announce the float out of the Spirit of Adventure or the Ems river conveyance of the Spirit of Adventure. So - if nothing changes - it´s pretty likely that the float out of the Odyssey won´t be announced either. steamboats