tidecat

Yes, Mobile was working on widening the turning basin so that ships would not have to be towed in/out of the Mobile River; iz is scheduled for completion in 2025. The cruise port was also scheduled to have its gangway replaced. Conquest and Triumph have docked at Mobile, but that was pre-shutdown. Many of the freight vessels that dock at Mobile have deeper drafts than Carnival's ships, which is driving the widening and dredging.

I think we have 8-10 years before we see start seeing reductions in service from Carnival Cruise Line due to height (air draft) limitations. Getting Luminosa out of Brisbane and one of the seasonal Spirit class vessels out of Mobile or Galveston by 2028-29 will help Baltimore, Tampa, and Jacksonville persist. Brisbane and Mobile/Galveston can use Conquest-class or larger vessels to run the routes currently served by their current ships. Elation and Paradise also have firm dates for dry docks in 2026. They aren't going anywhere yet, and their younger sisters in the Spirit class should stick around after the Fantasy class departs.

The press release is counting the Costa transfers that have already happened (Luminosa, Venezia, Firenze). Carnival Cruise Line will have added 10 ships since the restart (5 transfers, 5 newbuilds) by 2033 that will be at least 55,000 additional lower berths. Even if you count all of the pandemic-related disposals, only about 13,000 lower berths were lost with the six Fantasy-class vessels), which means Carnival may be up as many as 42,000 lower berths by 2033.

I'm not sure what debt Royal could pay off right now. The dividend will only cost about $100 million. The USD portion of the loan for Harmony only has an interest rate of 2.53%. The "B" trianches on both Utopia and Ascent combined are about $72 million, but I don't know if they're connected to the "A" trianches that are much larger. For $137.5 million they could have paid off Silver Moon, which is due June 2028 and is at SOFR + 210 basis points, which would be around 7.5% right now. That would have saved 10.3 million a year for nearly 3 years, net of any prepayment penalties. Operating cash flow for the year should be over $5 billion, and maybe even closer to $6 billion; it was over $4 billion for 2023, and Royal has nearly matched last year's income per share for 2023 in just two quarters. If that holds going forward, even if Royal pays $400-500 million of dividends, that should still leave north of $4 billion each year for debt repayment. That easily outstrips the scheduled maturities for 2025-2030.

Nova is "not going" in both Spanish and Portuguese, so Nova is likely out. Probably not an issue for AIDA given their specific focus on Germany.

I guess if you want to stick with the star theme, something like Carnival Galaxy or Carnival Solaris could work. The entire Excel class so far uses recycled names. Reusing Holiday would completely reuse the Holiday class. Not sure if any of the "ale" names (Carnivale, Festivale, Tropicale) would get reused, but Tropicale would be the most likely as it was Carnival's first newbuild. So far Carnival has not reused any other names. I guess Carnival Destiny could be on the table, especially if Sunshine sunsets in 2027 or 2028. In some ways it makes sense as Destiny was the first cruise ship over 100,000 GT, and a new Destiny could be the largest cruise ship by passenger capacity. The names of the entire Fantasy class may also be available by then as well.

Seems to be going OK for AIDA: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDAnova

Thr Barbados embarkation was targeted at those coming from Europe. There are threads on here about some of the unique experiences related to that on the San Juan turnaround days.

With five new builds on the way, what do you think the new ships will be named? Here's my guess: 2027 - Carnival Holiday 2028 - Carnival Fiesta 2029 - Carnival Stella 2031 - Carnival Aurora 2033 - Carnival Nova

Carnival Cruise Line is getting two new Excel ships in 2027 and 2028 in addition to these three. Don't be surprised to see one or more of the Excel or "Pinnacle" class on short cruises similar to what Royal Caribbean is doing with Utopia of the Seas.

Maybe Carnival Corp needs to work on "graduating" some cruisers to Princess and Holland America. Easier to hide the higher costs of a smaller ship in a luxury product. I actually think rebooting Holland America as an adults-only line might have some merit. If nothing else, Carnival Corp could hurt Virgin by beating Virgin on price.

The Excel-class design is from Meyer. Fincantieri is ultimately basing theirs on Project Mille, which has been used by MSC (Seaside and Seaside EVO classes) and Norwegian (Prima class).

This was only a few months ago when it sold, so no. If they wanted to keep it they wouldn't have sold it.

That was on the Project Pinnacle prototype Fincantieri pitched back in the early 2000s. Disney Cruise Line's Aquaduck was initially planned as a lazy river, but there was concern about how much deck space it would take up, so it became the elevated water coaster we know today.

Atlantica is a year older (2000) than Carnival Spirit and Pacific/Carnival Adventure (2001). This isn't much help in terms of replacing older ships. You also have to remember one of the popular features of the Spirit-class - the extra space per passenger - doesn't necessarily make a cruise line money Atlantica was actually sold to CSSC, now Adora Cruises, which was a joint venture between Carnival and the Chinese government. It appears Carnival took the ship back when they exited the joint venture, and then turned around and made an immediate sale - no cruises to cancel, no future cruise credits to issue, and no renovation to perform. Based on the proceeds from ship sales reported for that quarter, they likely made about as much money from selling the ship as they would have in five years of sailings had they decided to operate it. That's a nice boost, especially when you're $27 billion in debt.

There certainly will be some retirements by 2033. The height restricted ports (Baltimore, Jacksonville, part of Sydney Tampa) should be able to hang on between the four Spirit class ships, Luminosa, and the two P&O ships. This may require a different deployment to Alaska given that some of those ships are currently deployed to Alaska. Sunshine class is probably gone by 2033 as Radiance would be 33, Sunrise 34, and Sunshine 37.

8000 is maximum passenger capacity. Double occupancy will be over 6,000 as the announcement refers to there being over 3,000 staterooms.

No, the drink had to be $10 or below. What was bad was that a year prior, that drink actually was under the $10 cutoff.

It was $10 when I sailed in February. Couldn't even use it on a Mocha Chocolate Getaway.

Paradise and Elation both have 2026 drydocks set, they'll likely finish their careers in Florida. They both turn 28 in 2026, they should be able to last another 2-3 years after that, if not 5-6 years. Carnival's next window of opportunity would likely be in 2027 when Excel 4 enters the fleet. Sunshine may also be on retirement watch as well, so probably the only way Carnival adds a homeport is to reduce service somewhere else.

Just show up, it's counter service.

The weather in that part of the world doesn't vary much with the seasons. Average highs run between 86-92 Fahrenheit (30-33 Celsius) and average lows between 77-81 (25-27). Fall and early winter are nominally the wet season, but even then Aruba doesn't typically get more than 4 inches of rain in a month.

Correct. Victory's were actually done well before the scheduled drydock to become Radiance, which of course wound up being severely delayed due to the shutdown. Triumph had reduced capacity for her final sailings before her onversion.

Carnival Triumph was having staterooms updated while in service prior to the drydock in which it was converted to Carnival Sunrise.

Carnival has more ships sailing from US ports than any other cruise line - essentially all but one-and-a-half (Splendor and Luminosa outside of the Alaska season) of Carnival's ships sail from the US. Royal Caribbean has more ships, but more of those are based outside the US.