tidecat

I'm sure Carnival and MAS would like to see it expanded, but a year-round ship from any line would help build up off-site parking options, including park/snooze/cruise in the market. Margaritaville at Sea can do park/snooze/cruise from their existing resort in Biloxi (60 miles away, virtually all on I-10) as well as the one being built in Orange Beach once it is finished. There's probably some wisdom in not parking directly on the waterfront during hurricane season. Right now Carnival Spirit's Mobile deployment avoids most of the official hurricane season (June 1-November 30).

Percentage. Disney Cruise Line is less than 5% of Disney's revenue. The cruise line can be scaled much faster than the theme park business, which makes it attractive for additional investment.

NBC Universal, the parent company of Universal Destinations and Experiences - which operates a number of theme parks around the world - has registered an interesting domain name:

I would not count on Disney slowing down. It's probably the most profitable line of business the company has right now, and they still have basically the entire planet with which to work.

I'm not concerned with the 2029-32 time frame, but I think there will be more pressure across the corporate fleet in the 2033-36 time frame. P&O probably needs a new ship to compete with Marella's newbuilds due in 2030 and 2032. AIDA of course is set with 2030 and 2031 orders; right now TUI has nothing scheduled after 2026, but I suspect TUI will add more. Costa technically doesn't need anything before 2037, but I can't imagine them going 15+ years between newbuilds. If Costa doesn't have a spot for another ship to work (assuming Asia is off the table) perhaps they transfer a ship to Carnival. Carnival Cruise Line has five ships due between 2027 and 2033. This at least puts them in position to retire the Sunshine and Fantasy class vessels at roughly 31-33 years old. When the checkout time comes for the Spirit and Conquest classes is when things get messy, as Carnival took delivery of 7 ships between 2001 and 2004 (not to mention Liberty in 2005 and Freedom in 2007). I think Carnival Cruise Line needs five ships between 2034 and late 2036/early 2037 just to replace Conquest, Glory, Valor, Spirit, Miracle, Legend, and Pride. Depending on how long they want to hold on to Liberty and Freedom, Carnival Cruise Line may need seven ships in four years (2034-2037). It might be wise to take care of P&O and Costa by 2032 before Carnival Cruise Line consumes the new build budget in the mid-2030s. Princess and Holland America will be under similar pressure. They each have a pre-2000 straggler in their fleet that presumably will merit replacement before 2034 as well. Both lines can probably hold onto until 2035 on replacing the others. Of course if Carnival Corporation is generating $5+ billion in cash each year by then, then maybe Carnival Corporation can afford three new builds in one year. This would allow for much greater flexibility in managing the fleet.

The reduction of Costa's fleet should be read only as a narrowing of Costa's focus from a worldwide brand to a solely European brand. China's actions during the pandemic combined with Carnival Cruise Line's pandemic-accelerated ship disposals (Fascination, Sensation, Imagination, Inspiration; Fantasy and Ecstasy were likely gone in 2022 even without the pandemic) made the transfers of Luminosa, Venezia, and Firenze to Carnival Cruise Line an obvious decision. Margaritaville at Sea likely paid Carnival Corporation more than what Costa would have made selling cruises, especially since Fortuna is old enough to require a drydock every two to three years. Setting aside Venezia and Firenze since they were both additions and disposals, from 2018-2026 Costa is losing 9 ships with 17,970 lower berths while adding 2 ships with a combined 10,448 lower berths: NeoClassica - 1,308 NeoRomantica - 1,578 Victoria - 1,928 Atlantica - 2,114 Mediterranea - 2,114 Magica - 2,718 Luminosa - 2,260 neoRiviera - 1,248 Fortuna - 2,702 Keep in mind Atlantica and Mediterranea were both originally going to be owned by a Carnival Corporation joint venture to serve the Chinese market; that accounts for 4,228 of the lost 7,522 lower berths. CSSC (now Adora Cruises) chose not to use Atlantica and instead is building new ships. Selling Fortuna (2,702 lower berths) will also lead to Serena (3,014 lower berths) being pulled from Asia and redeployed to Europe, which means practically all of the lost capacity is from Costa exiting Asia.

Correct, Costa's newest vessels are from 2019 and 2021, which of course come on the heels of losing the 2019-built Venezia and 2020-built Firenze. AIDA's newest are from 2018 and 2021, but they have deliveries scheduled for 2030 and 2031. P&O's newest are from 2020 and 2022, so you could make an argument they really ought to have a new ship by 2031 as well, especially as a replacement for the 2000-built Aurora and/or the 2005-built Arcadia. Replacement stock is a little less of an issue for Costa and AIDA as the oldest ship in each fleet will have been built in 2007 after Costa Fortuna departs. Personally I would put one of these 180k GT ships in P&O and the other in Costa, and then setup so that HAL, P&O, Costa, and AIDA get a new ship at least once every five years. Carnival and Princess would share the other newbuild slot so they get two or three ships each every five years.

Shipping Italy seems to think 180,000 GT new builds may be headed Costa's way: https://www.shippingitaly.it/2025/05/26/per-msc-e-carnival-in-arrivo-nuove-serie-di-navi-da-crociera-da-costruire-in-francia-finlandia-e-germania/

Until of course, the beards tell him otherwise. It may be many years into the future, but eventually the demographic cliff of people having fewer children will catch up to the cruise industry.

I think we'll see some more movement over the next year, but all of the other brands in the portfolio have younger fleets than Carnival Cruise Line - P&O's oldest ships were built in 2000 and 2005, AIDA's in 2007, Costa's are from 2003 (for now) and 2007, Princess from 1998, Holland America from 1999, and Cunard from 2003. I would expect the 150k GT blueprint to last well into the 2030s. It's still almost five years before AIDA will even take delivery of their first vessel. That said I'm really not sure what we'll see for Princess - my guess is they keep up the arms race with Celebrity and we get another Sphere-class ship or a knock-off of it from Meyer. I think Carnival Cruise Line will keep farting out Excel/Ace-class ships as long as the market will bear it. There may be a few opportunities to consolidate ships doing short cruises with larger ships while still increasing passenger capacity even if the number of ships remains flat or even decreases.

I guess if these do well, we could see Carnival invest more in other forms of entertainment and/or amenities for all-adults sailings such as additional shows or a larger spa area. That really would not be justifiable for a few one-off sailings. Maybe "Sea" goes from sailings exclusively for adults to ships exclusively for adults. Gambling and alcohol still drive the bus when it comes to onboard revenue.

The near future at least seems to be focused on Europe and South America, as Costa continues to withdraw from Asia. AIDA and Carnival Cruise Line have more ships on order, but there doesn't really seem to be a need to do anything in the short term for Costa, especially with the tighter focus on Europe. If Costa feels they need newer hardware to compete with MSC, we might see some movement between brands to make room for a newer vessel for Costa. Carnival Cruise Line's oldest vessel was built in 1996 so they obviously have some ships due for replacement in the coming years.

I think starting in 2028 we'll basically see 1-for-1 replacements 2027: +Tropicale, no disposals 2028: +Festivale, -Elation 2029: +Ace Class #1, -Paradise 2031: +Ace Class #2, -Sunshine 2033: +Ace Class #3, -Sunrise I could potentially see Sunshine being retired in late 2027 as her next drydock would be January 2028. If so that might move the exit for Radiance up to 2031. The Spirit and Conquest classes likely will have more asked of them to allow Carnival to hold onto Baltimore, Jacksonville, and Tampa. If Carnival does wind up ordering a sixth, seventh, or even eighth Excel-class ship we may see a few more cuts to the fleet from those classes, as long as Carnival can hold onto 4-5 of those ships to service the aforementioned ports.

Should we infer that the Asian market was not performing as well? This seems to be the deployment being dropped with Fortuna's departure, as Serena will be moving to the Med.

I'm not sure what their contract with the Port of Palm Beach runs through, but it would make sense to move to Port Everglades or Port Miami, especially if they intend to offer longer cruises. Paradise may very well be retired, or gets moved to break new ground for MAS somewhere like Mobile, Port Canaveral, Jacksonville, New Orleans, or Galveston. I don't think the West Coast would be in play unless if Paradise already has shore power capabilities, which California requires.

I just don't know if Carnival Corp would want to spend the money to get what would likely be 8-9 years of service from a Carnival Fortuna. That money might be better spent on the existing Sunshine-class ships or on the new hardware.

This really isn't an issue for Carnival because Carnival hasn't adopted the split aft structure to where you can be outside but have little to no view of the ocean. For Royal's Oasis and Icon classes and MSC's World class that do have split afts, the view of the ocean from public spaces can be limited. Their huge beam also creates larger interior spaces with no outside views.

I don't think there's going to be a way to predictively manage security. At least one of the parties involved was from Baton Rouge, which while New Orleans was the closest cruise port to them, for whatever reason chose to sail out of Galveston. This was a seven-day sailing on the newest ship (by actual build year) in the fleet. Just in recent memory, there have been incidents on ships out of New York, Galveston, New Orleans, Tampa, Jacksonville, Port Canaveral, and Miami. If you go across all brands you could probably find incidents out of every departure port in the world. The only common denominator might be the size of the travel party - at 24 participants you are talking well beyond two nuclear families in this case. Even then that is not going to eliminate all incidents. There also isn't going to be a realistic way to prevent larger parties from booking the same ship at the same time - it would just be split up over more reservations.

Carnival could come up with the a dry slide specifically for disembarking the ship in Jacksonville.

It will be curious to see if the City of Galveston, Galveston County, or the state of Texas charge anyone. Although presumably this incident could also result in federal charges.

The first hit after the AI summary is this thread, so the AI is likely picking up on ideas being tossed around here.

A brawl happened during disembarkation in the Galveston cruise terminal after the end of the April 19 sailing: https://crew-center.com/brawl-galveston-cruise-terminal-after-carnival-jubilee-voyage

It may have to do with checkout time of their pre-cruise lodging. It is also possible to schedule things like spa appointments for embarkation day, so that may be an issue as well

I'm not as confident it will be less than three years. Given how many families with children Carnival carries, you don't want to run a family off just because they had a kid. There's roughly a 10 month span a woman who has a child can't sail - after 23 weeks of pregnancy to when her child reaches six months of age (and some itineraries forbid children under one year old). Now theoretically a family could have someone else take care of their child before the child reaches six months to allow mom and dad to go themselves, but that's not always a good option for everyone. I'm not familiar with all of the various lengths of military deployments, but given how Carnival has hung their hat on honoring the military, they might want to work around those situations as well. Three years is probably an acceptable medium. Generating large numbers of complaints from an excessively strict policy ties up customer service resources, to which there is a cost as well.

A late 2027 departure would make sense for Sunshine given she would be due for drydock again in January 2028. I just don't see Carnival Corp reducing the fleet anywhere right now. Given that Mobile is regaining service in the (North American) summer, someone else would have to lose summer service if Sunshine is being retired.