NCL Cancellation Announcements - January 5th 2022

[FlashF15]

24 minutes ago, Cruise Gopher said:

NCL TA website

It looks totally different now.  I guess it says the same thing but look different.  It seems harder to find all that information that you posted on their letterhead.

[flapr]

https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/cruise/cruise-ship-color-status.html#cruise-table
 

Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but according to the CDC, the only ships with Green status are those with crew only.  One would anticipate more cancelations forthcoming. 

[styxfire]

5 hours ago, BermudaBound2014 said:

There are lots of financial reasons to keep those prices high given that NCL is still borrowing money to stay afloat. The real teller about capacity is that the last minute pricing on NCL over the fall was insanely cheap. For a cruise in December, you could book 7 nights in a balcony for under $400 and sometimes that included all 4 perks.

I think what you're saying it spot-on.  But I also feel compelled to say that a week in early November and a week in early December are consistently, hands-down the CHEAPEST TWO WEEKS OF THE YEAR for last-minute cruising.  I've had some great cruise values during those weeks, in pre-Covid times.

[styxfire]

39 minutes ago, flapr said:

according to the CDC, the only ships with Green status are those with crew only.

This was expected.  The criteria for bumping a ship from Green to Yellow is INSANELY, unachievably low...  if more than a single crew member tests positive, CDC bumps it to Yellow and starts an investigation.  

 

IMO, besides the threshhold for Green being unattainable, it's also quite outdated in the face of new revelations about the seriousness of the virus now.  It really is absurd for the CDC to investigate something that has seemingly ceased to cause serious illness, and while so many therapeutics are now available that weren't when the CDC crafted these rules.  

[Back to school]

36 minutes ago, styxfire said:

This was expected.  The criteria for bumping a ship from Green to Yellow is INSANELY, unachievably low...  if more than a single crew member tests positive, CDC bumps it to Yellow and starts an investigation.  

 

IMO, besides the threshhold for Green being unattainable, it's also quite outdated in the face of new revelations about the seriousness of the virus now.  It really is absurd for the CDC to investigate something that has seemingly ceased to cause serious illness, and while so many therapeutics are now available that weren't when the CDC crafted these rules.  

I agree!

[jumbojem96]

4 hours ago, dmh165638 said:

Is it a coincidence that all the ships on that Travel Advisory are the old/smaller ships in the fleet?  Other than the Getaway cancellation.  I would assume the newer/bigger ships are more profitable so are they concentrating on keeping those going and hoping bookings for those ships increase?

I was thinking exactly this…

[Sand and Seas]

13 minutes ago, jumbojem96 said:

I was thinking exactly this…

Except for Getaway  January  5th cruise.....Not a smaller older ship.

 

When they  cancelled  this one on us I expected more  of a general  pause on many other sailings. 

Edited January 6, 2022 by Sand and Seas

[dmh165638]

34 minutes ago, Sand and Seas said:

Except for Getaway  January  5th cruise.....Not a smaller older ship.

 

When they  cancelled  this one on us I expected more  of a general  pause on many other sailings. 

Did you see in my post where I mentioned "except the Getaway" and they responded that they were thinking the same thing?  The Getaway is the exception if they have to many crew COVID positive to sail the current voyage.  The future cancelations on the smaller ships aren't necessarily related to current COVID infections on board.

[tinkr2]

14 hours ago, mvh said:

Does anyone really think all cruises won't be cancelled by the end of the week? My money is on cancellations.  I'm not sure what I'm hoping for.  Seriously, how good can a cruise be right now?

I don't think they'll cancel if they can operate profitably in any way . 
 

14 hours ago, yankees111 said:

Wearing a mask everywhere indoors, people being quarantined, entertainment being cancelled all over the place. No thank you. I will wait. I do not need to be on a ship that bad!

People enjoy the ship and the sun . Relaxing is important to many . 
 

13 hours ago, JustAPilot said:

Meanwhile our friends in the Carnival forum are all systems go on the fun ship, except for the fact Islands are starting to ban cruise ships from docking. At this point shut it all down until spring break when this passes over. 

 

And why is that a problem? Vaccinated, tested . The numbers are lower on the ships than my state . 
 

8 hours ago, BermudaBound2014 said:

 

You are absolutely free to believe what the captain says. Just like people are free to believe what crew says. I'm much more skeptical and tend to believe what the market indicates and what the quarterly financial reports state (not how Del Rio and his team spin them of course :)). Let us not forget Enron. 

My cruise on Jade was capped at 60%. They chose to sell no more cabins . Friends tried to join us after it was taken down and couldn't. 

[tinkr2]

I'll be cruising in February with zero reservations. Ive been vaccinated, boosted and just had omicron. I'm going to make the best of what I get . 

[missinver]

2 hours ago, tinkr2 said:

I'll be cruising in February with zero reservations. Ive been vaccinated, boosted and just had omicron. I'm going to make the best of what I get . 

I absolutely agree.  We are travelling from Northern Ireland to join the Bliss for Panama Canal on 4th February.  We fully intend to be on that ship unless circumstances outside of our control stop us.  We are both triple vaccinated and I had covid a couple of months ago.  Life has to go on!! 

[Karaboudjan]

10 hours ago, styxfire said:

IMO, besides the threshhold for Green being unattainable, it's also quite outdated in the face of new revelations about the seriousness of the virus now.  It really is absurd for the CDC to investigate something that has seemingly ceased to cause serious illness, and while so many therapeutics are now available that weren't when the CDC crafted these rules.  

I might say instead that it has seemingly ceased to cause serious illness on cruise ships because of the CDC's rules, investigations and warnings.  There are many people who cruise who would still be at a high risk of developing serious illness and I am all for encouraging them to wait until things are safer.

 

 

[bluesea777]

17 hours ago, Snowrose said:

Actually, I still have the document in my files...

e0a2e7_2fbd264de6404f00b1ca98eb2f6024bf.pdf 317.66 kB · 67 downloads

 

16 hours ago, Snowrose said:

It's the port listings for St Thomas. How many NCL ships do you see that are scheduled to go into Caribbean ports through Sept 2022? Only Norwegian Dawn is listed, for one trip on 2/2/22. There are no other NCL ships listed for the Caribbean. Or cat least not for the ports covered in that document.

 

13 hours ago, pandncruisers said:

We are on the Epic on 01/23 & 01/30 with a stop in St Thomas on the 01/30 cruise so it looks like that will not happen?

Looks like that is the Crown Bay port that is mainly used by RCI. 
 

NCL dock at Havensight, the other port in St. Thomas. 
 

[BklynBorn47]

@tinkr2

We have a lot in common.  Vaccinated & boosted.  We also feel safer on a ship with protocols enforced than in our hometown, on a plane (where I watched a woman munch a bag of chips for 4 hours to avoid wearing a mask) or in an airport (especially Miami).
 

We are booked on the Star in May using FCC after 2 previous cancellations.  Just back from 17 days in the Caribbean (Windstar).  After the 1^st positive case, ALL were tested every morning (passengers and crew) with the Captain informing us of the results.  We got our results in about 10 minutes. Of course, there were only 400 of us total (including crew). 

BVI ports were closed, but anyone testing negative in the morning could go ashore at those ports still open.  However, we did see hoards of people disembarking from RCCL, CCL and NCL at the same time.  I doubt those ships tested their thousands of passengers. 
 

Do I understand correctly that during the cruise the large ships only test those who call the medical team with symptoms and their close contacts?
 

Bottom line – We had a great time and would have stayed onboard if we could. 
Hope Omicron runs its course quickly. 

[Snowrose]

33 minutes ago, bluesea777 said:

 

 

Looks like that is the Crown Bay port that is mainly used by RCI. 
 

NCL dock at Havensight, the other port in St. Thomas. 
 

 

Thank you for that! Here is that schedule, though it says changes may not be listed.

january-2022-ship-schedule.pdf

[Honolulu Blue]

2 hours ago, BklynBorn47 said:

we did see hoards of people disembarking from RCCL, CCL and NCL at the same time.  I doubt those ships tested their thousands of passengers. 
 

Do I understand correctly that during the cruise the large ships only test those who call the medical team with symptoms and their close contacts?

 

You're correct - most cruise ships only test those with symptoms, close contacts of those that have previously tested positive, and some test those that need a test in order to return to their foreign countries.  I'm not sure if they test close contacts of those with symptoms but have tested negative.

 

I was on Celebrity in September and Princess in November.  As a U.S. resident who never had symptoms and never reported to the medical center, I was never asked to test.  Luckily I also dodged being anyone's close contact.

[RocketMan275]

On 1/5/2022 at 10:18 AM, wolft927 said:

We are booked on the Breakaway for March 6th 2022 and are looking forward to it. Hopefully by then Omnicron calms down a bit. We are both Fully Vaccinated and actually We both got tested positive on Friday the 31st. Mild symptoms like a cold and by Sunday the 2nd all my symptoms where gone and feeling Fine. Not at all worried about getting covid so If we can cruise march 6th we are there

We cancelled two bookings on that cruise, ourselves and our son and his wife because of the imposition of the masking requirement.

[D4]

1 hour ago, Honolulu Blue said:

 

You're correct - most cruise ships only test those with symptoms, close contacts of those that have previously tested positive, and some test those that need a test in order to return to their foreign countries.  I'm not sure if they test close contacts of those with symptoms but have tested negative.

 

I was on Celebrity in September and Princess in November.  As a U.S. resident who never had symptoms and never reported to the medical center, I was never asked to test.  Luckily I also dodged being anyone's close contact.

There are posts about the Royal Harmony cruise from last week that had a big outbreak of Covid cases.  People that had symptoms and were already being quarantined with a positive family member requested to be tested and were denied.  Clearly to keep their positive count down.

 

Royal hasn’t said how many people tested positive, but passenger quarantine cabins were on 3 different decks!

[Karaboudjan]

8 minutes ago, D4 said:

There are posts about the Royal Harmony cruise from last week that had a big outbreak of Covid cases.  People that had symptoms and were already being quarantined with a positive family member requested to be tested and were denied.  Clearly to keep their positive count down.

 

I think that is incorrect.  According to the CDC guidelines passengers or crew with symptoms and no laboratory confirmation of a different respiratory illness are counted as COVID cases.  So they cannot keep case numbers down by not testing symptomatic people.  In fact testing might reduce their count!

[jlseymour3]

22 hours ago, BermudaBound2014 said:

 

Sure, they can price accordingly if demand is good. Shareholders want that. Investors want that. But that wasn't what I was responding to. I was responding to the poster who said they are pricing in an attempt to keep occupancy low. That I don't buy for one minute.

 

PS: Fain (RCL)  just walked backward on his claims that demand is at a record high in 2022. Now the story is that demand will be high the second half of 2022 lol. 

 

Anyone who doesn't believe that cruise lines are in jeopardy of solvency should seriously consider going long right now. I'm short for another 6 months. 

I suspect the causal arrow is the other way.  Capacity is kept low, so keep prices high, because you may be able to fill available capacity with people who are less price sensitive.

[IMNOFUN]

On 1/5/2022 at 7:40 AM, MichiganBound said:

I agree with others that we may see a complete shutdown soon.  If it happens, I expect it will be fairly short-lived.  Omicron moves through populations very very quickly.  Maybe things will shut down for January/February and then re-open in March (Subject, of course, to any new troubling variants emerging).  

The cancellations are through to the end of April. It'd be weird to be cancelled/refunded, then told all aboard on the same date and ship. They wouldn't close down through April if they didn't think they'd have to. They could have waited at least toward the end of February to cancel April, etc.

 

Just wondering. My cruise person is trying to get me on a rebook, but we also have a cruise already at the end of July (family cruise with 5 cabins). I can't see shoving another cruise in only a month or so before that (June?). 

 

What are you all on cancelled March/April cruises planning to do. Rebook or ????

[IMNOFUN]

On 1/5/2022 at 8:53 AM, BermudaBound2014 said:

 

I do agree to an extent and even I mentioned it way up there ^ in my original post as a theory that is being floated. But, NCL has ships that have not yet returned to service. If this theory pans out it means that NCL didn't have the foresight to place those empty ships in the Caribbean in anticipation. I don't blame them really, seriously who saw this coming! 

 

 Many people don't realize just how small NCL is when comparing to the other lines.  Just in case anyone is interested, this is a chart of market share from 2018. 

 

I'm surprised Disney is so low. What I did today, to pass the time, is check out NCL stock price. It's dropped a lot. In my mind, that says buy. I'm having to get a cash transfer to my brokerage account since I don't want to take a realized gain, but I'm sure going to roll the dice and see if NCL's overly cautious operations will become the brilliant operating decision I think it is.

 

I wouldn't get on a Carnival ship unless I was having to escape an erupting volcano. To those of you who adore Carnival, my apologies if I'm wrong, but I just sense loud music, screaming children, and a lot of public drunkenness. If I'm wrong, then I'm sorry. NCL has always been pretty good for us. Sure, we'd like Holland or one of those luxury outfits, but we can't afford those options.

[tinkr2]

4 hours ago, IMNOFUN said:

I'm surprised Disney is so low. What I did today, to pass the time, is check out NCL stock price. It's dropped a lot. In my mind, that says buy. I'm having to get a cash transfer to my brokerage account since I don't want to take a realized gain, but I'm sure going to roll the dice and see if NCL's overly cautious operations will become the brilliant operating decision I think it is.

 

I wouldn't get on a Carnival ship unless I was having to escape an erupting volcano. To those of you who adore Carnival, my apologies if I'm wrong, but I just sense loud music, screaming children, and a lot of public drunkenness. If I'm wrong, then I'm sorry. NCL has always been pretty good for us. Sure, we'd like Holland or one of those luxury outfits, but we can't afford those options.

 

I don't love carnival but have only seen that on one spring break cruise 14 years ago. I t seems to be the same hoards of kids as RCCL and NCL . and the drunkeness is the same on all the 3 days on weekends out of Florida. Id actually give that prize to Sky when it included drinks.

[BermudaBound2014]

14 hours ago, IMNOFUN said:

What I did today, to pass the time, is check out NCL stock price. It's dropped a lot. In my mind, that says buy.

 

You may find this link helpful. 

https://www.nclhltd.com/investors/financial-information/financial-results

 

[Joanne G.]

15 hours ago, IMNOFUN said:

 . . .I wouldn't get on a Carnival ship unless I was having to escape an erupting volcano. To those of you who adore Carnival, my apologies if I'm wrong, but I just sense loud music, screaming children, and a lot of public drunkenness. If I'm wrong, then I'm sorry. NCL has always been pretty good for us. Sure, we'd like Holland or one of those luxury outfits, but we can't afford those options.

Generalizations and assumptions are dangerous!  The worst case of public drunkenness that I have seen on 20+ cruises was at a piano bar on a Holland America ship.  Some NCL cruisers with buckets of beer came close.   The most obnoxious kids were packs of teens on an Easter week cruise on NCL.  Going further, the only cruise line that lost an opened bottle of wine between dinners was Princess, and the only cruise line on which we returned from an all-day excursion to an unserviced cabin (unmade beds and damp towels) was Celebrity.  None of those things have happened to me on Carnival.  😀   

 

Sorry for hijacking the thread, but I had to stick up for Carnival LOL.