Carnival Cruises and Mobile Alabama Future?

[futaba951]

Gulfport has been making noise about a cruise ship ever since Carnival did trial cruises out of Mobile with the Holiday about 5 years ago. I think Gulfport or any other Gulf Coast city would be ill advised to spend money on terminals and such right about now with the state of Caribbean cruising. RCI has all but pulled out of the Gulf ports and only has a seasonal presence. X and Princess are both gone for the foreseeable future. Carnival is about the only game in town now when it comes to year around cruising from Gulf ports. Most of the fleets are going to Alaska, Europe and S. America. Carnival doesn't have enough ships right now to go around to every city that wants a ship. Also, Gulfport wants to market themselves as a destination port to the cruise lines and I don't think that is a real good approach. The cruise lines want you to board the ship with a full wallet and leave all your money behind when you disembark so they can send you home flat ass broke. They don't necessarily want you to blow your wad before you board the ship, or be holding back so you have money to blow in MS casinos after you get off the ship. Mobile was successful in negotiationg with Carnival because they had RSA backing them with a new state of the art terminal and parking garage and millions of dollars in incentives to Carnival such as reduced port fees and millions in free advertising on RSA radio, newspaper and television stations nationwide. Carnival is just like any other business, they will give it up to the one who shows them the money. Look how long Galveston and NOLA were stuck with all the small old ships. It takes time to prove yourself before you start to move up the food chain and I think in the next several years, if the Caribbean market improves, Mobile will start to see some larger, newer ships. And I'd bet that RSA will be back with a large financial commitment when that time comes. David Bronner has taken a liking to Mobile for some reason. He's buying Mobile building by building.

[M&Scruisecraze]

I would expect that you'll be fine. We've had this discussion previously on the board. Celebration will be the first to go and there's no set date for that yet!

 

Oh yes there is a set date for that.. april of 2008 around the last of april is the last trip for celebration then its dry docked. It will be sometime in sept. before the Fantasy goes to Jacksonville for good. Go check the cruising dates for Jacksonville.

[LHP]

Oh yes there is a set date for that.. april of 2008 around the last of april is the last trip for celebration then its dry docked. It will be sometime in sept. before the Fantasy goes to Jacksonville for good. Go check the cruising dates for Jacksonville.

 

??? I thought the Fascination was taking the Celebration's place????

[Cruzman]

??? I thought the Fascination was taking the Celebration's place????

 

I think him made a booboo with his typing finger, lol. As to the parking issue; the mayor announced several months ago that plans were in place to build another parking garage just north of the current facility. He also stated that such plans would not be implemented until there was a firm commitment from Carnival or another cruise line to homeport a larger vessel there. I spoke with a number of ship's officers last summer while aboard the Holiday, and they all said that Carnival was bringing in a larger ship but there was no agreement on the timetable. I am confident that it will happen; just don't know when.

[Checkmate1955]

I read that all of the Carnival ships that make the 3 to 5 day cruises are being upgraded with a lot of new water slides and pool upgrades... All of the ships were mentioned in this article in a Carnival corporation mail out... One ship was not mentioned and that was the Holiday... It seems that the Holiday is not being upgraded at least to the extent of the other ships... So that could mean that the Holiday is going, going.... gone!

 

Why is the Holiday mentioned in the same class as the 70,000 ton ships when she is only 50,000 ton approximately... ?