Cruise update

My cousins Steven and Bob have postponed their long awaited Caribbean cruise.  They were leaving mid April for Fort Lauderdale and doing a back to back Eastern and Western cruise with their wives.  It was a retirement gift for Bob.  They found the same cruises in October 2021 and got the same cabins.  They lost nothing but will have to pay a little more.  Everything they paid was applied to this cruise.

Watching the cruise problems now is troubling.  In BC, our provincial health minister, Adrian Dix, said in a press conference people should not cruise during this virus.  https://travel.gc.ca is our government travel site that gives Canadians travel information and warns where it isn't safe to travel.  They do not have a warning for cruises, but they do show every country in the world.  It's a great site to check before you travel.  If you travel you should register so the foreign offices know if Canadians are in a country that has a health crisis, a natural disaster or political uprising.  I've been registering my trips for the last five years.

The problems with many cruise lines hasn't always been on the news.  We did hear about a river cruise on the Nile and of course the Diamond Princess in Tokyo that was treated abominably.  I think they learned a lot from the mistakes made by the Japan Health Ministry and Princess Cruises who at the time thought they were doing everything right when they quarantined all passengers on the Diamond Princess in Tokyo.  At the time of quarantine ten people tested positive.  After 14 days of quarantine the number rose to 696, seven have passed away and thirty-two are in critical condition.

Many Asian and Caribbean cruises have been turned away from ports.  Royal Princess was scheduled to depart San Pedro, California for a Mexico cruise on Saturday.  The embarking passengers were kept in the port until 5 PM when the police were called.  They were going to announce the cruise was cancelled and were ready for passengers to become violent!  Thankfully the passengers left without incident but taxi's refused to pick them up and some hotels when they heard they were from the port wouldn't let them check in!   That also happened in Fort Lauerdale when passengers departed their cruise ships!

Here is the latest from Princess Cruises on cancelled cruises:

https://www.princess.com/news/notices_and_advisories/notices/itinerary-modifications-cancellations.html

I was very pleased our Federal Government has a plane to pick up the Canadian passengers on the Grand Princess who have been sailing in circles off the coast of San Francisco.

Cunard have still not given any information on cancellations or compensation should you want to cancel.  I have clients booked on June 2 and July 31st Alaska cruises on the Queen Elizabeth.  The June 2nd clients have paid in full!   The Queen Elizabeth is still in Australia and if the US closes it's ports to foreign vessels, the Queen Elizabeth will probably stay in the South Pacific.

I hope Princess Cruises will dock all the ships currently sailing out of North America and cancel the cruises.  They need to quarantine the crew and deep clean their ships.  It probably won't happen but right now no one is booking cruises and many people are cancelling!

If you haven't got this site bookmarked, it's a good one to track the spread of the virus:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/