tidecat

I still think Carnival is missing out on not putting Firenze in Seattle seasonally. Of course at some point the Alaska market becomes saturated as well, given that sister brands Princess and Holland America have a massive deployment there. But if Firenze is in Seattle, Spirit or Luminosa could work elsewhere during that season.

The real question is how many countries' laws she broke by doing this. All of the ships that homeport in Port Canaveral except Mardi Gras and Venezia are registered in Panama. There almost certainly was a call to the Bahamas, possibly other countries.

It was disclosed in Carnival's 10-K for 2023 (page 16): "During 2023, we completed the exit of our noncontrolling interest in Adora Cruises Limited, formerly CSSC Carnival Cruise Shipping Limited, a China-based cruise company (“Adora Cruises”), and recognized losses on exit of $21 million within other income (expense). As of November 30, 2022, our investment in Adora Cruises was $70 million. We provided an immaterial amount of services to Adora Cruises during 2023, 2022 and 2021 and we paid Adora Cruises a total of $55 million for the lease of ships during 2021. During 2021 we made capital contributions to Adora Cruises in the amount of $90 million."

ESPN has rights to the World Series in most of the Caribbean and South America. Carnival will have ESPN's Caribbean feed available onboard: https://www.mlb.com/postseason/international-broadcasters

I was on Seashore recently, you should have plenty of options for live television, news or otherwise. They had quite a few channels you typically would not have in the US.

The "CBSN" channel is not actually live. That is the only news channel Carnival carries in the cabins.

No.

We should get some information about Jubilee's (and Mardi Gras' and Celebration's) new sister due in 2027 before too long.

Nope: https://www.carnivalcorporation.com/news-releases/news-release-details/carnival-fascination-move-mobile-2022

There are some busy weeks in the fall and winter months like around Thanksgiving, New Year's, and President's Day, but there just isn't 10-12 weeks of high demand in a row like there is in Q3. Carnival needs more Southern Hemisphere sailings to truly balance the seasonality. Unfortunately Australia has about 1/10 the population of the US. Australia and New Zealand also have caused the cruise industry a lot of pain the past few years. Brazil is a little closer to the US in population, but I don't think South America can match the North American market in terms of spending power. Carnival tried to get in Latin America with Fiesta Marina, but that didn't last too long. Not sure how well MSC does in Africa, but that's really about the only other option in the Southern Hemisphere. I believe Costa has some sailings out of South Africa but it's not close to a full-time home port. Alaska is also a very profitable market. Carnival Corp is well positioned there as they have significant assets landside in addition to a large deployment to the region each season.

Agreed. A lot of investors who look solely at the numbers are still going to see bad metrics on the balance sheet. It's going to take a few more quarters to shake that off. A profit of $0.05/share (Q4 estimate) is still a profit, but that's a big step down from $1.26/share (Q3). Carnival has always had seasonality, but it seems to be very pronounced.

It's back up over $18 right now, but still off from Friday's close.

Back in late 2018/early 2019 the management of the government took over operations of the San Juan Cruise Port. The decision to renovate the port was made, and basically management did it without the involvement of the cruise lines. Royal Caribbean eventually canceled all calls that were not under contract. Carnival announced the discontinuation of home port operations as of January 2022. Then of course, the world stopped. Eventually port operations were outsourced to Global Holdings, and it looks like things are getting patched up, both literally and figuratively. Carnival Cruise Line may not return (at least for homeport operations), but Princess is returning in 2025.

Latest update as of 12:30 PM: JACKSONVILLE – The port is currently open. Carnival Elation 09/21/2024 – The ship is expected to dock early afternoon today, Friday, September 27. Carnival Elation 09/26/2024 (now departing Friday, 09/27/2024) – This voyage is being shortened to at 3-day cruise, with a visit to Freeport. We will have more details about embarkation and options soon. To stay up to date, please sign up for text alerts by texting CCL1 to CRUISE (278473).

1:00 PM EDT update from Carnival. Not surprising given Helene's center is forecast to be in South Central Georgia on Friday: JACKSONVILLE – The port is currently closed. Carnival Elation 09/21/2024 – The ship is currently sailing a safe distance from the storm, en route to Jacksonville. Given the storm’s current location and track, it will not be able to return to Jacksonville today, Thursday, September 26. Once the storm passes and the port reopens, officials will be able to fully conduct a post-storm assessment before giving clearance to return. We are very tentatively anticipating sometime Friday, September 27, possibly Saturday, September 28. Carnival Elation 09/26/2024 – This voyage will not be departing Thursday, September 26. We will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates as more information becomes available. To stay up to date, please sign up for text alerts by texting CCL1 to CRUISE (278473). The full update is on Carnival.com and addresses all of the other Florida and Gulf Coast ports

Wednesday 6:30 PM Update from Carnival: Carnival Elation 09/21/2024 – The ship is currently sailing a safe distance from the storm, en route to Jacksonville. Given the storm’s path, it will not be able to return to Jacksonville Thursday, September 26. Once the storm passes and the port reopens, officials will be able to fully conduct a post-storm assessment before giving clearance to return. We are very tentatively anticipating sometime Friday, September 27, possibly later. Carnival Elation 09/26/2024 – Due to the projected path of the storm and anticipated closure of the port, the voyage will not be departing Thursday, September 26, 2024. We will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates as more information becomes available. To stay up to date, please sign up for text alerts by texting CCL1 to CRUISE (278473).

Carnival was going to leave San Juan when Fascination was originally scheduled to reposition to Mobile in January 2022. Covid only accelerated the timeline. The earliest realistic chance Carnival could resume homeport operations in San Juan would be 2027, assuming the fleet actually expands with Excel #4. A 2026 return would be on the table only if Carnival is willing to cut service somewhere else.

It seems more on brand for Carnival to have various quick service options like they do onboard, some of which will have their own "brand".

You may not be aware of this, but cruise ships positions are actually publicly available on many Web sites. Elation is currently east of Hialeah, Florida right now (2:45 PM EDT). This morning Elation was south of Grand Bahama Island. Even at top speed (about 22 knots), there is no way Elation can make it back to Jacksonville before conditions deteriorate.

The ship is too far away for that to be an option, as even at 20 knots thr ship would arrive in the wee hours of Thursday morning just before Tropical Storm force winds would start in Northeast Florida. Carnival will delay Elation's return to after the storm passes. The ship would be safer out at sea away from the storm rather than in port during the storm. The September 26 sailing will be shortened if not canceled outright.

Jaxport expects to be at Zulu (gale force winds expected within 12 hours) around 8 PM on the 25th. That would put the worst conditions around the time Elation is scheduled to arrive on the morning of the 26th. https://www.jaxport.com/weather-and-labor-update/ Carnival is instructing guests on the 9/26 sailing not to proceed to the terminal until notified otherwise: https://help.carnival.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/9754?_gl=1

Mathematically speaking, a resident of or visitor to Tampa is more likely to take a cruise than a resident of or visitor to Houston/Galveston. Fares and/or onboard spending can be higher in Galveston simply because of Galveston doesn't have the quantity of inventory that Port Canaveral or Miami does. If Galveston had as many cruisers relative to the population/tourist base as Port Canaveral did, it would have 5 million passengers a year instead of 1.5 million. Even getting to Tampa's level would be an extra million passengers compared to what Galveston does now.

If you can find a Friday night flight out of MKE to PBI or FLL, I'd recommend that instead. You'd only be looking at about a 75 minute train ride from West Palm Beach as opposed to 5 hours from Orlando. If for some reason Brightline wasn't running, you could do a one-way car rental. If you fly into FLL there will be shuttles to PortMiami - you may have to call MSC to book their shuttle, but there are also third party options as well. If you can find a flight to MIA at a time that works for you, that of course would be gold. Just remember it may be cheaper to book each leg separately than as round-trip flights.

Galveston (Houston Metro, 6 million residents and 50 million visitors) actually underperforms relative to Port Canaveral (Orlando Metro, 2.5 million residents and 75 million visitors) as Galveston only had 1.49 million cruise passengers in 2023 while Port Canaveral had 6.8 million. Technically Tampa outperforms Galveston as it has only about half as large a metro area and gets about half as many visitors, yet is not far behind with 1.2 million cruise passengers. Given that Philadelphia has a comparable metro population to Houston, and receives about 40 million visitors, the ceiling for Philadelphia theoretically would basically be close to where Galveston is now. Weather and navigational issues (bridge clearance) will prevent Philadelphia from getting to Galveston's level in the short-to-medium term, but if Carnival gets in early enough it can be a license to print money.

I don't buy that they necessarily will cannibalize their own passengers. The Jacksonville Metro by itself is 1.6 million people, but more importantly, is within driving distance of most of the state of Georgia, not to mention some other parts of North Florida. The population of Georgia by itself is nearly 11 million. Even if we give Jacksonville only 25% credit for Georgia (Mobile, New Orleans, Charleston), that's effectively a pool of 4.5 million potential cruise passengers. If we treat Port Canaveral as part of the Orlando metro that is over 2.5 million people. Of course we know that there is a significantly larger portion of cruise passengers who fly in from outside the local market as about 75 million people visit the region each year. The Tampa Metro is 3.2 million. It obviously does a fair amount of fly-in cruise traffic even though "only" 26-27 million people visit the region each year. The Miami Metro is over 6 million people and of course receives a significant number of cruise passengers from outside the market as part of the nearly 20 million visitors to the region each year. Baltimore (not even counting the separate DC metro) is 2.8 million people. The combined Baltimore/Washington CSA is closer to 10 million. The New York CSA that includes the northern part of New Jersey is over 19 million. The separate Philadelphia Metro is over 6 million people. The area also receives more than 40 million tourists annually. There's no reason Philadelphia can't stand on its own as a cruise market - Carnival only needs about 125,000 people each year of the 46 million people who either live in or visit the area to fill a ship - technically less by the time you factor in drydocks or longer sailings that cut down on the number of departures. After researching this, maybe the real question might be what it would take to get Carnival in Boston? Tourism is not far behind Tampa/St. Pete and the metro population is about 4.5 million.