tidecat

Carnival Cruise Line is getting two new Excel ships in 2027 and 2028 in addition to these three. Don't be surprised to see one or more of the Excel or "Pinnacle" class on short cruises similar to what Royal Caribbean is doing with Utopia of the Seas.

Maybe Carnival Corp needs to work on "graduating" some cruisers to Princess and Holland America. Easier to hide the higher costs of a smaller ship in a luxury product. I actually think rebooting Holland America as an adults-only line might have some merit. If nothing else, Carnival Corp could hurt Virgin by beating Virgin on price.

The Excel-class design is from Meyer. Fincantieri is ultimately basing theirs on Project Mille, which has been used by MSC (Seaside and Seaside EVO classes) and Norwegian (Prima class).

This was only a few months ago when it sold, so no. If they wanted to keep it they wouldn't have sold it.

That was on the Project Pinnacle prototype Fincantieri pitched back in the early 2000s. Disney Cruise Line's Aquaduck was initially planned as a lazy river, but there was concern about how much deck space it would take up, so it became the elevated water coaster we know today.

Atlantica is a year older (2000) than Carnival Spirit and Pacific/Carnival Adventure (2001). This isn't much help in terms of replacing older ships. You also have to remember one of the popular features of the Spirit-class - the extra space per passenger - doesn't necessarily make a cruise line money Atlantica was actually sold to CSSC, now Adora Cruises, which was a joint venture between Carnival and the Chinese government. It appears Carnival took the ship back when they exited the joint venture, and then turned around and made an immediate sale - no cruises to cancel, no future cruise credits to issue, and no renovation to perform. Based on the proceeds from ship sales reported for that quarter, they likely made about as much money from selling the ship as they would have in five years of sailings had they decided to operate it. That's a nice boost, especially when you're $27 billion in debt.

There certainly will be some retirements by 2033. The height restricted ports (Baltimore, Jacksonville, part of Sydney Tampa) should be able to hang on between the four Spirit class ships, Luminosa, and the two P&O ships. This may require a different deployment to Alaska given that some of those ships are currently deployed to Alaska. Sunshine class is probably gone by 2033 as Radiance would be 33, Sunrise 34, and Sunshine 37.

8000 is maximum passenger capacity. Double occupancy will be over 6,000 as the announcement refers to there being over 3,000 staterooms.

No, the drink had to be $10 or below. What was bad was that a year prior, that drink actually was under the $10 cutoff.

It was $10 when I sailed in February. Couldn't even use it on a Mocha Chocolate Getaway.

Paradise and Elation both have 2026 drydocks set, they'll likely finish their careers in Florida. They both turn 28 in 2026, they should be able to last another 2-3 years after that, if not 5-6 years. Carnival's next window of opportunity would likely be in 2027 when Excel 4 enters the fleet. Sunshine may also be on retirement watch as well, so probably the only way Carnival adds a homeport is to reduce service somewhere else.

Just show up, it's counter service.

The weather in that part of the world doesn't vary much with the seasons. Average highs run between 86-92 Fahrenheit (30-33 Celsius) and average lows between 77-81 (25-27). Fall and early winter are nominally the wet season, but even then Aruba doesn't typically get more than 4 inches of rain in a month.

Correct. Victory's were actually done well before the scheduled drydock to become Radiance, which of course wound up being severely delayed due to the shutdown. Triumph had reduced capacity for her final sailings before her onversion.

Carnival Triumph was having staterooms updated while in service prior to the drydock in which it was converted to Carnival Sunrise.

Carnival has more ships sailing from US ports than any other cruise line - essentially all but one-and-a-half (Splendor and Luminosa outside of the Alaska season) of Carnival's ships sail from the US. Royal Caribbean has more ships, but more of those are based outside the US.

I was referring to Pacific Explorer, so we know the only place it is moving is out of the fleet. I do agree with you that Adventure and Encounter likely stay put given their age. It is possible they could wind up replacing the two Fantasy class ships if Carnival parts with them around 2029 (or 2026 if Carnival doesn't dry dock them), although the P&O ships are not that much younger. What Adventure and Encounter do have is a lot more cabins with balconies.

Australia apparently wasn't lucrative enough market for Carnival to keep all three P&O AU ships. Maybe Pacific Explorer could have been used stateside or sold to Margaritaville, but Atlantica was available for sale at the time Margaritaville was looking to buy. There is a cost to canceling cruises, and Pacific Explorer would have lost an additional 17 months of sailing had she been sold to Margaritaville. Doubling up in Baltimore may not be an option as Royal and Carnival basically have every Saturday and Sunday spoken for at the one terminal. There aren't any legal 3-day or 4-day itineraries from Baltimore. Even options for 5-day sailings are somewhat limited. If Carnival had its own terminal this could have been an option. Charleston turning into Norfolk may also pull a few people who normally would sail from Baltimore. Going year-round in Mobile would be an option, but then you have to put Spirit somewhere else during the winter. Another option would be to have it do seasonal Australian and Alaskan sailings like Luminosa. Seattle is mandating shore power, and some Alaskan ports are moving to cap visitors, so that may have been too much of an investment, especially to spend the other half of the year in a currently underperforming market.

Carnival Corporation owned the ship up until October 2023. Carnival actually exited its position in Adora Cruises (formerly CSSC Shipping) in September 2023. I can't find any detail on the transaction but I suspect they took the ship back as part of the payment for their stake in the joint venture. It looks like Carnival Corp sold Atlantica and AIDAaura for a total of $80 million based on the difference in proceeds from sales of ships on their Q3 2024 cash flow statement and their annual report. Right now each lower berth Carnival Corp has makes about $7,800 of profit per year ($2 Billion / 257,000 lower berths). It was easier to take three years' profit from the sale, if not four or five years' profit when you factor in the cost of any required drydock. Costa Atlantica is older than all of her Carnival Spirit-class sisters - not by much, but you're looking at a fairly narrow window to recover any refurbishment costs and make money. Pacific Explorer is older than every Carnival ship except Carnival Sunshine so that window is even smaller. Adventure and Encounter also had substantial refurbishments during the shutdown. There also becomes the issue of where to deploy any additional ships. Carnival may not have wanted to put a third ship in Tampa, even seasonally, especially with a substantially identical ship already there. Obviously, Paradise Cruise Line Operator (d/b/a Margaritaville at Sea) was willing to do that.

This is going to get messy for those scheduled to call at Cozumel, Costa Maya, and Progresso around July 4-5.

Any new debt for ship construction would stretch well into next decade. This debt also tends to be cheaper since the ship being built is the collateral and tends to have government support. That would only be $3-$5 billion in additional debt in the case of each company. Getting other debt paid down will free up cash for the interest and principal payments on the newer debt. If Royal takes out $3 billion per year in debt, that's about $180 million per year in interest savings, and if they do that three years in a row you're looking at over a half billion dollars. Carnival might actually see a slightly greater boost to the bottom line as a lot of their debt is between 7% and 8%.

Their additional capacity actually for 2025-28 isn't going to be that much more than Carnival Corporation's. RCI is adding about 17,800 lower berths (Star, Icon 3, Oasis 7) and Celebrity is adding 3,200 (Xcel) for a total of about 21,000. Carnival Cruise Line is adding about 10,700 (Excel 4, Excel 5) and Princess is adding 4,300 (Star) for a total of 15,000. Both companies could justifiably retire some ships if demand softens.

Just looking at the past performance without any context can be misleading. No other industry was hit as hard by governments response to the pandemic. Now if you think there's a reasonable chance of that happening again, then yes you would be better off investing in a broad based index fund. The stock was also trading at irrationally high prices before sailings had even resumed - including a nice bump when the vaccine was announced - that also makes comparison wonky. Also, $29 billion of Carnival's remaining $32 billion in debt is priced below 10% - some of it as low as 1%. The next 36 months are still critical to righting the balance sheet - but if profitability returns to or exceeds 2019 levels, it would not be unreasonable to see $4-$5 billion of debt paid down each year. Whether you feel that will result in a higher returns for $CCL than the market as a whole is the decision you have to make. No one talks about Royal Caribbean's debt, but their debut burden for the last three quarters of 2024 and all of 2025-26 is pretty similar to Carnival's ($7.3 billion for Carnival vs. $7.0 billion for Royal). Royal had EBDA (not EBITDA - interest and taxes use cash) of over $3 billion for 2023 so I'm not worried about them paying it off, but Royal probably isn't going to have as many opportunities to pay ahead like Carnival should.

Repayment of debt does not reduce reported profit. The company has not been profitable until recently due to a combination of not being able to sail at full capacity everywhere until 2023 and elevated interest on the debt it took on during the pandemic. The benefit of paying debt off early is to reduce interest expense in future periods, which frees up cash and raises profit. Based on one of the loan agreements in the 10-Q, there doesn't appear to be a way to legally pay a dividend before August 2027 unless if the company is rated investment grade by the major credit rating agencies. Even if the rating threshold is met before then, that is going to fall in the heaviest part of the maturities in 2027-28.

It's actually the data that is the killer, as that is typically priced per megabyte, and you can go through hundreds if not thousands of megabytes in a matter of days. Many plans now are unlimited talk and/or text for a flat fee, but obviously check with your carrier as their international plans will differ.