How early is TOO early for certain ports?

[Krazy Kruizers]

I was looking at the Maasdam's 15 day cruise from Ft Lauderdale to Montreal for 2006. We did a similar cruise in May of 2004 and loved it. But it did have a couple of draw backs. We booked a couple of tours and a month before we left we got an e-mail from HAL. We had booked lunch at the Pond's House in the Acadia National Park (Bar Harbor) and it was cancelled because they don't open the Pond's house that early in the season - the tour was to have been on May16th. I don't remember what we booked for Halifax but that tour was also cancelled for the same reason. About 80% of the stores were open in Bar Harbor and no restaurants along the pier were open. In Halifax only a couple of stores and restaurants were open along the boardwalk. Too early in the season.

Now I see that HAL has this cruise scheduled for April 28 - right after the Maasdam comes out of dry dock. That is even earlier than the cruise we took. So how many stores will be open that early in the season in some of those ports?

Why didn't HAL schedule a couple of more cruises out of Norfolk, schedule the Maasdam for dry dock 2 - 3 weeks later and then begin this cruise when the ports will be "in season"?