Parents Rejoice: children ARE allowed to cruise out of the US this summer!

[exm]

Royal Caribbean's Senior Vice President, Sales, Trade Support and Service, Vicki Freed, told travel agents in a webinar today that the CDC's plan was purposefully left short of requiring 100% vaccinated passengers so that kids could sail.

 

"The reason for that is because children do not have to be vaccinated if they are under 18," Ms. Freed explained after getting asked why not require everyone to be vaccinated. "And so at this point, that is where the difference between the ninety five and one hundred percent."

 

"All adults will need to be vaccinated, but children under 18 do not need to be vaccinated, but they still have to take a Covid test prior to boarding."

 

It does look like the exact age for non-adults vaccinations is still TBD: could be 18, 16 or 12. But I'm excited!

[Stallion]

Burying the headline-All Adults will Have to Get Vaccinated

 

....and how will RCCL certify those requirements to the CDC?

[harkinmr]

4 minutes ago, exm said:

Royal Caribbean's Senior Vice President, Sales, Trade Support and Service, Vicki Freed, told travel agents in a webinar today that the CDC's plan was purposefully left short of requiring 100% vaccinated passengers so that kids could sail.

 

"The reason for that is because children do not have to be vaccinated if they are under 18," Ms. Freed explained after getting asked why not require everyone to be vaccinated. "And so at this point, that is where the difference between the ninety five and one hundred percent."

 

"All adults will need to be vaccinated, but children under 18 do not need to be vaccinated, but they still have to take a Covid test prior to boarding."

 

It does look like the exact age for non-adults vaccinations is still TBD: could be 18, 16 or 12. But I'm excited!

And depending on the capacity of the sailings, that 5% will be small.  Take a capacity of 2000 passengers, that will be 100 children.  With a capacity of 3000 passengers, that's 150 children.  Quite competitive for those slots it sounds like.  

[Cigar King]

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fknowyourmeme.com%2Fphotos%2F529287-monty-python&psig=AOvVaw2RUUqy0o8wCkrISX7734e-&ust=1620332339825000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCJiizL6us_ACFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD

 

[Tapi]

24 minutes ago, harkinmr said:

And depending on the capacity of the sailings, that 5% will be small.  Take a capacity of 2000 passengers, that will be 100 children.  With a capacity of 3000 passengers, that's 150 children.  Quite competitive for those slots it sounds like.  

It may sound like a small number, but on our last cruise before the pandemic (Feb 2020 for the kids mid-winter break), there were 2,600 passengers onboard and only 110 children registered at the kids club.  
 

With the vaccines’s approval for children 12-16  expected in the next few days, the number of children that don’t qualify for the vaccine will be reduced even further. 

Edited May 5, 2021 by Tapi

[smokeybandit]

They never were not allowed though.

[harkinmr]

3 minutes ago, Tapi said:

It may sound like a small number, but on our last cruise before the pandemic (Feb 2020 for the kids mid-winter break), there were 2,600 passengers onboard and only 110 children registered at the kids club.  
 

With the vaccines’s approval for children 12-16  expected in the next few days, the number of children that don’t qualify for the vaccine will be reduced even further. 

Thanks for sharing that detail.  I wonder if all kids naturally end up in the kids club?  It will be interesting to see if RCL will mandate vaccines for younger than 18 when they're eligible and open the pool of eligible cruisers.  I think mandating vaccines for passengers less than 18 is going to be tough because lots of parents may balk at that.  I guess if they want their kid to easily cruise they might.  We'll see.

[exm]

2 minutes ago, harkinmr said:

Thanks for sharing that detail.  I wonder if all kids naturally end up in the kids club?  It will be interesting to see if RCL will mandate vaccines for younger than 18 when they're eligible and open the pool of eligible cruisers.  I think mandating vaccines for passengers less than 18 is going to be tough because lots of parents may balk at that.  I guess if they want their kid to easily cruise they might.  We'll see.

 

Few things to consider:

- Not all parents will get the vaccine, so they'll automatically be excluded

- I want to bet that most parents with really small children (< 2 years old) might skip a cruise. I would definitely do this

 

So no, not all parents signed up with the kids club (crazy parents!), but I also think that there will be less vaccinated parents with kids that want to cruise. My 10 year old is absolutely crazy about cruising: she likes it better than Disney World!

[shipgeeks]

We've done many cruises from Baltimore on Grandeur and Enchantment.  We've rarely seen more than a dozen children, if that, or maybe 20 or so before Christmas.  RC in Florida might be a "family cruise line", but it's more of an "active seniors community" in our experience.

[Tapi]

19 minutes ago, exm said:

Not all parents will get the vaccine, so they'll automatically be excluded

 

My 10 year old is absolutely crazy about cruising: she likes it better than Disney World!

We have cruising friends who are fully vaccinated but refuse to cruise until their 3 kids (ages 9-14) are elegible to be vaccinated, so that’s another example of people who will not be cruising this summer. 

 

My kids are also in the “Cruising over Disney”  fan club. I did take them on one Disney cruise to make sure we weren’t missing out. Kids said that they had fun but that they’ve had way more fun on other cruise lines. Thank goodness! 

[Ocean Boy]

1 hour ago, shipgeeks said:

We've done many cruises from Baltimore on Grandeur and Enchantment.  We've rarely seen more than a dozen children, if that, or maybe 20 or so before Christmas.  RC in Florida might be a "family cruise line", but it's more of an "active seniors community" in our experience.

Grandeur and Enchantment are probably not first choice ships for families.

[shipgeeks]

10 minutes ago, Ocean Boy said:

Grandeur and Enchantment are probably not first choice ships for families.

But they are for adults.  They have sailed at full capacity consistently, for years.

[Ocean Boy]

1 minute ago, shipgeeks said:

But they are for adults.  They have sailed at full capacity consistently, for years.

Was not your comment about the number of kids that you have encountered?

[cured]

2 hours ago, exm said:

 

Few things to consider:

- Not all parents will get the vaccine, so they'll automatically be excluded

- I want to bet that most parents with really small children (< 2 years old) might skip a cruise. I would definitely do this

 

So no, not all parents signed up with the kids club (crazy parents!), but I also think that there will be less vaccinated parents with kids that want to cruise. My 10 year old is absolutely crazy about cruising: she likes it better than Disney World!

You also have to figure into that 5% the possibility of adults that have medical exemptions being allowed to sail. (Are they allowing medical exemptions for the Nassau/Bahamas sailings?) That would reduce the number of slots for children even further.

 

5% of Oasis's capacity is approximately 270.  If you figure 1/3 of those slots are taken by those claiming medical exemptions, that leaves only 180 slots for children on a "family" ship. If a family typically averages 2 children, that is only 90 families with children that would be able to sail on Oasis.  If I had young children, I wouldn't be celebrating too hard yet till more details came out.

Edited May 5, 2021 by cured

[exm]

13 minutes ago, cured said:

You also have to figure into that 5% the possibility of adults that have medical exemptions being allowed to sail. (Are they allowing medical exemptions for the Nassau/Bahamas sailings?) That would reduce the number of slots for children even further.

 

5% of Oasis's capacity is approximately 270.  If you figure 1/3 of those slots are taken by those claiming medical exemptions, that leaves only 180 slots for children on a "family" ship. If a family typically averages 2 children, that is only 90 families with children that would be able to sail on Oasis.  If I had young children, I wouldn't be celebrating too hard yet till more details came out.

I will be on the Symphony which currently is unavailable to book. We booked about a year ago, so I am hopeful that if they cap the number of children they will do this by booking date.

 

On a side note: does the CDC still have capacity restrictions, and cruise length restrictions?

[100viper]

Makes sense. I'm sure a lot of parents are breathing a sigh of relief.

 

Fully vaccinated and ready to sail!

[Ocean Boy]

5 minutes ago, exm said:

 

On a side note: does the CDC still have capacity restrictions, and cruise length restrictions?

Yes.

[SidneyHuff1950]

This is great news. I love to see the young families on the ship.

 

Sidney

[smokeybandit]

2 hours ago, cured said:

You also have to figure into that 5% the possibility of adults that have medical exemptions being allowed to sail. (Are they allowing medical exemptions for the Nassau/Bahamas sailings?) That would reduce the number of slots for children even further.

The number of people that have legit medical exemptions is a trivial amount of people to begin with. And if you have a medical condition that prevents you from getting a covid vaccine, you likely aren't cruising anyway.

[RoyalC]

So what is the scientific difference between an adult and child not vaccinated? Nothing. Why bother?

Same principals apply. Why did schools close then? 

[smokeybandit]

13 minutes ago, RoyalC said:

So what is the scientific difference between an adult and child not vaccinated? Nothing. Why bother?

Same principals apply. Why did schools close then? 

Out of irrational fear. Then half the schools reopened when they learned that their fears were unfounded. The rest stayed closed due to teachers unions enjoying not working.

[MommaBear55]

2 hours ago, smokeybandit said:

Out of irrational fear. Then half the schools reopened when they learned that their fears were unfounded. The rest stayed closed due to teachers unions enjoying not working.

My friends who were doing distance learning would have much rather been in the classroom. They certainly weren't "enjoying not working"

[Mapleleafforever]

That's great and all but.....we still don't know 100% if anyone will really be allowed to cruise this summer yet (out of the US).....

 

[shipgeeks]

12 hours ago, Ocean Boy said:

Was not your comment about the number of kids that you have encountered?

Yes.  Few kids, still full ships.  RC would have no trouble filling the ship even if kids are excluded.

[Ocean Boy]

5 minutes ago, shipgeeks said:

Yes.  Few kids, still full ships.  RC would have no trouble filling the ship even if kids are excluded.

Did anyone say otherwise? The point is that the demographics that you see on those two ships most likely cannot be extrapolated to  RCI in general.