Constellation from Tampa in January?

[travellerin1984]

Hi!

I guess you don’t know more than I do but I am very curious about our 11 nights Caribbean cruise from Tampa in January… We live in Northern Europe and it starts to be time for booking flights… What do you think about the possibility cruise is going as planned?

 

I haven’t followed other cruise lines. Are they making adjustments for longer cruises or keeping as planned? 
 

 

[Cg52]

We are booked for a cruise in January too. I will be cancelling if the numbers are not significantly better in the US by final payment date which is mid October.

[CruisinNole]

We are booked on the 7 November 21 Constellation cruise out of Tampa and just made final payment. It's a short cruise and I believe we're the first Constellation cruise. I sure hope it goes as does yours.

[canderson]

Just now, CruisinNole said:

We are booked on the 7 November 21 Constellation cruise out of Tampa and just made final payment. It's a short cruise and I believe we're the first Constellation cruise. I sure hope it goes as does yours.

We'll be right there with you, doing a B2B on 11 Nov. as well, so we also surely do hope this one flies!

 

I guess the good news is that Constellation has been in dry dock in Cadiz getting the kind of maintenance done that might have been deferred had they not planned on the Caribbean schedule being executed this Fall/Winter.  And certainly no need for the pretty new X paint job if she was just going to to back to floating around somewhere in the Aegean sans passengers.

 

Due to leave dry dock on 11 August (just 3 days!) after being there since 17 July. 

 

Will then be very interested to see where she parks in the Florida area.  As noted in my posts elsewhere, one would think that as this ship was only weeks from being 'revolutionized' when CoVID hit, that there should be a warehouse full of already paid for soft goods that might be installed between now and November.  The warehouse space is probably costing them more on a monthly basis than it would cost to move the stuff to the ship, and unlike last Spring, there's some pier-side help to do it.  Would be nice to have new curtains and spreads for our trip.

 

[hcat]

29 minutes ago, travellerin1984 said:

Hi!

I guess you don’t know more than I do but I am very curious about our 11 nights Caribbean cruise from Tampa in January… We live in Northern Europe and it starts to be time for booking flights… What do you think about the possibility cruise is going as planned?

 

I haven’t followed other cruise lines. Are they making adjustments for longer cruises or keeping as planned? 
 

 

Hard to predict..try for refundable or flexible airline tix..definitely get cancel any reason travel ins.  Hope all goes well!

[susiesan]

I am booked on Constellation for Dec. 3. FP is due Sept. 4. I have refundable plane tickets from SW.

Because one of the ports, St. Kitts, is not allowing cruise ships, that only leaves 5 ports and 5 sea days on a 10 day cruise. And if masks have to be worn onboard I won't go. My plan is to go ahead and cancel the cruise, keep my air arrangements, and then if things improve I will just rebook the cruise a month before the sail date. At this point, the cruise is only 50% sold.

 

With Celebrity having 8 ships in the Caribbean market sailing from Florida this coming winter, and if all of the ships are lightly booked, I expect X to start cancelling some ships and offer incentives to people to switch to different ships. And if not, I just won't cruise in December.

[justmer8]

We are also booked for Jan, (maybe, we're mixed vaccines from Ontario). A few years ago I booked a combined flight/ cruise with Carnival and swore I'd never do it again. However I relooked at it for this cruise and am extremely happy. Three times in the last month I've found a lower price on my flight and it only took a call to have them cancel the original booking completely and rebook me at the new price. As well, if they haven't changed their vaccine policy by final payment, I'll just cancel everything. 

[canderson]

5 hours ago, susiesan said:

Because one of the ports, St. Kitts, is not allowing cruise ships...

http://www.timescaribbeanonline.com/no-cruise-ships-until-vaccination-and-testing-protocols-can-be-clearly-identified-says-st-kitts-nevis-tourism-minister/

 

I see things changed day before yesterday!

 

They may well have it sorted before 11/7, however.  It seems St. Kitts is primarily concerned about Florida cruises with any unvaccinated passengers, and that may now change quickly since Florida had an injunction slapped against their current vaccination policy.  Celebrity could certainly switch to 100% from 95%.

 

 

Edited August 9, 2021 by canderson