Worried about itinerary for November

[City_Woman]

I have been reading on Carnivals site the 7 day cruises that have been reduced to 5 day cruises. What's going on? Why can't they still be 7 day cruises and visit other ports?

 

I am totally sympathetic to the horrible results of the hurricaines and understand and appreicate why we cannot visit places like Grand Cayman.

 

But, I don't know why the cruise ships can't still give 7 day cruises.

 

Am I just being mean?

 

I guess I've been looking forward to my cruise for so long, I would be disappointed if it went down the pooper.

 

I've looking at Western Caribbean on November out of Miami.

 

Comments? Suggestions? Comforting words?

 

City_Woman

[GoinCruisin]

I don't see anything on Carnivals site about November cruises being changed?? Where are you reading this at?

[L2J]

Opps...had to take another look at their website and edit...GC you are correct.

[tef43]

What ships and itineraries for November have been shortened?

 

This is typically done when it is not safe to bring a ship into homeport because of threatening weather. You *do* want the cruiseline to do everything in its power to keep you safe, don't you?

[roohound]

If you're referring to the past few weeks, it's really kind of simple.

 

You're running 7 day cruises. You hit weather where you have to extend you 7 day cruise to 9...what makes the most sense? Shorten the next 7 day cruise to 5 days and only affect that one cruise or keep it at 7 even tho it will affect people's travel plans and then the next 7 day cruise will have it's emabrakation and debarkation days thrown off by two days....as will every cruise from there on out.

 

Clearly the only choice is to have the change affect the second 7 day cruise (obviously the 1st one was affected but we can't help the weather), compensate those passengers, and have all subsequent cruises run as scheduled.

[Kami's pal]

but you sound a bit confused. Have you looked at the maps carefully? Typically, western Caribbean routes sort of hug the coast of Mexico. The hurricanes have devastated the islands of the eastern Caribbean.

 

The other message I'm reading is that you are feeling lots of uncomfortable feelings. Perhaps you feel helpless? You know that people are suffering terribly from these storms and you don't like that. You'd like to fix it but what can YOU do? For example if everyone who still had time to get refunds cancelled their vacations and sent the money to the Red Cross, would that really help; or would that just cause suffering to the employees and merchants who depend on the tourist trade? Conflicted because since you have sacrificed and planned for this, you now fear you'll lose the enjoyment? I could go on, but you can do an inventory of your feelings better than I. I feel the same way. How did I get to be so lucky while others get destruction, grief, disease, poverty etc. And what can I do to ease the discrepancy?

 

I like Alice Walker's take on life's journey. In The Color Purple, she says, "Appreciate." 'But what if I don't?" "Then He (sic) make another." (I don't have the book right beside me so I can't give the page number.) I believe that we are meant to enjoy what we have and help those we meet. There will be enough ease and enough pain in every life. We do our best not to add to the pain, and we dare not ignore the blessings as they come.

 

So enjoy your cruise, no matter how many challenges there are in getting there, itinerary changes, or other mix-ups you'll have.

 

And forgive my arrogance in even posting this sermon!

[gatour]

The reason why cruises were shortened over the last few weeks was that the hurricanes were hitting the embarkation/embarkation ports around the time the ship were scheduled to come and and embark/disembark passengers. The coast guard would close the ports so the ships couldn't come in, and since this was all over florida, there was no alternate ports, within reason, to embark/disembark passengers, so the ship had to stay at sea. If a hurricane was hitting a port that you were scheduled to stop at for touring purposes then the cruise ship would avoid that port and perhaps go to an alternate port for tour reasons