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Three of them are Carnival Ships with the red whale's tails on the top. In the past, older ships were sold off to low-budget regional lines. That market may not exist any more with the pandemic.
Naturally the cruise lines will get rid of their oldest and least popular ships. Usually those are ones without balcony cabins.
Some areas of the world are best seen from a ship: Alaska; Baltic; Mediterranean; Caribbean; Round the Horn of South America; Greek Islands. We have done all of these.
It will probably be a long time before we go again.
BTW: Never got sick on one!
Sounds like we have had similar experiences and itineraries.
Until Covid I never once contemplated the possibility that ports would decline to allow disembarkation of passengers or that all passengers would be confined to their cabins for weeks, while the cruise lines negotiated with countries/ ports. That some ships were denied transit through the Panama Canal, was insanity. That US ports declined the ships, while millions of people continued to pour in from European hot spots to US Via international airports was insanity.
We usually sailed in the cheap seats, inside/ outside cabins instead of balcony or suite cabins with mid market cruise lines. We will pop for the balcony going forward as a precaution in the unlikely event a virus will compel passengers to be confined to their cabins.
And yet, somehow, millions of people take cruises every year without getting sick.
I'm greatly saddened by seeing those beautiful ships sent off to the breakers. And yet, in a way, this may actually be a blessing in disguise. Cruise lines have been expanding their fleets at a prodigious pace, betting that demand would continue to increase. But eventually, the market will mature, and growth will level off. When that happens, I was afraid that the cruise lines would be saddled with too much capacity (i.e. too many ships) chasing after a no-longer-growing market. It seems that the coronavirus has basically forced their hand, and hopefully a more realistic fleet management paradigm will be the result.
I understand why but it's sad and creepy at the sametime to see once great ships treated like that. They don't look that old or like they were still sea worthy less than a year ago.
The cruise industry has been one of the biggest US tax dodgers around. They hire people from the poorest nations and pay them as little as possible so that fat Americans can gorge themselves on all you can eat buffets. They lied to their customers about the pandemic so that people would continue to book cruises.
I don't feel sorry for them.
Norwegian Cruise lines has a separate subsidiary for one ship that does 7 day cruises in the Hawaiian Islands. The ship flies a US flag. Onboard crew tend to be visa workers, not US people. Because of anti gaming laws in Hawaii, the onboard casinos do not operate. Fares are higher than equivalent 7 day cruises in the Caribbean because of wages and lack of gaming.
Cruises marketed to US passengers compete on base fares and don’t include gratuities.
Legacy laws require cruise ships to include at least one foreign port for tax benefits
The majority of wages have historically been gratuities. Most mass marketed cruise lines now impose a “ hotel fee” replacing gratuities. Some passengers continue to tip for service and some passengers object to the hotel fee and stiff the crew, because they can.
Most of foreign crews send their incomes home where it’s needed and goes a lot further than it would in the US.
Some cruise lines seek to achieve a balance of nationalities amongst crew. Some recruit primarily from the Caribbean Islands. Others recruit from Eastern Europe. One major line recruits primarily from the Philippines and Indonesia. Independent international brokers take a percentage of income as a placement fee.
US states and port cities impose port fees/ taxes on all passengers. Alaska’s port charges are the highest in the world. Passengers fly to port cities, often book pre/ post cruise hotels. They dine in the port city and often engage in local entertainment and tours. Locals load and offload cruise ships. And of course food and fuel in sourced from ports cities.
Neither Florida or Alaska can compensate for the enormous loss of tax revenues and jobs connected to cruising that has occurred, due to Covid.
Those ships shown have been in the dismantling phase or slated to be for quite some time, long before this virus thing. A decision to do such a thing is planned years in advance. In this case, these ships had no buyers, not unusual due to costs to refurbish and maintain can only be carried out by larger companies, thus they were sent to the scrap yard.
Mega ships have been in Europe for a long time, now. The first mega ship to Alaska was in 2018 or so and now they all do it.
We likely have a different definition of “ mega” cruise ships, which is OK.
When I use that term, I am talking about ships with passenger capacities of 5000 +/-
There is only one such ship permanently based in Europe. That’s the Aida Novs. Aida Cruise lines is owned by Carnival. German is the primary onboard language. Due to its size the intineraries are very limited.
Royal Caribbean has the largest ships and itineraries and are limited to major cruise ports in the Caribbean.
Norwegian’s Bliss ( 4000 passengers) and Royal Caribbean’s Ovation ( 4900 passengers) began limited 7 day sailings from Seattle to Alaska, last year. ( Calling briefly in Vancouver satisfies the Jones Act). Most ports can not accommodate mega ships so passengers must be tendered to/ from shore then there’s that pesky Panama Canal. The Norwegian Bliss is the largest cruise ship to traverse the canal during repositioning from the Caribbean to the Pacific. While huge, it does not meet my definition of mega.
All of these ships have discontinued sailing due to Covid. The financial impact on Alaska and Florida is significant.
Cruises are overrated anyways. But these are basically floating Petri dishes.
Your opinion and you have a right to post, but explain why you think they are over rated. Many people cruise several times a year, love it and rarely get sick. the average 1st time cruiser" 70% say they will gladly cruise again, 20% say they will but there are other fun vacations as well and 1% say it is not for them.
It seems like a pretty incomplete article. It states that decommissioned ships from Britain, Italy, and the U.S. arrived for dismantling (three more ships set to join five). It doesn't give the timeline as to when the other five arrived and it doesn't state exactly why the ships were decommissioned and assumes it was due to the ships not finding work. Shotty journalism.
It is a stupid article and not based on the major ships on major cruise lines. It is based on ships that have seen better days and probably would have been put completely out of service anyway.
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