Thursday, June 4, 2009

RCI Modifies Oasis of the Seas Itinerary

Royal Caribbean says the opening of the new port at Falmouth, Jamaica, has been delayed until December 2010 resulting in a change of itinerary for 16 Western Caribbean sailings of Oasis of the Seas.

The ship will sail an alternating pattern of 7-day eastern and western Caribbean itineraries. With the delay of the opening at Falmouth, the line has replaced the Jamaican calls on the western sailings with a call at Costa Maya, Mexico, from May through November 2010.

The new western Caribbean itinerary will now sail from Ft. Lauderdale and call at Cozumel, Costa Maya and Labadee.

Monday, June 1, 2009

Hawaii Superferry Files Bankruptcy

In March, Hawaii's supreme court ruled that Hawaii Superferry could not operate while awaiting the results of environmental impact studies, which were expected to take many months. At the time the company shut down, it said it was looking for charter opportunities for the ship outside of Hawaii until it could again operate in the state.

Those opportunities did not materialize as quickly as the company hoped, and the company is running out of cash. They filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy over the weekend. That would indicate that the company does intend to reorganize, restructuring their debt, rather than liquidating (where they would have filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy).

Sunday, May 31, 2009

And why is this news?

Carnival Fantasy returned to New Orleans yesterday as scheduled. Is that news? A lot of news outlets think it is, because the wire service story got carried by hundreds of outlets.

The reason for the report ostensibly is that it was the end of the cruise from which a 18-year-old went overboard and died while celebrating his graduation from high school. But the article that ran all these places did nothing to update the story. It did not have any new information; it did not have any comments by friends or family disembarking from the ship.

So what was the reason for running the story? Didn't they expect the ship to return? Or was it just to generate some more readership based on a very sad event that is causing misery for the boy's family and friends?

Lose Your Home - Win a Free Cruise

Maybe something is being lost in the translation. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is offering free cruises in the Adriatic and Mediterranean to survivors of last month's earth quake in central Italy.

The 6.3 magnitude quake killed 300 people and left some 50,000 homeless in tents. Berlusconi earlier told the survivors that they should think positively and view their current condition as a "camping experience."

Berlusconi gave no details of which cruise lines will be involved or how the cruises will be paid for. The 72-year-old politician worked as a singer aboard cruise ships in his youth.

Last Survivor of Titanic Dies

Millvina Dean, the last survivor of the sinking of Titanic has died today at her home in Hampshire at 97.

Ms. Dean was the youngest survivor and only an infant at the time of the disaster, and she had no memory of the events, so the milestone of her death marks more the end of an era than the loss of a first-hand witness to history. Still she was the last living connection to the voyage of Titanic, which to this day captures the imagination of most.

We last covered Ms. Dean a few months ago when she was selling off some of her Titanic memorabilia to make ends meet and pay her nursing home bills. Hearing of her plight, actors Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, who appeared in the 1998 movie Titanic, and the film's director, James Cameron, contributed towards the costs of her care.

There is additional coverage on the web by the BBC (with video) and the London Time Online (including an interesting Titanic archive).