Carnival Cruise Line Extends Pause Until April

UPDATE 1:51pm: Carnival Corporation sub-brands Holland America Line and Princess Cruises have also pushed back their restart date. HAL will now resume operation in April of 2021 and Princess Cruises will resume operation in May 2021. 

Carnival Cruise Line issued a press release this morning announcing additional cruise cancellations and a new target date to resume sailing from U.S. homeports. After already pushing back their restart countless times already, the cruise line hopes to embark from American ports after March 31, 2021. The previous restart date was set for February. 

“We are sorry to disappoint our guests, as we can see from our booking activity that there is clearly a pent-up demand for cruising on Carnival.  We appreciate their patience and support as we continue to work on our plans to resume operations in 2021 with a gradual, phased in approach,” said Christine Duffy, president of Carnival Cruise Line.

The full list of cancellation and restart dates issued by Carnival is below: 

• All embarkations from U.S. homeports through March 31, 2021
• Carnival Freedom from Galveston through April 10, 2021 (which includes a repositioning of the ship from Galveston to Seattle and a 17-day Carnival Journeys cruise which is not allowed under the current guidelines issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC))
• Carnival Miracle from San Diego and San Francisco through September 16, 2021 (which includes many 10-day and longer itineraries not allowed under the current CDC guidelines)
• Carnival Liberty from Port Canaveral from September 17-October 18, 2021 (to accommodate rescheduled dry dock work)
• Carnival Sunshine from Charleston from October 11-November 13, 2021 (to accommodate rescheduled dry dock work)
• Carnival Spirit’s 15-day cruise from Singapore to Brisbane on June 12, 2021 (consistent with the current limitations on international travel in place in Australia).

Interview with Christine Duffy

In December, Carnival Cruise Line President Christine Duffy joined Porthole Cruise Founder and Editor-in-Chief Bill Panoff for a discussion of the latest cruise industry news, including the launch of the new Mardi Gras cruise ship and how her cruise line would approach fulfilling all the requirements laid out by the CDC in their conditional sail order. You can watch the full video below!