MALTA DENIES MSC GRANDIOSA GUESTS DISEMBARKATION AFTER POSITIVE CASE OF VIRUS

The devil, as usual, is in the details...which ppl read, or miss, or read AND misunderstand. Went back and looked at those "protocols"...(sounds like sumpin you find crawling on the ocean floor eh? heheh) The lines made a big deal about expanding/improving their medical facilities, including "isolation" facilities, blocking off certain cabins for that purpose etc etc. Reading what they plan to do when there's a breakout leaves quite a bit of space between the lines...if folks think they're going to stay on board and be treated.....well.....that's only if they can't figure some way to get you OFF the ship....We went round and round about ours of 2/21...old news...nothing alot of other folks haven't done, and are STILL doing...finally decided "its a cruise"...not supposed to be a matter of life n death, or a crapshoot..or pretending to be able to make a decision based on understanding the risk...because neither we nor anyone else has all the so-called "facts"....and besides...as many folks have opined in here...NOBODY knows the future...so we cancelled it...all I can say is once the deed was done, we felt better...including the next day and the day after that...so we're making other cruise plans, far enough down the road to (hopefully) not have these circumstances to consider...and guess and worry about...

We cancelled 3 cruises for August 2021, mainly due to port and ship changes but the thought of what the world would look like then was also a contributing factor.

The travel industry is evolving and it is gonna take some time before it is close to a new normal.

Thats why we cancelled 2/21...same exact situation....

I understand your point. However, if you know ahead of time that might happen and you choose to sail it is a risk to which you have agreed. We are still debating whether we want to go in January (if they actually sail). It’s a choice and we will make before final payment is due (mid November). One of us is more willing than the other to take the risk.

They simply CANNOT insure there will be no infections once passengers are boarded, no matter how "bureaucratically satisfying" their so-called "protocols" may be. (Theres another new word for our brave new world.) Nor will ANY "foreign" port welcome any ship with "positives" onboard. But it begs the question I asked before. Anyone who has traveled in the Caribbean extensively should wonder (and worry) about the "facility" available to handle positive cases once they're...um...kicked off the ship. Or the "arrangements" made to repatriate them once they are deemed no longer contagious...assuming they survive the plague or the facility, not necessarily this that order...Malta, in the Mediterranean, prides itself on its facilities, since German bombing practically sunk the island during WWII, and virtually everything needed to be rebuilt. Caribbean islands, on the other hand seem to be leveled year after year due to storms, and given their levels of poverty, one wonders how they would treat infected cruise ship passengers.

All this is of the moment to us, since despite having several cancelled, we have rebooked, and hope we can cruise again. We would NOT like to spend a couple of weeks in some makeshift ward someplace, and then figure out how to get home.

Start of the new world

Still it shows that protocols are working. The ship was aware of the situation, notified the port and the port made the decision. My impression is that the plan for the Caribbean ports is that there will be a facility to transfer the infected passengers.

Good for Malta. Looking after their small island. Unfortunately until this passes (which I doubt will happen) or there is a reliable vaccine for this we will see things like this.