Proof of Vaccination

Not willing to take an experimental inoculation. If I have been on my last cruise so be it. But as much as my wife and I love to cruise the high price of the cruise is the ONLY price I am willing to pay to go.

Love to cruise but my wife and I refuse to be guinea pigs for an EUA inoculation. When we finally are ready to go I will also not be paying a premium price just to be told to wear mask, social distance ... I have an immune system.

I sure am glad I am sailing out of Seattle on a fully vaccinated cruise. I am happy we all have to show are vaccine cards!! I feel much safer for now!!

Showing vaccination records is not new to travel. Certain South American and African countries require proof of vaccination for Yellow and Dengus fever. In my opinion - this is no different.

I’d wear it.

The short answer is it depends on how you get there, and how long you plan to stay.......for our purposes, the answer is yes, you need a passport. Try GOOGLING it... I suspect about a gazillion peeps have asked that question...

Agreed...there is nothing quick or easy about those kind of logistical changes....you "might" be able to pull it off in the military, where everyone obeys orders...or at least they used to.......sorting out the legalities of those contractual obligations would take a lifetime...Del Rios salary alone could .....well....nevermind.....

That sure sounds like an effective solution Queen. However, it's not that simple. There are probably over a thousand different things cruise ports effortlessly handle each day that other ports aren't equipped or designed to handle. And getting the other ports infrastructure up and running to be able to accommodate cruise ships would take a large investment of both time and money.

Lets start with the most obvious piece of infrastructure, the cruise terminal. The most efficient ones located in Miami & Port Canaveral are designed to handle multiple ships embarking/debarking thousands of passengers daily. You just can't set up that kind of operation elsewhere overnight. It would be akin to asking a small city airport to instantly become an international air travel hub. How could they go from processing a few regional flights a day to dozens, if not hundreds of large commercial jets.

In addition, all the logistics involved with keeping cruise ships stocked with supplies are handled by dock & warehouse workers in close proximity to the cruise port. To move massive warehouse & logistics operations to another city takes months of planning and many, many weeks to implement. Then to properly train all the workers involved in the well choreographed supply operations (that few of us ever see) would take a few more weeks. The cruise lines don't own these logistics companies, so they would have to either find new suppliers, or convince the ones they have to uproot or expand their operations to a new city.

This is just two points. There are others, but I don't want this to be a long read.

Norwegian CEO Frank Del Rio's bluster about his ships having rudders and propellers that can move his business elsewhere is just that.....bluster. The truth is there are not that many options open to him or the other cruise lines, and the gargantuan amount of investment of time and capital it would take to make it so would not be worth it in the short term.

Interesting take. I wonder how many folks would not be able to cruise because of having to fly into the Bahamas to go on a cruise. There are quite a few folks who I meet on cruises who drive to the port and park there. Also I've never flown into the Bahamas but I would imagine a passport is mandatory unlike cruising out of the states. Maybe a 30 to 40 percent hit between flying into the Bahamas and required passports?

There is one other option too that the Governors seem to forget: if the cruise lines won't budge on the issue and neither will the Governors, the cruise lines have every rite to say "Fine, then we'll move our Headquarters and our ships out of your state". The Headquarters might take a while, but moving the ships won't...all they have to do is rework the itineraries. In my case, my next cruise has a stop in Port Canaveral, and I'm going on Royal Caribbean. It wouldn't take much for our ship to be re-routed to the Bahamas (I know this because I've had a cruise re-routed while I was on the ship). All they have to do is tell the Captains the new itineraries.

If that's the case, the Governors who won't require the ships to ask for vaccination status can kiss BILLIONS of dollars goodbye: there goes all the port fees, taxes, agriculture, and economical benefits of having cruise ships port in your state. And if it's a home port, they can also kiss all the revenue from the hotel business goodbye, since many cruisers arrive either days before the cruise or stay a few days later.

Ironically, it could work out for the states and their neighboring states who have Governors insisting on proof of vaccination to cruise. Let's say, for instance, Cuomo requires proof of vaccination to cruise (for the record, I don't know if he will or not). The ships could then relocate their bringing all the benefits of having the ships home port from his state that DeSantis would miss out on. New Jersey would also benefit, as many of the cruisers who sail out of there (including me) could book hotels in New Jersey if they don't want to book a hotel in New York.

Again, this is all hypothetical, I don't know if all of this (or any of it) will happen, but it's a possibility.