NEWS UPDATE: Carnival Testing Policy Update, Royal Dining Changes & Starlink Debuts in Australia

Join my private Facebook group for cruise deals, tips and advice - the more members we have, the better we’ll get! www.facebook.com/groups/CTGdeals Follow me on Facebook and Instagram: www.facebook.com/thecruiseandtravelguy www.instragram.com/thecruiseandtravelguy Support the channel with a slogan tee: https://thecruiseandtravelguy.myshopify.com Head to my website for great cruise and travel deals: www.thecruiseandtravelguy.com.au Citing elevated cases of COVID onboard, the Grand Princess skipped her call in the port of Newcastle earlier this week. The decision to forego the scheduled stop was made in conjunction with the NSW Health Department. Grand Princess was sailing on a 14 night Coastal Queensland cruise from its homeport of Melbourne. The 109K GRT ship arrived home in the Victorian capital yesterday December 1st, before embarking on a 13 night roundtrip cruise to New Zealand. Princess did not share case numbers, but confirmed in a statement to the Herald Sun publication that all 2100 guests had disembarked. Carnival Australia yesterday updated its COVID-19 protocols, indicating that there may be voyages where in addition to pre-cruise testing, onboard testing might be necessary. However, according to the revised policy, this is more likely to occur on cruises 8 days or longer. Royal Caribbean is potentially making a change to its main dining room options that have some regular cruisers a little more than displeased. Royal Caribbean is well known for their expansive main dining room menu, with dinner options consisting of nightly specials as well as classic staples that are available every night. The cruise line had previously trialled a change onboard Symphony of the Seas, removing the entire range of classic dishes. Now, the line is contacting its most loyal guests with a survey to find out just what makes them tick about dinner service. According to reports, the aim is to speed up the entire dinner process for both guests and the kitchen, and to do that, the menu needs to shrink. The survey is attempting to identify what people enjoy most, both in terms of specific food options but also in terms of what is the ideal amount of time to spend sitting at the dinner table. No decisions have been made as yet, but it looks like 2023 may bring some changes to the Royal Caribbean dinner experience. USA Today published a highly intriguing article this week, examining the effect the US Center for Disease Control’s ending of the COVID-19 Cruise Program had on case numbers onboard ships. The scrapping of the program in July this year lead to the eventual elimination of pre-cruise testing and vaccination requirements for major cruise lines in the US. USA Today accessed the data through the Freedom of Information Act and looked at three examples, across NCL, Carnival and Royal Caribbean. All three lines began welcoming unvaccinated guests onboard as well as removed or reduced their pre-cruise testing requirements in early September. In the three weeks before the protocol change, NCL reported 234, 164 and 184 cases. After the change, NCL reported 138, 161 and 204. Carnival reported 214, 265 and 214 in the three weeks up until their protocol change, and subsequently reported 193, 193, and 144 in the three weeks following the shift. Royal Caribbean reported 448, 311 and 348 in the lead up to their change in protocols and then 341, 306 and 237 in the weeks after. Whilst far from scientific, I think this information is very interesting in a broader sense and probably indicates that shipboard case numbers will always be more a reflection of what’s happening on land than anything else. Let me know what you think about those numbers in the comments below. Finally this week, Celebrity Eclipse has become the first cruise ship to sail in our region offering the recently announced SpaceX owned Starlink internet service. The Solstice Class ship is currently sailing from Australia and has become the first ship in our region to offer the high-speed, low latency internet. The internet upgrades were announced by parent company Royal Caribbean earlier this year and will eventually make its way onto all of the company’s vessels. The new service is said to revolutionise internet use onboard, and I will be testing it personally from next week. Thanks for watching!