Carnival Cruise Line Expects to Resume North American Sailings on August 1

Carnival Cruise Line on Monday morning announced that it will look to resume its North American service starting on Aug. 1.

Carnival is planning to start sailing eight ships from Miami, Port Canaveral, and Galveston on Aug. 1 while sailings from the rest of its homeports remain on pause through Aug. 31. The line, along with all other CLIA member lines, entered voluntary suspension on March 13 because of the impact of COVID-19. 

Carnival is planning on sailing Carnival Dream, Carnival Freedom, and Carnival Vista out of Galveston; Carnival Horizon, Carnival Magic, and Carnival Sensation out of Miami; and Carnival Breeze and Carnival Elation out of Port Canaveral.

“We are committed to supporting all public health efforts to manage the COVID-19 situation. We are taking a measured approach, focusing our return to service on a select number of homeports where we have more significant operations that are easily accessible by car for the majority of our guests,” Carnival said in its announcement on Monday.

Any sailing prior to July 31, along with all other sailings out of other homeports through Aug. 31, will be cancelled. Carnival has also already cancelled the Vancouver-Honolulu cruise on Carnival Spirit scheduled for Sept. 25 and the Honolulu-Brisbane transpacific cruise scheduled for Oct. 6.

All guests on impacted sailings, along with their travel advisors, are being notified of the changes and the options for future cruise credits and refunds.

Carnival had been offering extensions and additions to its advisor-centric programs—including an extra 1% bonus commission on new retail bookings along with an extension of the current commission rates that agencies have reached in 2020 into 2021—as part of its COVID-19 response. That, along with paying commission on both bookings canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and bookings made with future cruise credits, have earned Carnival praise from the trade.