San Juan Cruise Port Unable to Take Mega Ship Due to Technical Problem
by Dori Saltzman
Photo: Shutterstock.com / fitzcrittle
Symphony of the Seas’, one of Royal Caribbean’s Oasis Class ships and a top-10 largest cruise ship in the world, will be skipping San Juan on an upcoming sailing. This will be the second time the ship has been forced to omit San Juan thanks to an undisclosed “technical” issue at the port.
As reported by Cruise Hive, guests scheduled for the Dec. 1 sailing received a notice stating that “due to technical issues with the pier and the work that must be done and cleared by the USCG for accepting a ship of our size, we’ll have to adjust our itinerary for our sailing.”
Royal Caribbean did not elaborate on the technical issue and the San Juan Port Authority did not return TMR‘s inquiry.
The sailing, which was scheduled to call on San Juan, Philipsburg (St. Maarten), and Perfect Day at CocoCay, will now visit Falmouth, Labadee, and Perfect Day at CocoCay instead. (Royal Caribbean returned to visiting Labadee just last month.)
Symphony of the Seas first had to skip San Juan earlier this month.
Smaller ships – and most cruise ships are smaller than Symphony of the Seas – have been unaffected. MSC Seascape called on San Juan yesterday (Nov. 26) as scheduled, and Celebrity Apex is expected to arrive today without issue.
Symphony of the Seas is not scheduled to return to San Juan until Christmas Day.
