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The problems surrounding the demise of Crystal Cruises are becoming clearer by the day. And through it all, the financial issues could hit those who booked cruises onboard the Crystal ships harder than the company had initially forecasted. According to the former CEO for Crystal Cruises, Jack Anderson, the company owes more than 100 million in outstanding deposits. This should pose no problem for those who paid by credit card for upcoming cruises. Those with FCC’s, which are now worthless, and those that paid cash for a cruise, will likely never see their money. Genting Hong Kong Abandons Crystal Cruises...

Cruise lines are expecting to welcome back more families with vaccinations for younger kits set to be approved. Several major cruise lines have indicated that they will be welcoming young kids back on board sooner rather than later. While it is technically possible for children under the age of 12 to sail right now with the most cruise lines, there is a whole list of testing requirements that need to be fulfilled—something which is putting families off cruising right now. Whether or not it does happen depends on the FDA approving Pfizer’s research into vaccinating children, something expected to happen...

Gay Pride Month may have ended in June but Disney’s push to indoctrinate your children with LGBT propaganda has just begun. It’s new movie, Jungle Cruise, features a scene in which the actor Jack Whitehall’s character comes out as gay. During an interview Whitehall told reporters that he is “proud” and hopes that this scene means a lot to the “LGBTQ kids.” In 2019 Disney placed one of its “first” openly gay characters into a children's television show called Andi Mack. It has been a downward spiral since then with seven different films featuring LGBT characters in the past two...

A federal appeals court, which previously sided with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) amid Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R-FL) battle against the federal health agency over the vaccination rules it is imposing on the cruise industry, reversed its decision, ultimately siding with the state over the CDC’s No-Sail Orders.On Friday, Florida “filed an Emergency Application to Vacate the Eleventh Circuit’s Stay on the Preliminary Injunction.” That same day, the Eleventh Circuit reversed its earlier decision, allowing the cruise industry to resume operations without adhering to the CDC’s restrictions, including what effectively amounts to vaccine passports, which are illegal...

CDC Cruise Order Decision Reversed After Florida Appeals to U.S. Supreme Court The CDC cruise order decision has been reversed after Florida appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court to allow cruise ships to disregard CDC requirements. The State of Florida has once again been successful in its ongoing dispute with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Conditional Sailing Order. The state went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to appeal an earlier decision that favored the CDC to keep its order on cruise ships in place in Florida. Florida Goes to U.S. Supreme Court Against...

When cruise ships depart from Florida’s ports in the coming months, some won’t require passengers to get the most effective pandemic life preserver there is — a Covid-19 vaccination. That’s because of new legislation Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed that bars businesses from requiring customers to show proof of vaccinations. The law goes into effect Thursday and opponents say it could threaten the recovery of an industry that is vital to the state’s economy, in addition to making it difficult for cruise ship companies to put some teeth into the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccination recommendations. At...

In the summer of 1972, Alice Cooper and David Bowie blared from the radio as the country prepared itself for a presidential election later that year. (Incumbent Richard Nixon trounced George McGovern, the South Dakota Senator.) In the San Fernando Valley, teens and people in their early 20s were cruising up and down Van Nuys Boulevard, then they parked and hung out. Photographer Rick McCloskey, who grew up in the Valley, took his camera and chronicled the scene.

Miami-based Norwegian Cruise Line said it may avoid Florida ports because of the Sunshine State’s vaccine passport ban. “But at the end of the day, cruise ships have motors, propellers, and rudders. And God forbid we can’t operate in the state of Florida for whatever reason, then there are other states that we do operate from. And we can operate from the Caribbean for ships that otherwise would have gone to Florida,” Norwegian President and Chief Executive Officer Frank J. Del Rio told reporters on Thursday during an earnings call for the first quarter of 2021. He said all cruise...

Norwegian Cruise Line wants to start US cruises again on July 4, and it's willing to require all passengers and staff to be vaccinated before it sets sail.Norwegian, which despite its name is a US-based company, sent a letter Monday to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, notifying it of its proposal. It's the first major American cruise line to lay out plans for a resumption of US sailings...So on Monday, Norwegian essentially said: Enough. The company said it plans to require vaccinations for everyone on a ship at least two weeks before sailing."Vaccinations are the primary vehicle for...

Some exciting headlines yesterday as Royal Caribbean announced new homeports in June for two of its cruise lines. In two separate announcements, Celebrity Cruises will start sailing from the Dutch Caribbean island of St. Maarten, while Royal Caribbean will be sailing from the Bahamas. The news came after the announcement from Crystal cruises which will also begin operations from the Bahamas. It seems then that the cruise lines believe that we can indeed cruise safely and securely. The move to announce homeports away from the United States will be seen as a power play as the cruise industry has traditionally...

Joe Biden’s transgender nominee for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Dr. Rachel Levine recommended in 2017 “accelerating” cross-sex hormones for homeless teens suffering from gender dysphoria. Levine, born Richard Levine four years ago, delivered an address to an audience at Franklin & Marshall College titled “It’s a Transgeneration: Issues in Transgender Medicine."

Transgender activists are slamming a campground for gay men because it is excluding women who say they are transgender men. Owners of Camp Boomerang RV Park and Campground, a new, private gay campground in Orleans, Michigan, made it clear that the campground is for men only, effectively banning transgender men — biological females who consider themselves males. “Camp Boomerang is a private, membership-only rv park/campground that allows only ‘guys,'” Camp Boomerang cofounder Bryan Quinn wrote, defining “guy” as “a person with a penis” who “presents himself as male and has a state-issued ID that says ‘male.'” “We understand this statement,...

Transgender activists are slamming a campground for gay men because it is excluding women who say they are transgender men. Owners of Camp Boomerang RV Park and Campground, a new, private gay campground in Orleans, Michigan, made it clear that the campground is for men only, effectively banning transgender men — biological females who consider themselves males. “Camp Boomerang is a private, membership-only rv park/campground that allows only ‘guys,'” Camp Boomerang cofounder Bryan Quinn wrote, defining “guy” as “a person with a penis” who “presents himself as male and has a state-issued ID that says ‘male.'”

Will I need a vaccine to cruise? It’s one of the biggest questions regarding the return of sailing. Our opinion? Vaccines will come to cruising. With the vaccine rollout there is lots of optimism that the dose can get us over the health crisis and back to some semblance of normal. At the same time, some people have worries about the vaccine, aren’t eligible to receive it, or simply can’t get a shot due to lack of availability. In other words, even if cruise lines do require passengers to get the vaccine, there could still be headaches in actually enforcing...

On January 12, 2021, the Centers for Disease Control issued an Order, in effect January 25, requiring all air passengers arriving in the US from a foreign country to get tested no more than 3 days before their flight departs. All passengers will also be required to present the negative result of the test, or documentation of having recovered from COVID-19 to the airline before boarding the flight. This puts the US in line with various other countries that have introduced similar measures over the last weeks. UK Mutation Accelerating Measures The mutation of COVID-19 recently discovered in the United...

John Weaver, a veteran Republican operative who co-founded the Lincoln Project, declared in a statement to Axios on Friday that he sent “inappropriate,” sexually charged messages to multiple men. “To the men I made uncomfortable through my messages that I viewed as consensual mutual conversations at the time: I am truly sorry. They were inappropriate and it was because of my failings that this discomfort was brought on you,” Weaver said. “The truth is that I'm gay,” he added. “And that I have a wife and two kids who I love. My inability to reconcile those two truths has led...

People have a hard time hating cruising. They may think they’re going to hate it. They may want to hate it. But then they try it, and they’re hooked. If you don’t believe me, just look at the numbers. When I first started writing about cruising, in the 1990s, barely 5 million people a year were doing it. These days, the number of people cruising each year is six times that level. That’s not the growth trajectory of something that people don’t love. Still, just because people love something doesn’t mean they love everything about it. That’s the case, for...

Following the CDC announcement of the No Sail Order extended until October 31st, Carnival Cruise Line announced that resumption of cruises would be from Homeports Port Miami and Port Canaveral in November and December. It could come to mind that sailing a few ships to Europe, or having ships based in Bridgetown, Barbados, for an earlier start would make sense. Why is Carnival waiting for Florida? Well, it turns out there are several important factors involved in this. One of the reasons that Carnival Cruise Line is so successful is its vast loyal following. A large part of its regular...

You do you think cruise ships should be allowed to sail and cruises resume? You can currently get on a packed airline, stay in a hotel, visit Disney World and Six Flags, ride a subway, but cruises are still not allowed to sail. The CDC is receiving comments from the general public for two more days on their website asking for public participation regarding the restart of cruises. So far, just under 6,000 comments have submitted to the CDC pertaining to the planning/infrastructure and resumption of passenger operations. The CDC has 28 different questions that you can respond to including:...

Nearly 2,500 comments have been submitted to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as part of an initiative launched in late July that saw the organization formally request comments on the resumption of cruising from members of the public. The request followed the extension of the CDC's "No-Sail" order barring the resumption of cruises from U.S. ports of call until at least September 30, 2020. The No-Sail order was originally put in place on March 13 as the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic swept the globe and was extended again in April for a period of 100 days. The...