Over 11,500 cruisers on peak day of phased return
(CNS): The phased return of cruise passengers may not feel very phased on 6 April, when as many as 11,594 people may descend on George Town from three ships, just two weeks into the re-launch of cruise tourism. On the 21 March, the Disney Magic, carrying a maximum of 2,700 passengers, will be the first cruise ship to dock here for two years following the COVID-19 border lockdown. After that the numbers will increase towards the peak days in April.
The tourism ministry released the proposed schedule for the phase one return of ships on Tuesday evening, which shows that even huge vessels like the Carnival Horizon with 5,101 passengers, will be back in George Town Harbour at Easter. That vessel will be arriving on 13 April, on the same day as the Celebrity Edge, which will be carrying up to 3,385 passengers
Following government’s decision to lift the cruise ship ban and draw up new regulations, a total of 74,208 passengers will visit Cayman on 21 ships from Monday, 21 March, to the 17 April, when 3,148 passengers will arrive on the Celebrity Equinox ahead of the next phase.
Tourism Minister Kenneth Bryan said the full schedule was being released to give stakeholders as much time as possible to plan for the return of cruise passengers and prepare their operations.
Cabinet’s approval of the return of cruise ships and the associated schedule for Phase I, has paved the way for the regulatory amendments specific to the cruise industry, to be drafted. These are expected to be approved next week, well ahead of the arrival of the first cruise call.
The minister defended the need for the return of the ships, despite public concern about the resumption of the cruise sector, not just due to the issues relating to the COVID-19 pandemic but because of more troubling and long-term issues, from the exploitation of watersports operators to the sector’s terrible environment record.
“Cruise tourism makes up a significant portion of our tourism industry and the return of cruise passengers will bring welcomed relief to many Caymanians who depend on this industry for their livelihoods,” Bryan said. “Every cruise call that brings passengers to our shores is helping to support Caymanian employees and business owners that have been hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Bryan said that once the regulations are finalised, a press conference will be held to provide the public with more detailed information.
Cruise Ship Schedule – Phase I
| Cruise Ship | Date | Maximum Passenger Capacity |
| Disney Magic | 21 March 2022 | 2700 |
| Carnival Paradise | 23 March 2022 | 2697 |
| Carnival Sunrise | 23 March 2022 | 3920 |
| Celebrity Apex | 24 March 2022 | 3385 |
| Carnival Glory | 24 March 2022 | 3806 |
| Emerald Princess | 25 March 2022 | 3092 |
| Disney Fantasy | 29 March 2022 | 4000 |
| MSC Seashore | 29 March 2022 | 4560 |
| Celebrity Reflection | 30 March 2022 | 3480 |
| Rotterdam | 31 March 2022 | 2650 |
| Celebrity Edge | 1 April 2022 | 3385 |
| Carnival Vista | 6 April 2022 | 4977 |
| Carnival Paradise | 6 April 2022 | 2697 |
| Carnival Sunrise | 6 April 2022 | 3920 |
| Celebrity Apex | 7 April 2022 | 3385 |
| Carnival Pride | 8 April 2022 | 2680 |
| MSC Seashore | 12 April 2022 | 4560 |
| Carnival Pride | 12 April 2022 | 2680 |
| Carnival Horizon | 13 April 2022 | 5101 |
| Celebrity Edge | 13 April 2022 | 3385 |
| Celebrity Equinox | 17 April 2022 | 3148 |
| TOTAL | 74,208 |
- Fascinated
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So the pandemic is over? Sorry, I must have missed the memo.
Yeah, great idea. Let’s invite thousands of Trump supporting, bigoted, ignorant, belligerent, MAGA blowhards onto our island. Great idea, said no one ever.
I’ll bet you’re fun at parties.
Look who’s the bigot. You fit your username well.
As far as I can remember caymanian people cannot go into other country and tell them how to run their business.
Guess I will have to pick up some contractor bags for the garbage that will soon overflow our beaches… Garbage coming in, and garbage going out… Once they are in International waters, these behemoths are free to dump as they go… Ever wonder why the garbage floating in has decreased since weve not had them.. 1 plus 1 equals 2..
Have not noticed any decrease.
Yup. It’s locals
I was down in December. Tourists just arrived and trash everywhere. I know it wasn’t from tourists. There were not enough tourists on island to create that mess. Stop blaming others.
We’ve obviously learned nothing from the enforced pause of COVID-19. What about those lofty ideals of deciding what parts of “normal” were worth returning to and which were not? We’ve gone back to the same harmful, stressful routine as before. Traffic is just as bad, or worse. And the rat race has sped up. I had so much hope that we might get it right with a new Govt (Progressives only worried about the progression of their own bank accounts and how high an honour they can score on the Queen’s list. They sold out long ago) but it seems this is not to be. Is my only choice really to flee to the UK when I grew up here in my forefathers’ island in the sun amongst those who ran screaming into the tax free sunlight from that gray and miserable land? Depressing.
Only two of these ships reside on CDC’s real-time “Green” List: Carnival Paradise and Disney Fantasy. All the rest “Yellow” and below, either have some degree of active COVID outbreak underway, or a history of non-compliance which has merited either closer CDC observation, or outright investigation for penalties. Now compare that failing cruise ship standard to our inbound flight rules and then again with domestic heath and safety policy, and then join me in scratching head in bewildered wonderment.
MIC…. KEY Why? Because I love you!*giggle* MOUSE.
I feel bad for us, who have to bear the weight of this incursion, and I feel bad for the visitors, who will discover the joy of banging together on crowded streets, OR being rushed to a tiny beach to bake in the sun, pressured by hawkers selling their wares.
We don’t have it together, imo. We aren’t ready, and don’t have an attractive package to encourage return cruise visitors. Moreover, we don’t have the infrastructure to support a mass influx of visitors.
Still, most of us that can will avoid downtown on those days. I hope the visitors have a good experience. I wish we were ready for you folks.
I don’t blame the tourists, but if I’m given a vote (and I’m not) I vote no more cruise ships.
Sure, more fundamentally there’s that too, but OP was relaying that in addition to that, 37% of this month’s cruise visit traffic will also be coming from specific ships already under individual scrutiny by the CDC for protocol non-observance and active outbreaks. Even as their fines are being calculated, and even as our air guests navigate Travel Time hoops, Kenny is inviting them here to bypass all of that, and come ashore for the day. We need to pick a lane.
Completely agree.
I would hope that “lane” would be one we could all enjoy, but it doesn’t seem so.
74,208 maskless, MAGA-red trailer state, prepaid-all-inclusive, non-spending, super spreaders – though we can assume that most have already had it at least once.
Listening to their audience, mask mandates were scrapped in all of the embarkation states, and ended four days ago for all major liners themselves.
CDC’s Cruise Ship COVID Guidance is Opt-In, and they have applied “Color Status” risk matrix for each ship based on flag, investigation status, as a consumer caveat emptor. If any brains were being applied here, our port should be restricted to vessels with a green or yellow status only. Cabinet coordination with DoT and CI Port, should not be inviting any Orange, Grey, or Red status cess-pools within 12 miles of the Cayman Islands:
https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/cruise/cruise-ship-color-status.html
The following “Orange Status”, are under active investigation by CDC for breeches should be barred, until they turn yellow or green:
Celebrity Apex 3385 (x2)
Carnival Glory 3806
MSC Seashore 4560 (x2)
Rotterdam 2650
Carnival Horizon 5101
For the record, that’s 27,447 suspect passengers this PACT regime is willing to turn a very deliberate blind eye to right now, even with Travel Time and widespread “health and safety” mandates in force.
Always nice to start a rant with gratuitous insults. Cayman kind.
Hit too close to home for you?
Nah, I have a beach house in North Side. Just wondering about your mental health.
How ironic, the first ship back will be a Disney ship with Mickey Mouse. I’m sure Kenny will be there for the photo op. CNS please make sure you Id who is Mickey as I’m not sure there is a difference
Mickey Mouse wears a Kenny Bryan wristwatch.
I haven’t heard that one since leaving the army 30 years ago, but it’s still gold.
Perhaps if people protested by picketing the port when the cruise passengers are arriving then the government might start to pay attention. At the moment it is only the interests of the cruise lines and a few cronies who sell T-shirts to cruise tourists that have the Minister’s ear.
Excellent idea! That would send a message that might get heard.
We only protest like that when the Gays come to town…
Seriously we are going to have a cruise industry.
The debate needs to be about how it is managed.
Management is easy. 1 cruise ship every 6th Tuesday in alternate months.
So when I return to Cayman I have to arrange a video LFT and get a negative result before I can fly back to Cayman but thousands of cruise passengers can descend on the Island without a suoervised negative LFT? Sure that really makes sense.
Like it or not, the health and safety theatre of a Travel Cayman, managed by Cayman Airways staff, is probably moot already and should be dissolved in next 1-2 weeks.
This is a phased return? I say not! Jackasses!
Thank god I’ll be off Island when these monsters show up. Suspect our Island will start sinking again now given the impending extra weight about to stomp around George Town. BK & KFC in town will be excited about this. Dreading coming back after the Easter break.
Rude
Assuming all Covid restrictions, testing, isolation will be dropped then if we are importing thousands of tourists? Can’t restrict the population if the government has decided to ease travel restrictions further for those visiting the Islands.
Time we learned to live with Covid – after all isn’t that why the vast majority are protected?
Or die with it perhaps.
I think it’s time to protest. Make our voice heard and do it when the most attention is on us.
Caymanians are a totally passive people. Sadly, they are only keyboard warriors.
Even knowing the CPR petition had worked, no referendums given by PACT. Nobody starting a fresh one either, when in theory, 25% of registered voters could instruct all kinds of material changes to the corrupt running order. Shame.
Unless you tell them it’s a gay cruise.
So all stipends will be stopped in a couple of weeks CIG?
03 @ 3:30pm – Perhaps if every displaced tourism worker, specifically related to cruise ship visitors, got their jobs back. I know a person from a souvenir shop downtown who’s still unemployed.
3.30pm Only if they fail to return their questionaire.
Time for a referendum. No cruise ships over a certain size, maybe small exclusive and expensive cruises. All they do is pollute our waters, they may buy a couple of t-shirts and all tours are already pre-booked by the cruise ship and they get the majority of the money. Not the local tour operators.
I have had friends who visited here on cruise ships, they ate breakfast on the boat, grabbed a sandwich or something from the supermarket for lunch, because they had to be back on the boat by 2:00pm so would eat a proper meal then.
Between 2 adults and 2 teenagers, they spent no more than US$50 on island. Total.
Is it really worth destroying our environment for a few measly dollars? In fact for any amount of money? We are quickly losing the attractions that visitors come to visit our islands.
We should be unique, not crowded tourist traps like every other island. At this point there isn’t much that distinguishes Cayman from any other Caribbean cruise destination.
Why are we allowing this?
YES to a referendum!
Because half a dozen families and Dart own this island and what they say goes. And the woters don’t know any better due to the woeful education system on this island. Suck it up buttercup.
Could not sum up the Cayman Islands any better from a capital and economic al perspective 7:41. The wealthy merchant colonial family class system is well entrenched here supplied by a work permit indentured work force which is not going to change any time soon! Cayman Islands is a Commercial Commodity and generational Caymanians is a product that is being sold and bought daily for little as nothing!
Agree with everything you said, except the ‘suck it up buttercup.’
That was kind of pissy and defeatist. We have to suck it up NOW, but what if we organise? I know, right? Insane, yes? We have no power now, but we can.
Why can’t there be a limit on the number of cruise ships in port at the same time?
I will not send my kids to school with a mask any more. I am done with this madness. If the school has a problem they themselves can take it up with the Government.
There is NO justification for them wearing them anymore on the back of Cruise ships being allowed in.
This is utter lunacy at this point.
It’s about time the schools stood up for the kids too! Just sickening.
Vomit, vomit!
What exactly are they getting off the ships to see or experience. GT is dead except for a few jewelry stores and t-shirt shops. 7 Mile is not the jewel it once were so not sure what they are going to enjoy here. Perhaps they might enjoy seeing new construction sites and blocked sidewalks?
It’s the CIG $/headcount. That’s why they do it. We have no say.
Yet.
Not so sure that’s it. If you run the numbers, the CI Port Authority headcount tax in our best year ever was just a few mln USD. We have to imagine we lost more than that in the opposite direction via cruise tender subsidies we pay as liner inducement, and fart away a similar net mount on pre-Christmas NICE vote-buying. Cruise tourism is not a net money maker for CIG, because that might explain the thinking if it was. It’s fishy that the lobby groups that won’t adapt or change their business models and hustle a tightly-wound CIG into subsidising their private business interruptions, with our public funds. Add to that, an opaque CI Port, staffed with cronies and blood relations, that refuse to keep reliable books. Clearly, it seems there are deeply conflicted millionaires conditioned into getting their reliable stream of payments from whoever is paying the baksheesh.
I’ll vote for the first politician who wants to ban these damn things.
If there’s one thing we’ve learnt, it’s that Wayne and Kenneth primarily, and PACT collectively, are poor stewards of the environment despite what they’ve petitioned from before and getting into Govt. It’s awful but I hope they’ll be sitting on their porch as the world and climate comes crashing down around them, but then if it did, they wouldn’t even know as they’re so ******* lost in their ignorance anyway 🤬🔥
Ship’s have been gone for two years and the climate is still crashing down on us. Maybe it more then just the Ship’s fault !!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/cruise-ships-climate-health-impacts-b1928659.html%3famp
tag below if you’d some more
End testing and mask mandates NOW!!!
Cayman has the rudest comments about tourists. Why visit or spend money where you are not wanted?
Tourists = yes. Cruise ships = no.
It’s the cruise ships the majority of people don’t want not the stay over tourists.
There is a major difference.
Still no reason to be rude and low class.
Lets hope that embarrasing prancing policeman doesnt turn up in town confusing drivers!
And telling people to “go” on a red light.
Can’t wait to have Mr and Mrs Blobby from Texas back on island And neither can KFC, Subway and Burger King.
Have you looked at your own people.
Is each one of the passengers required to fill out the travel declaration and get an antigen or PCR test before setting foot on our shores, assuming that they will be visiting other ports on their cruise to Cayman? Or is it one rule for them and another rule for air travellers?
The latter.
Back it up even further…they don’t even need a USA Passport to board the ship for international travel. Cruise ship ID card and lanyard are issued at registration desk with varying levels of picture ID accepted as proof of identity. Prohibited items routinely pass through whatever standards of screening generally applied. Criminal/no fly records don’t matter. Doubtful any paying passengers get run through an FBI, rogue Interpol, or Red list catalogue. The ships just send a very casual passenger manifest to receiving ports, and then match up whoever decides to come ashore and return as best they can. Sometimes folks miss the ferry and have to fly out to rejoin their baggage at the next port.
Great news, will we be sticking with the idiotic mask mandate?
They must all wear masks and maintain 6′ social distancing.
Can’t wait to go meet Mickey.
Just go to West Bay, home of MickeyMac and his sidekick Minikenny.
We need cruise ships back like we need another more deadly virus.
Same thing….
What we need is an easy way to remove politicians that have lost the confidence and trust of the public.
Simple, just herd them all onto the cruise ships before they set sail.
No Mask No problem No Cayman!
Yet our kids are in Masks!!
Parents, do the right thing.
Do not comply anymore.
Turn up to school without them en masse as of Monday.
Enough is enough.
Where are all these people going to go?
Royal Palms closed.
Calico Jacks closed.
Tiki Bar & Beach closed.
We are looking at chaos on SMB with this many people.
Guaranteed to piss off all the high paying stay over visitors who stay on Seven Mile Beach.
What do our tourism people use for brains?
Do they think these things through?
Get ready for the invasion of the Public Beach with the sun bed renters out in force.
CNS readers are advocates for both cruise ships and for expanding the port.
CNS readers are advocates for sarcasm as well.
Too many. As a destination these ships require we should be doing more to ensure Cayman is respected as a destination. Returning to business as usual should be counted as a missed opportunity for the sustainable future of this country.
You think you are helping these islands by getting then back in as soon as possible with little to no preconditions but you are selling us short and just perpetuating our servile reliance on an exploitative (of both destinations and employees) and polluting industry that needs to learn to do better.
11,000 + people can stroll arrive in Cayman and just ashore off of these floating petri dishes, yet I still need to take a certified covid test before I can get on a plane?
Ok then.
Don’t you mean Petri dish plane
Welcome back!
I’d really love to know which politician, or which politician’s friends, are benefitting from cruise tourism. The average small business owner isn’t making much from cruise tourism. The taxi and bus owners are making a couple of bucks from it, but not much. The vast majority of the residents on island don’t want cruise tourism at all because the marine environment suffers, the streets are clogged with cheap tourist who don’t spend any money and are more of a nuisance than anything else. So who is benefitting from this??
Keep KB in a job (he is doing badly)?
What is your employment?
Which politicians…?
Do you really have to ask…?
They have a lot of shops in GT selling perfume and jewelry 🙂
Those shops are owned by a select few. Mostly Dart.
“Cruise tourism makes up a significant portion of our tourism industry”, where the term “significant” doesn’t necessarily define a critical jobs number, but rather a stakeholder-driven imperative, concentrated to a very concise list of millionaire local benefactors. Corruption still reigns in Cayman.
It makes up the majority of our tourism business by headcount but is worth a fraction of the stay over value. It would be way better for the economy to financially take care of the very few (if any) Caymanian who lose their jobs when we cancel cruise ships than to let the cruise ships back in. Has anyone run the numbers????
Hello govt….if cruisrs allowed to land without lft or pcr…why airlines requiring itto satisfy govt?
And so the joyride begins….
What a missed opportunity, it will be a sad day seeing these monstrosities back in our waters. Zero vision from our elected leaders 🙁
All they see is the green
yes and too often for themselves and their cronies
To see the green look no further than the financial industry Russian money ect
Ugh. We don’t want them.
These are ship capacities, not necessarily the amount of people coming in. Ships are not currently full and many will just stay on the ship (hassle to line up/tender for an hour each way).
Cayman should only accept cruise ships with less than say, 500 passengers. Such cruise ships exist and are usually quite exclusive with richer clientele, compared to the package tourists on these mega ships. By discouraging the riff-raff you would encourage the better quality companies and tourists, and without blocking George Town streets every day. It might take a while for the schedules to pick up, but if you welcome them they will come.
Are these not the older ships that don’t meet EU directives on being environmentally progressive? The sail ship everyone likes to quote has very poor ratings.
Us richer folks aren’t bothered by your so-called riffraff tourists. Why are you? I’d tell you to just go where we go, but I’d rather not see you there.
Don’t they get it? The residents don’t want the ships here. With a 2 year break, our tourism ministry had ample opportunity to reconsider our tourism offering and make it better. And what did they do? Get free designer handbags in naff colors.
Meanwhile our hopes for a new sustainable and fairer priced high-quality tourism product that properly benefits the island and its residents are dashed against the iron shore.
Residents, you hit the nail on the head. Cruise is about looking after Caymanians.
Cruise is about looking after a handful of already very wealthy Caymanians and making them richer, while blighting the lives of everyone else who lives here.
This is exactly the problem the residents have decided what is best for Cayman and Caymanians. The lawyers, accountants and foreign business owners don’t want cruise ships. But the local taxi drivers, staff in the duty free stores, bus and tour operators (Caymanians) can’t wait to be able to earn a living and not have to depend on Government stipends. Thankfully the politicians still understand who they were elected to represent.
The audacity of this so-called government. Holding the kids hostage in masks and threatening to not life the mandate to wear them in schools unless parents subject them to a vaccine that is not even effective (for the 5-11 age group) for a illness that doesn’t even make them sick, while allowing cruise shippers back in by the thousands. Shame on ALL of them. I am disgusted.