Cayman appears on mega ship’s 2019 itinerary
MSC Meraviglia
(CNS): MSC Cruises has announced that its mega ship, Meraviglia, a 5,700-passenger ‘smart’ ship that was launched this summer, will include the Cayman Islands on its itinerary during the 2019 autumn season, even though there will be no piers in George Town when the ship makes is debut in the Caribbean. According to a press release issued Monday, from mid-November 2019 the ship will be operating out of Miami for the rest of that season, from where it will offer 7-night cruises, sailing to two itineraries in the western Caribbean, the first of which will include Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Mexico and the Bahamas.
One of the persistent arguments government makes to justify its decision to press ahead with the costly and controversial cruise berthing facilities in George Town is that the new generation of mega cruise ships will not use tender boats to offload passengers at their destinations, and will therefore not stop at Grand Cayman until it has built the piers. But the fact that MSC, the largest cruise company in Europe and South America, has included Cayman clearly demonstrates that tendering is no barrier to the large ships calling here.
This raises questions about the claims being made by the administration that the jurisdiction will lose its cruise business unless it invests in the costly project, which also poses a massive risk to the marine environment.
Category: Cruise Tourism, Tourism
My wife and I regularly cruise. We’ve been across the Atlantic, to Bermuda, Portugal, England, Norway the Virgin Islands, Mexico, Haiti, Columbia, Panama, Jamaica, and up the Pacific coast as far as Vancouver, Canada. Grand Cayman is a wonderful port. If you can preserve Cayman’s unique blend of European style safety, order and competence, along with Cayman’s easy-going, unpretentious, friendly, relaxed, humorous, charm, then cruise lines will always want to stop in Cayman. Dock or no dock. On the other hand, if Cayman becomes like Jamaica, you can build a huge dock and fake Colonial city such as the one in Falmouth, and the cruise lines will bypass Cayman, just as they have Falmouth.
Jamaica has always been a problem port for Cruise lines. It is the people, crime and constant hassling and heckling that makes Jamaica a dump not the dock.
I had the exact same experience with the tenders when in cayman. Lovely staff and the ride itself was a joy but the lines are horrible. Any one that has experienced this and been to Cayman would definitely save themselves the hassle of and endless day of waiting in the heat for hours and just enjoy the ship.
So we need better tenders and that’s really the beginning and the end of this problem. How many does $300 million buy?
I was just on a cruise to cayman and I can tell you that the actual tender ride isn’t the problem it is the amount of time that it takes to both load and unload the tenders. The tender ride Itself was maybe 5 to 10 minutes and the crew and boats are awesome but it was at least 15 minutes to load and then another 15 when we got to the dock. That doesn’t count the half an hour waiting in line before that. All the other ports with docks were easy walk right out and no lines at all. I was only on a smaller 2200 passenger ship. You could never convince me to get in that line behind 5000 people. I would just stay on the ship in Cayman.
CNS: According to your IP address, you are writing this from the Cayman Islands. So, when you say “I was just on a cruise” (indicating that it has finished), do you live here normally and went on a cruise that included Cayman? Or did you love it so much that you came back? Or are you making this up?
Hahaha!! Called out! Good job CNS!
Can we get a separate “like” section when CNS responds to a post?
Or a dislike.
CIG : We need to build the cruise berthing facilities so we can hand out multi-million dollar contracts to our private Donors and corporate backers… I mean so we don’t lose cruise ships to other ports with the facilities
*Cruise ships continue to regularly come to Cayman and new ships add us on their routes*
CIG: We need to build the cruise berthing facility so we can hand out multi-million dollar contracts to our private donors and corporate backers, didn’t you guys hear?
We need Campaign finance reform
The PPM is allowed to put gross numbers for all of their candidates while claiming transparency in the government
Because the Kirk gang want the new dock and they will go to no end to get it.
Even without the necessary cruise berthing?
Peculiar
Diogenes