Today, it’s time to make three port stops, all of which are enjoying their changing associations with cruise ships…
New Orleans: It’s almost like people who cruise just re-discovered what a great place New Orleans is to visit. In 2011, the port showed an increase of 39 per cent to 738,908, the most cruise passengers New Orleans has ever had. Four ships (two Carnival, one Norwegian, one Royal Caribbean) home-port in NoLa and this week two more ships stopped for a visit — Fred.Olsen’s Balmoral and P&O’s Oceana, bringing in another 4,000 visitors.
Vancouver: Disney made news this week by announcing it will return the Wonder to its previous home, Vancouver, in 2013, following a one-year diversion to Seattle as the shared embarkation point for its Alaska cruises (this year’s cruises are Seattle to Vancouver via Alaska, and vice-versa). Apparently, Disney cruisers expressed a preference for Canada’s Olympic city for its on-shore experience. Hmm, maybe cruise lines really do listen to customers.
Miami: The Disney Wonder is this week’s newsmaker among cruise ships, because when it’s not in Vancouver it will be in Miami, the line’s first ship to be based in what is being called PortMiami with the arrivals of “home” ships from MSC, Costa and Regent Seven Seas. Until this, Disney ships in Florida were all based in Port Canaveral, just east of Orlando. Ironically, on the Disney website the Wonder’s repositioning cruise through the Panama Canal (above) only goes as far as Los Angeles, its present home.
Conventional wisdom is that a cruise ship in a port means $1 million a day for the local economy.
These are three winners of the cruise lottery.
DAILY DEAL:
Holland America Rotterdam VI
15 nights
April 17, 2012
Fort Lauderdale, Funchal and Lisbon (Portugal), Brest and Cherbourg (France), Rotterdam
Inside $799
www.hollandamerica.com