Home / Blog / Additional comment from John Heald regarding FEMA chartering Carnival Fascination.

Additional comment from John Heald regarding FEMA chartering Carnival Fascination.

From Carnival Senior Cruise Director John Heald:

Good evening everyone.

I see some of you are posting letters you have received about your planned cruise on the Carnival Fascination from where I am writing to you now. You will then have heard of the decision to charter the ship to FEMA to help the people who are helping rebuild and to care for the people who during hurricanes Irma and Maria lost everything and I do mean everything.

When earlier this week the senior beards at Carnival were approached by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency ) to ask we provide a ship for a four-month charter an agreement was quickly made.

The details are that as per FEMA’s request, the ship will be docked in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands and will provide housing and meals for relief workers. The duration of the charter is from October 15, 2017 to February 3, 2018.

And the Caribbean is our home, Carnival’s home and more than any other cruise line it is where our ships have always sailed to and we want to do all we can to help them recover.

At the same time it would be silly of me not to mention how frustrated and disappointed those whose cruises we have canceled will be.

I know how much you were looking forward to your cruise vacation and all the fun. This along with the short notice we are giving some of you means I want to apologise, sincerely apologise for the disappointment we have caused you.

Your cruise refunds will be automatically processed to the original form of payment within three weeks and there will be a letter sent to each of you with details of this and how we will help each guest who has had their cruise canceled and offer future cruise discounts

We have reached out to our airline partners to request their cooperation in waiving change fees and will also be working with our guests on non-refundable airline change fees. Now the question I am sure I will be asked the most is “ why are we only finding this out now’? Let me answer that then if I can.
You see, we had sent our Carnival team to San Juan last weekend to assess and confirm our ability to resume operations in San Juan and had decided to confirm sailings on Monday. And then FEMA issued a formal request and we responded.

Carnival Fascination will return to normal cruise service sailing year-round from San Juan to the Southern Caribbean on February 18, 2018 following a drydock in the Grand Bahama shipyard where she will receive a number of new features including Guy’s Burger joint and Blue Iguana Cantina among other highlights.

I also want to mention something I know you will be asking me because so many of you care about the crew who for so many of our guests remain the best part of a Carnival cruise. So with that in mind I want to tell you what is happening here on the ship

The Captain and senior management are working on informing the crew. Some of them will be assigned to other ships, many will stay and work here to serve and assist the relief workers and some will be excited to be offered early vacation before returning to another ship or indeed back here to the Carnival Fascination.

Every crew member will be supported and looked after by Carnival and the ones staying on the Carnival Fascination during the FEMA charter will I know represent this great cruise line with care and dedication. I am proud of all of them.

So to all of you who have had your cruise canceled I hope that you will use your refund and future cruise credit and book another cruise with us soon. And I hope that your disappointment will be tempered just a bit by the knowledge that Carnival and FEMA will be helping the people of the Caribbean get back on their feet again.

Thank you for listening and please can I ask you to all share this post

#carnivalfamily.

John
.

About Scott Lara

President of MilitaryFares.com. Navy Veteran, Travel Agent, love to cruise!

Check Also

Norwegian Cruise Line to sail from Jacksonville

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (February 6, 2024) – Today, the JAXPORT Board of Directors unanimously approved a four-year …

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.