Royal Caribbean Cruises has announced that it intends to sail from Florida, but a new law may complicate matters.
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Royal Caribbean Returns to Service
Cruise enthusiasts rejoice, Royal Caribbean International is ready to set sail again. After working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 15 months (since the “No Sail Order” was put into place) the cruise line will operate its Celebrity Cruises ship, Celebrity Edge, on June 26th for a seven-night western Caribbean trip.
The trip that will visit both the Bahamas and Mexico will cruise from Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, one of the busiest cruise terminals in the country. The departure location was likely chosen both due to infrastructure and as a symbolic gesture. Florida offers cruises from all over the state including Tampa, Jacksonville, and Port Canaveral adjoining the Kennedy Space Center.
But wait, there’s more.
New Law
In order to become approved for the cruise outside of the No Sail Order, RCL had to ensure all travelers and crew members would be fully vaccinated.
“Celebrity Cruises spokesperson Susan Lomax said the company has opted to comply with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccination threshold and will require all crew and passengers 16 years old and older to be vaccinated. The age requirement will drop to 12 years old on Aug. 1.”
However, Florida Governor DeSantis just signed SB 2006 into law that states that makes it impossible for RCL to ask for proof of vaccination.
“Additionally, the legislation codifies the prohibition of COVID-19 vaccine passports. Governor DeSantis enacted this prohibition through an executive order last month, blocking any business or government entity from requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination.”
A spokesman for Governor DeSantis extemporized outside of the press release the exact conundrum that the cruise lines will find themselves in:
“We’ve been very clear, the law is clear in Florida,” said Taryn Fenske, spokesperson for the governor. “You can’t mandate vaccine passports. We are interested to see how the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) works with them so that they don’t get these exorbitant fines.” – Tampa Bay Times
Will It Sail?
The question remains as to whether or not the first new cruise will actually sail.
To review:
- The CDC had prohibited new sailings but has allowed this one so long as all the passengers and crew are vaccinated.
- Florida law prohibits and can fine (up to $5,000) any business that asks customers their vaccination status
That leaves this ship and future cruises in choppy waters. How can Royal Caribbean prove to the CDC that it has complied and all of their staff and passengers are vaccinated while at the same time not asking it nor requiring it?
The Governor’s order might work well against landlocked, permanently affixed businesses, but many fly to Florida to start their cruise vacations the prior night, cruising the next morning. Would those travelers choose to fly to Galveston, New York, Boston, or San Diego instead? Will cruise lines who have to remain compliant with both the ports they serve and the overarching governmental departments like the TSA, Homeland Security, and in this case, the CDC, move their best ships out of those cruise ports for the time being?
In the case of the larger return to the water, the above issues may move ports of call elsewhere, but for this particular cruise, it will set sail prior to SB 2006’s enactment on July 1st, 2021 and therefore it will likely sail regardless.
Conclusion
Governor DeSantis might have scored a victory for his right-leaning electorate in the fight against vaccine passports and required vaccination (and disclosure) of its citizenry. Businesses can still choose to require masks or take other precautions, they can also shut their doors if they choose to only sell to vaccinated persons and require proof of inoculation. However, if cruise lines feel that they must sail with explicit knowledge of the vaccination staff of passengers and cannot do so in the state of Florida, the Governor may have some very upset local business owners. That is if both cruise lines and passengers both choose against cruises from Florida. It should make for an interesting showdown.
What do you think? Will the first new cruise set sail? Will Florida acquiesce or allow exceptions? Will the CDC be able to enforce its vaccination requirement?
Desantis is a dipwad. No one in their right mind would cruise unless all passengers are vaccinated. Maybe Celebrity just pays the $5000 as the cost of doing business.
That’s, uh, $5000 per passenger.
this whole thing is a big mess.
@CR – That’s the way I read the rule.
Are masks required on this particular cruise?
It’s unclear. The way they did things on MSC’s first cruise out of London (Southampton), you either had to be vaccinated or test negative and people were required to wear masks in the same context as on land (e.g. yes when indoors, no when on the deck or while working out).
I wonder if RC could require a small insurance policy from each passenger that is purchased from another company (outside of Florida), and that company offers to sell insurance, with discounts for proof of vaccination?
So a workaround perhaps? RC isn’t requiring the vaccination proof, the insurance company is….
And of course the price for the insurance is $infinity for the non-vaccinated, and a pittance for vaccinated? Or maybe won’t see to non-vaccinated at all?
I don’t see why RC doesn’t just move their cruises outside of Florida. I get that Florida has by far the biggest cruise ship infrastructure, but I imagine this season is going to be pretty tentative and there shouldn’t be too many issues.
It’s fully insane to me that a state governor can override federal regulations for a ship that while stopping in Florida, will remain in US (not Florida) waters while it’s there and then sail to international waters and ports of call. Also this whole standoff is telling that DeSantis and Republicans care more about appealing to the Trump cult than they do about small business owners and workers or even freedom. These cruises bring tons of money to small businesses and workers in Florida and to prevent the cruise lines from running their businesses as they see fit is not freedom, it’s government overreach.
I’m not saying we should have a situation at this time with where COVID is in the US, where any businesses are forced to require vaccine mandates, but the state also shouldn’t prevent businesses from requiring proof of vaccination. While that might not work so well for a local business, I have to imagine cruise lines probably would rather require proof of vaccines than risk an outbreak on their ship.
The stock photo appears to be a Costa Cruises ship, not an RCL ship.
@Robert makes sense, except these vaxes are not approved. Emergency Use Only. No insurer would touch it.
It’s not intended to be insurance itself….maybe that was a bad scenario/choice?
How about required certification/assessment for traveling in a pandemic? Good hygiene practices, etc.?
The certification would require a vaccination confirmation and passing a basic quiz?
hey – I have scheduled cruises upcoming and this has become quite important. I’m trying to figure out if the libertarian RDS is preventing me from harmful demands (option 1) or
Preventing me from taking a cruise I’ve paid for but can’t join because my vaccination (choice) doesn’t meet his cruising no-vax rule (option 2).
Right now I’m in “heads I win, tails you lose” on the part of RDS, and can’t understand his position.
Jeff your the Liberal DIPWAD!! Our Governor is trying to give people their rights and freedom in Florida vs the liberal left-sided states taking away their rights and freedoms!!
I wonder if a workaround could be to require vaccination proof to re-board the ship at the intermediate ports, as opposed to requiring it to board the ship in Florida?
This controversy over “Vaccine Passports” is created by those who are *beholden* to Big Pharma! What should be the *real* end goal — societal *immunity* against COVID-19, whether through “vaccines” or *not*! Once you’ve been exposed to COVID-19 and recovered, you have just as robust, if not *more* robust, natural immunity for the future! I’ve read that a projected 50% of people in USA could already have such innate immunity by having recovered from prior exposures to COVID-19 (lightly symptomatic or asymptomatic), so they theoretically should *not* even need to get jabbed!
What we *really* need are “Immunity Certificates” that certify personal immunity, rather than “Vaccine Passports,” because such Certificates do *not* discriminate against those who have natural immunity — don’t we need to be absolutely “Equitable” in how we treat everyone who can *resist* COVID-19, whether by natural immunity or by “vaccination”?
For all those who love to share that you are vaccinated and that others should demonstrate they are two, will you feel the same when a family member has a condition causing elevated risk of severe cardiovascular events, early onset cognitive disorder and potential employers feel entitled to go fishing for medical status. How about inquiring on whether a woman is pregnant? Medical privacy laws exist for a reason. Every exception is narrow and justified until it is neither narrow nor related to the orignal exception. If Congress wants to pass a law overriding FL and justifying disclosure of vaccination status, they can pass a law. They haven’t. They punted to regulation from unelected public health organization with zero enforcement capacity. Stop yelling at anti-vaxers and start yelling at the politicians you elected that cannot/will not do the job of protecting public health.
I suppose, Dee, that you’re (note: it’s not spelled ‘your’) also against seatbelts. And No Smoking signs. And stop lights and pedestrian crosswalks, and a thousand other rules and regulations that are robbing poor little you of your rights and freedoms. Grow-up!
Clearly, Ron DeSantis isn’t the only DIPWAD in Florida.
The interesting “bigger picture” question here is that GOP politicians across the South and West are mandating a variety of intrusive “big government” policies and executive orders – exactly the thing the GOP is allegedly against. In Texas and Florida – among others – cities and counties have been stripped of their rights to enact local legislation and ordinances, giving the State primacy over local matters; again, exactly what the GOP alleges it is against doing showing itself to be the party of feckless hypocrites. Insofar as cruise ships, RCL is attempting to make the cruising experience as safe and secure as possible (after the debacle of the COVID outbreaks across cruise ships in 2020), the company should be applauded, not penalized.