I don't know how it works, but if you lose everything now if you canceled, and would lose the same later if you cancel, you might wait. You would need to find that out. I guess airfare and the cruise itself might be separate things and you may have to cancel one in advance to maybe save some money, but then risk not being able to get to the cruise perhaps.
There might come a point soon where the cruises themselves cancel. They might not yet in the hope the virus wanes, but late May seems early I think. As for later, getting into the summer, no one knows how this might act in the summer in the Northern Hemisphere. We'll have to see how it acts right now in the Southern Hemisphere where it is summer going into fall.
The Reason for the Season: why flu strikes in winter:
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2014/the-reason-for-the-season-why-flu-strikes-in-winter/
This is again, not the influenza, but the coronavirus, but the question is uncertain what might happen. There is still a chance it won't become widespread, though based on things in the past few days that's become more and more unlikely. And it doesn't seem like it would be on the decline by May.
Cruise ships at this very moment are not a good idea. If one person gets sick with something that looks like it could be coronavirus a cruise ship would be quarantined I would assume, with no country letting them off, until they determined it wasn't. Or if it was, then you get into the place where the Diamond Princess was in. I would assume that other countries wouldn't be quite like Japan. They should have gotten everyone off that ship and housed them elsewhere. I would assume a cruise leaving from the U.S. would be allowed to come back and everyone would be quarantined on land, but maybe not. That's not a simple task, or cheap. If it gets so bad though around the country, quarantine won't be very effective though in that case. If it's already everywhere, letting people off with it may be something they might do. But then again, maybe not. We might be getting into territory we haven't really ever seen, at least in the last century.
If it does get everywhere though, I think cruises won't leave or go to those places. The cruise lines themselves may be forced to shut down or do it themselves, which might mean you get a refund if they did. There is a limited amount of airlines that have been allowing changes without fees I believe. You'll have to look into that. Some airlines are already asking for employees to take some time off because of reduced routes.
Cruises might alter their routes if they are going too. They might not end up making any stops. Leaving and returning to where they came from. That might be some of what they do first. I'm not sure how cruises are operating in the Caribbean right now.
At some point though it would probably make sense for cruises to stop running and they might make that decision themselves. They not only put the passengers at risk, but the crew. I don't know how early on cruises sell out of a ship, but it's not likely people are booking cruises now. If they weren't already booked, you'll have a lot of empty space I would assume. So it may not be worth it to operate, And it would be a mess if someone on the ship got it and there had to be a quarantine of some kind. I'm not sure who would pay for that. |