CANCELED MY CARNIVAL CRUISE, RCCL CRUISERS NOT ALLOWED TO BOARD, CRUISE BACON SHORTAGE - CRUISE NEWS

Cruise news time! Wow, there continues to be a lot to talk about in the cruising space. Jam-packed show for you today. And then the big breaking news is we've decided to cancel our cruise coming up on the Mardi Gras on the 21st. Less than a week to cruise. We've decided to cancel. I'll tell you why. Let's talk about it. Hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome back to La Lido Loca. I'm your host, Tony, here with the latest cruise news updates. Well, let me get this out of the way straight away. A lot of people have reached out. Have I seen the latest video from our friend's pair of DJ? Yes, I have seen the latest video from our friend's pair of DJ, and our thoughts and prayers go out to them as Dee is working on recovering from COVID. She tested positive on the Mardi Gras. Their video goes into all the details, so I will let them tell that story. But just to answer everybody's question, yes, I'm in the loop on that. I've reached out to them. It sounds like they've made it home and that they're beginning that recuperation process. So again, send some positive vibes to our friend's pair of DJ as they deal with getting Dee through the virus. And so we can't wait to see them on their next adventure. And a lot of you asked, did I see that Don had canceled his Mardi Gras cruise? Yes, I talked to Don before he canceled his Mardi Gras cruise. I do know what was going on with Don. There is a bit of irony there. We kind of enticed Don to go on this cruise because it was a cruise that Jenny and I were jumping on secretly, not really going to tell anybody to celebrate our birthday. And then he spoiled the surprise and told everybody, and then he backed out. So yeah, I'm familiar. I've got more to say about what's going on with Don when I tell you why we've canceled the Mardi Gras. But before we get too much deeper, I just remember I need to say thank you to the sponsor of today's show. Thank you Surfshark VPN for sponsoring the cruise news today. Surfshark VPN, it's a great tool. And I feel like if you're traveling right now, it is essential. When you go traveling, you connect to all of these public Wi-Fi's. I've worked in IT. I've worked in IT security. Public Wi-Fi is one of the worst places for getting your data exposed. There's not a lot of security when you're in a hotel full of people. If you get somebody that, let me just say this, public Wi-Fi bad. That's what we used to tell everybody that worked with us at the corporations. Public Wi-Fi is bad. So you want to use a VPN. And VPN basically makes a secure tunnel for your data, keeps it away from prying eyes. It allows you to, a lot of us on cruises, have you ever done this? You're getting toward the end of your cruise. You know, you got a credit card out there to pay your cruise bill. And you're wondering like, well, do I have enough to cover the balance? I bought a few extra drinks or I spent a little more at the casino. I need to check my credit card. You do that publicly. It could be a little bit dangerous. VPN allows you to make a secure connection to the internet so that you can do things like look at your bank transactions without the prying eyes. The cool thing I like about Surfshark VPN is it's one price, covers all your devices, your mobile devices, your laptops, all that. As always, Surfshark has a deal for the Loka fam. Use the promo code LALITALOKA to get 83% off plus three extra months free of Surfshark. Surfshark offers a 30-day money back guarantee, so there's no risk. You can surf with your own set of rules. The link is in the description. Thank you, Surfshark, for your continued sponsorship of the show. All right. For the next couple of cruise news stories, we're going to jump over into the computer. Let me show you what I'm talking about. I just pulled this up, this Business Insider article just for the headline. Royal Caribbean bars passengers not vaccinated for COVID-19 from cruise to Alaska. The article goes on, and there's several of these articles out there. This article goes on to say that six people, they flew all the way to Seattle. They went to get on cruise ship. When they showed up at the cruise port, they were unvaccinated and they were turned away. They said they did not know that they were supposed to be vaccinated. They knew that Royal Caribbean was sailing with vaccinated and unvaccinated people. They did not know. They made the whole trip to Seattle, and they had to stand on the docks and watch their cruise ship sail away. They've gone to the media with it. We talked about it just the other day in the video Five Mistakes Cruisers Are Making Right Now, not knowing what your pre-cruise protocols are, not knowing what your vaccine protocols are. These people said they did not know that they had to do this. What I said in that video the other day, I'll link it above, make sure you watch it, is that before you go on a cruise, make sure that you know what your health protocols are. Here's how hard it is. I just Googled Royal Caribbean. I'm on Royal Caribbean's landing page, and right here at the top, it says, cruising returns this summer. Learn about protocols for a healthy return to sea. I click that. Here we are at their landing page. You slide down, third paragraph, vaccination, testing, and travel document requirements. This isn't hidden, folks. Click the link. See travel requirements for your cruise vacation. Where are you sailing from? All right. Sailing from Seattle. All right. Oh, here we go. Vaccine requirements for cruises departing Seattle in August 2021. All guests age 12 and older must present proof of COVID-19 vaccination with the final dose of the vaccine administered at least 14 days before sailing. How long did it take us to get there? Look, I am empathetic for anybody that gets all the way to Seattle and then to have their cruise disrupted, but I tell you what, if the information was that easy for me who doesn't have a cruise on Royal Caribbean from Seattle to figure out, I don't know what to tell these folks. I would not be going on the news complaining about it. I would just try to do what I could and lesson learn it. All right. And let me jump out for a second and tell you about another mistake I saw that I did not include in that video. The day I was leaving the MSC Meraviglia, there was 50 to 100 people at customer service trying to settle their bill. As I was leaving the cruise ship, debarking the cruise ship, they were pulling people out of line who have not settled their bill. If you go on a cruise ship and you haven't paid enough money or you haven't provided your credit card, get it done before the day that you're trying to leave the cruise ship. I saw so many people upset like, oh, yeah, yeah, of course, I didn't get my credit card and I didn't make sure my credit card had enough balance or I'm paying in cash and I didn't pay enough cash. I can't believe now I got to go through all this rigmarole before. Of course, you got to go through the rigmarole. The cruise ship is not going to let you off there owing a balance. So let that be known. A couple of days before your cruise is over, just pull up on the app or pull up on the TV or go to one of the kiosks, go to guest services and say, how much money do I owe and do I have some sort of payment in place for that? And if the answer is no, pay your bill or you're going to have a horrible disembarkation. I saw 100 people have a really bad disembarkation because they're trying to figure out how to pay their bill. No good. So let's go from talking about paying your bill on the cruise line to the question of whether cruise lines should report to the public exactly how many COVID cases are on it. I've been contemplating thinking about this for a few days, especially since I did that video that shows where you can go and see which cruise ships have COVID cases on the CDC. Make sure you check out that video. I'll link that above. But today, as I was looking in the cruise news, I saw this article right here from the Sun Sentinel. Cruise lines won't say how many infections are on board their ships. Look, I can't get into it. You got to you got to be a subscriber. Boom. They done hit me with the paywall. But look, I got the gist. I've been thinking about this for a few days. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention don't require ships to disclose COVID-19 infection data. Hope you get what's going on here. The cruise lines, all they have to do is report the cases to the CDC over on that color coded website. And the CDC is going to work out that color coding and say whether or not cruises can continue. If cruise ships are under the right color, then they can continue to cruise. They got to be all the way red before they're not going to be able to cruise. And so the cruise lines, that's where they're reporting to. From what I understand, cruise lines are not required to report to the public the amount of cases that are on cruise ships. It begs a great question. Are you concerned with the exact number of cases that are on a cruise ship and all the detail and all the minutia around those cases? Are you interested because it's going to help you make a cruise decision? Are you interested because you believe that's what transparency should be? For me, that CDC website was eye opening because the day that I hit it for the first time, almost every cruise ship that was cruising with paying passengers across all cruise lines had reported some sort of COVID case. And because I've been cruising over the last couple of months, I've been seeing cases on cruise ships play out in different ways. First, you're finding cases because of testing. There is a very rigorous testing protocol around crew members. Crew members are primarily vaccinated. Most cruise lines are getting to that 100% level of vaccinated crew members. And so testing is finding breakthrough cases. They're finding vaccinated people who have tested positive for the virus. And in most cases, they're not showing any symptoms. They're asymptomatic. But I have also been in a scenario where there have been people on cruise ships that have not felt well and presented themselves to the medical facility and have tested positive for the virus. That's the way it was on the Celebrity Edge for me. There was a fully vaccinated person not feeling well who went to the medical facility, was tested and tested positive for the virus. Do I need to know exactly the number of cases? Is that going to sway my decision? For me personally, it's not. I am content with the color-coded system. I am content with the idea that the cruise lines are reporting to the CDC and I'm fine with that. But I don't know that everybody is. And so I wanted to open up that conversation. Does it matter to you the exact number of cases on a cruise ship? Should cruise lines be reporting that? Why? And that's that conversation. I feel like we're all over the place. Now we're back at the computer. I want to talk about why we are canceling the Carnival Mardi Gras on the 21st while we're not going to go. But before I get there, let me quickly invite you to subscribe. If you like staying up to date with everything that's going on in cruising, please consider subscribing with the notification bell on. That way you don't miss out on these episodes. It doesn't cost anything. It helps the channel out greatly. Get us to a million subscribers. Is that too much of a stretch goal? Thank you in advance. All right. Why are we not going on the Carnival Mardi Gras? So you might surmise that we're not going on the Carnival Mardi Gras because Carnival done did my friend Don dirty. It's not that. Don would not want us to cancel because of the challenges he's having getting tested. I do feel a lot of sympathy for Don. Yeah, Don, he can't get a test. And to rearrange his schedule to get a test in a timely fashion, it will cost him a lot of extra money. Makes sense to me that Don doesn't want to go through the extra hassle to get the test and get back. It would be easier if Carnival would give him the test. But we're not not going on the Mardi Gras out of protest. Now, if you've guessed the second reason why we might not go on the Carnival Mardi Gras, this one would make more sense than even Don. This was a few days ago from August the 13th from John Heald. Just to recap what I said on today's live video, John Heald is the brand ambassador for Carnival. A lot of times he's the messenger for things that are going on in Carnival. If you want to stay up to date with everything that's going on in Carnival, follow John Heald's Facebook page. Just to recap what I said on today's live video, our suppliers are having some challenges sourcing bacon for the ships. I promise this has nothing to do with my sailing on Carnival Horizon and Mardi Gras over the last six weeks. Good one, John. We are going to temporarily move to an every other day schedule for bacon at the Lido Buffet. If you see this sign up on the Lido on your cruise, it's because it's the day we won't be serving bacon. But no fear, it will be back the next day. Just a little vacation for the day. Meanwhile, there will still be breakfast ham and sausage. No one loves bacon more than me. If I can do this, you can do this too. This tragic event could have happened to us on the Mardi Gras where bacon was only available every other day. I am super fascinated by this approach. This seems like you're just setting yourself up for people to be annoyed. I don't care if there's bacon every other day. If I went on the cruise ship and they said, hey, sorry, we're out of bacon, I would have adjusted. I would have something else to eat. They got a whole bacon ain't here sign. How about that? I just thought it would be hilarious. I don't know if there's any good tick tockers out there or short form content makers, but it would be funny to see somebody go and pick up like their two 12 packs of Coke and to swing by and pick up a pound of bacon. Would that be a hilarious tick tock? I just don't have the time to do all that. But yeah. So but look, let me set you at ease. We're not canceling our carnival Mardi Gras because of the every other day bacon shocker. I know. I know the reason we are canceling our carnival Mardi Gras cruise and this hit us on Friday. And it's it's very challenging. Friday, the CDC came out and said that people that are moderately or severely immunocompromised need one more shot to have the best chance of the vaccine fighting off COVID. This isn't a booster. This is like if you want your full vaccination, you need to have three shots. And it's based on studies that the CDC have done. They found that of the breakthrough cases, many of the breakthrough cases that resulted in hospitalization are people that are immunocompromised. Some of you may know it. Some of you may not know it, but Jenny has psoriasis. She's dealt with it her whole life. Psoriasis is an immunocompromised disease, and she also takes medicine to deal with it. And that medicine also messes with her immune system. It messes with her immune response. That's significant because we've been working under the assumption that if we do have a breakthrough case, it'll just be some sort of mild COVID that we can work through at home. But the data is suggesting that if you are immunocompromised, you have a greater risk of your breakthrough case resulting in severe enough COVID where you have to go to the hospital. And the last thing any of us want is to see Jenny go to the hospital. So the next step for us is to get Jenny the third shot. That'll give us a period of time between now and our cruise on the Mardi Gras in October. And hopefully that will help with the variant. This is a graph of our county. You can see that there are a lot more cases in our county than at any other time during this process. And so this gives us an opportunity for some time to pass, hopefully some control to happen when it comes to this Delta variant, and we can get Jenny on a cruise ship where she can enjoy it. It's a huge bummer. We're both very excited to check out the Mardi Gras, of course, to hang out with everybody that was going to be there. But we've thought about it. We've prayed about it. And we really feel like this is the wisest thing for us to do. And yeah, that's the story. Let me kick the question over to you. A lot of interesting topics today. Do you feel any sympathy for the people that went all the way to Seattle to only find out they needed to be vaccinated to cruise? Do you want to know exactly how many COVID cases are on cruise ships? When's your next cruise? Has any of this Delta stuff made you reconsider cruising? Lots of conversation to have there. Please leave a comment below. Thank you so much for checking out the show today. Please show your support by hitting the like button or your mouse and wireless keyboard battery will die and you have to go find a regular keyboard so that you can get your computer working again. This is Tony with Live Lido Loca and until the next time, we'll see you on the Lido. Bye.