Celebrity Cruises has just formally canceled a whole range of their popular Pacific Coastal cruises for the spring that are usually the shoulder-season waters for the Alaska-bound cruise ships before they’re heading up north.
While the line hasn’t sent emails to all affected customers yet I found the information when I checked my already booked cruises and got the notification that the Celebrity Eclipse Voyages are all canceled.
This is rather annoying as the Pacific Coastal sailings are pretty popular with people especially in California as it gives them the opportunity of taking a nice cruise without having to travel across the entire country.
In my case, I had booked the Celebrity Eclipse from Los Angeles and then up the coast to Vancouver on April 16th which is the last coastal sailing before the Eclipse does Alaska for the summer.
It wasn’t meant to be:
The precursor for this was that the option to book these sailings suddenly disappeared from the website since last week which is rather odd as there was still plenty of availability when I book my own onboard the Celebrity EDGE two weeks ago (comped onboard offer from the Casino).
Celebrity has now taken all Pacific Coastal cruises out of their inventory except for one, the 10-night Celebrity Millennium from San Diego to Vancouver with a pretty nice itinerary:
Rebooking my sailing to this one would have been nice but for one this is a 10-night cruise rather than 7 nights for which my Casino comp is eligible for and there are only basic inside and porthole (window) cabins available, not the Aqua Class my booking was for.
Instead, I just rebooked to an Alaska cruise on the beautiful Solstice out of Seattle again. I’m not sure if Canada will be a problem once again and what the situation is in May but going out of Seattle is a safer bet at the moment.
If Canada decides to be a princess again maybe (probably) congress will extend the Alaska Tourism Recovery Act that was signed by the President last year, allowing cruise ships to bypass Canadian ports as an exemption from the Passenger Vessel Services Act:
President Biden Has Signed Bill H.R. 1318 Allowing Alaska Cruises To Sail From Seattle – Now What?
Either way, it’s a long stretch all the way until May when the Alaska cruising season starts, and a bit too early to worry about these things. I just thought the next best thing to my coastal cruise would be to just swap it for Alaska which has never disappointed me so far.
It’s a bummer that those who were booked on the Eclipse now have to make alternate arrangements. I wonder when Celebrity would get around actually notifying people about this? In my case, I got wind of it early on and decided to call them for a “Lift & Shift” of the cruise which is the name of last year’s policy that allowed to freely move cruises around before others have the same idea and the great cabins are gone.
Conclusion
Celebrity Cruises is the latest cruise line that decided to cancel sailings that were as far as three months out from now. It’s hard to say what their motivation behind this was as it’s still a good amount of time before these trips would start and the Eclipse is now free until Alaska starts. Who knows what will happen with her until then.
I already shifted my booked itinerary to another sailing, going to Alaska instead. This will be a beautiful trip as well and probably more interesting than just going up the west coast to Vancouver.
Keep an eye open on your cruise itineraries for the next months, they might get canceled and the cruise lines are usually not very fast notifying passengers.