October 20th Sailing Norwegian Bliss
Altered by Hurricane Willa
We've returned from National Conference and will continue our October #ChooseCruise mini-series. Internet on Norwegian Bliss was fine for social media posts (which hopefully you followed) but blogging was another story.
Agents and guests of Cruises Inc, CruiseOne, and Dream Vacations 2018 Inspire Conference on the brand new Norwegian Bliss, departed the Port of Los Angeles (Long Beach) as scheduled on October 20th. Plans called for 3 sea days and 3 port days in the Mexican Riviera (as shown in the itinerary below).
Shortly after we sailed, while we were at dinner, the captain announced that due to the high seas expected from then Tropical Storms Vincente and Willa, we were altering our course for San Francisco, San Diego, and Ensenada, Mexico.
This was our 13th conference, that we attended, and it was only the second time that Mother Nature had interfered with the original plans, and the first time that the change occurred after departure. So, I guess that's a pretty good track record, considering we always sail during Hurricane Season for our national conference.
The first time we had a course correction was in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. We were to have sailed from New Orleans, but instead departed from Galveston, Texas. In that case, we needed to rearrange flights, but the basic itinerary was only slightly modified. This time, there were no flight changes needed, since we would still depart and return form Long Beach, CA.
While we were disappointed that we wouldn't be able to do our planned shore activities in Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, and Puerto Vallarta, we were grateful that we would still be able to have our complete conference itinerary and enjoy 3 ports of call. Cruise lines have the right to modify itineraries for any reason, and we are happy that they consider safety of passengers, crew and ship as a priority.
Changing cruise itineraries is no small feat, and we'll focus on that for the rest of this post.
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| Original Itinerary - Mexican Riviera |
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| Revised Itinerary - Baja California |
The Jones Act: The Passenger Vessel Services Act, (PVSA), 46 U.S.C. § 55103 (b), prohibits commercial vessels such as cruise ships from allowing passengers to board at one U.S. port and debark at another U.S. port. Such travel would constitute point-to-point transportation between two U.S ports, which is prohibited on foreign flagged ships.
You'll see from our modified itinerary map above that we made a stop in Ensenada, Mexico prior to returning to our point of embarkation in Long Beach. That is due to the Jones Act restrictions.
The Jones Act played an important part of our conference cruise, since original plans called for certain cruise line and other suppliers joining us or departing from one or more of the ports of call along our original route. There are fines that can be paid to circumvent the requirements. See the following on the
Customs and Border Patrol website for more information about the act and fines.
Norwegian Cruise Line picked up about $20,000 in fines to accommodate suppliers that were embarking or debarking in ports other than Long Beach (in other words only completing a portion of the cruise without first going to a foreign port).
Planning for our conference began about a year ago, right after the last one. Many of those plans had to be modified, in a matter of hours, due to the change to our itinerary.
We still had the 3 sea days, which is when the bulk of our meetings occur, but now they were on different days, and some suppliers would not be able to attend, on the given day or at all, due to conflicts in scheduling, inability to get flights, or other logistical difficulties.
Cooler temperatures at night meant we moved indoors to the Observation Lounge for some events.
The cruise line staff worked closely with our headquarters team to make all the necessary modifications and the conference went off without any issues. If you've ever considered hosting your conference at sea, this story should take some of the fears away - cruise lines are definitely quite adept at dealing with logistical nightmares due caused by natural or other disasters and your conference will go and still be successful.
Thank you to Camille Olivere, Senior Vice President, Norwegian Cruise Line, and the entire Norwegian Cruise Line team for all you did to make Inspire 2018 Conference a huge success.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Mexico impacted by Hurricane Willa. Knowing the cruise industry, we will be there to assist in rebuilding and getting people visiting again.
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