The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released their color-coded status update for individual cruise ships operating within their jurisdiction for the week of August 24, 2020 and the Disney Dream and Disney Wonder remain in a Green status allowing for commercial travel of crew. Although, the last update was technically Friday, August 21st.
As of Friday, August 21st, the Disney Dream and Disney Wonder remain green with with a complete and accurate No Sail Order response plan per the CDC. It is expected the Disney Dream will be dropped from the list as she is sailing to Brest, France for repatriation and dry/wet dock, not to escape CDC oversight like a South Florida newspaper suggests.
CDC’s Green Ship Criteria
- No confirmed cases of COVID-19 or COVID-like illness for 28 days, as determined by a qualified medical professional.
- If the ship received ship-to-ship transfers within the past 28 days, crew must have come from a ship that had no confirmed COVID-19 or COVID-like illness within the 28 days before the transfer occurred.
- If land-based crew embarked, they were immediately quarantined for 14 days upon embarking the ship.
Note: To maintain Green status, ships must submit a weekly EDC form to CDC. Failure to submit, changes ship status to Red. Green ship status means that CDC believes the ship is currently unaffected by COVID-19 based on information provided by the cruise ship operator.
This week, there is 1 new ship (shown in bold below) in a Green status allowing for commercial crew travel through the CDC process. Those include:
- Grand Celebration
- Disney Dream
- Disney Wonder
- MSC Armonia
- MSC Meraviglia
- MSC Preziosa
- MSC Seaside
- Celebrity Eclipse
- Celebrity Edge
- Celebrity Equinox
- Celebrity Millennium
- Celebrity Reflection
- Celebrity Silhouette
- Celebrity Summit
- Adventure of the Seas
- Brilliance of the Seas
- Enchantment of the Seas
- Freedom of the Seas
- Grandeur of the Seas
- Harmony of the Seas
- Liberty of the Seas
- Mariner of the Seas
- Navigator of the Seas
- Oasis of the Seas
- Rhapsody of the Seas
- Symphony of the Seas
- Vision of the Seas
At this time, the Disney Magic and Disney Fantasy are in Europe and, therefore, do not fall under U.S. CDC jurisdiction thus not included. It is anticipated the Disney Dream will drop off the list next week since she is no longer near a US port of call.
For additional details, please see our previous article when the CDC introduced the color-coded rating for cruise ships. You can view the status, updated each Monday, for all cruise ships currently operating in U.S. waters, or seeking to operate in U.S. waters over on the CDC’s website.
It is very important to note, meeting the CDC’s criteria does not mean a cruise ship can resume passenger service. At this time, the CDC does not have enough information to say when it will be safe to resume passenger sailings. According to the CDC, cruise lines may need to establish additional safety measures before sailing with passengers is permitted to resume. CDC will continue to evaluate and update its recommendations as the situation evolves.
Disney Cruise Line Crew Repatriation Update
As of August 25th, there have been 1,346 Disney Cruise Line crew members repatriated through CDC approved disembarkations – this does NOT include those repatriated via stops through the Caribbean.
Due to the CDC’s constraints limiting commercial travel, the ships had been sailing to various ports in the Caribbean and the Magic to Europe to drop off crew members. The Disney Wonder remains in the vicinity of Port Canaveral while the Magic and Fantasy are in Europe with the Dream nearing her arrival in France. Thankfully, other countries continue to help crew members return home, especially considering they have been quarantined on the ships for over 4 months.
My effort to summarize the public comments which have been submitted for the CDC’s request for information related to cruise ship planning and infrastructure, resumption of passenger operations stalled a bit over the last week. It remains a work in progress, but all current public comments submitted to the government for the CDC’s review can be viewed on our CDC COVID-19 Cruise Ship Public Comments page which also has some summary stats, but those are really in the infancy at this point as each comment must be reviewed. So far, there are over 2100 comments and only about 600 have been summarized. Like I said, it is a work in progress and with hundreds of comments published on some days, this is becoming a challenge.