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 3, 2020 and the Disney Dream and Disney Wonder have been upgraded from provisionally green to Green allowing for commercial travel of crew. The CDC reports the Disney Dream and Disney Wonder No Sail Order Response Plan is complete and accurate with signed acknowledgment. As expected, the Disney Fantasy dropped from the list as she departed for Europe, out of CDC oversight.

As of Tuesday, August 4th, the Disney Dream and Disney Wonder are in a green with the CDC.

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.

Last week, a number of ships from Celebrity Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean moved to a green status. This week, there are 3 new ships (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
• Celebrity Eclipse
• Celebrity Edge
• Celebrity Millennium
• Celebrity Reflection
• Celebrity Silhouette
• Celebrity Summit
• Freedom of the Seas
• Liberty of the Seas
• Mariner 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 remains in Europe sailing to Brest, France, and is scheduled to meet up with the Disney Fantasy tomorrow, August 5th. As a result, the Disney Magic and Disney Fantasy do not fall under U.S. CDC jurisdiction thus not included.

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 July 30 (not updated for current week at time of publication), 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 Dream, for now until she departs for Europe, and Wonder remain in the vicinity of Port Canaveral while the Magic and Fantasy are in Europe sailing to France. Thankfully, other countries continue to help crew members return home, especially considering they have been quarantined on the ships for over 4 months.