Cruising In 2022

[iloveglee]

I wonder if anyone has, so far, taken a cruise this year, or late last year. if so, do you have any idea of how the covid testing regime panned out.

We are very keen to take a cruise later this year, around the greek islands. The greek government have now disbanded all covid policies, including requiring vaccines, but the cruise line demands not only fully vaccinated, but also a negative antigen test to get on board.

I fully understand their nervousness given the awful situations that arose during the early days of the pandemic, but the policy is a little bit confusing, and raises questions relating to being denied boarding/claiming on travel insurance. I have been in touch with the cruise line, and they clearly have not been asked this question already, as the person I spoke to was not sure about this either!!

So, what happens, if one person, in a group of 4, all on the same booking, tests positive. Does the whole party get bumped (which is logical), or just the one who is positive. If the only person to get bumped is the positive one(s) the others, who will not wish to travel, would presumably be classed as disinclination to travel and the insurance will not pay up. The cruise line do offer a reschedule of date in this situation, which isn't much use if the group may not be able to travel together in the future. The cruise is not transferable to someone else.

I am really looking to see if anyone has tried to cruise once they started up again, and been caught out with this kind of situation. I haven't gone ahead and booked the cruise yet, due to this uncertainty. In fact, I am wondering if cruising is something to not consider this year. It does seems now that the travel rules and restrictions are become almost too complicated to figure out. Does anyone else feel that way? We managed a week in Spain at the beginning of May, and they had no restrictions apart from having to show your vaccine document, and even then it was a very cursory look. All experiences and/or advices welcome.

[sddsddean]

Have you tried looking on the forum boards for your cruise line at
https://boards.cruisecritic.com/

[andy-hughes]

We cruise with P & O but all lines have different protocols for Covid.

If you are with P & O, come back for some specific info.

If not, check Facebook for groups that travel with your company, always lots of good advice there.

[iloveglee]

Thanks for answers. The cruise line we are looking at is Celestyal Cruises - specialists in greek island cruising. We are in Athens anyway, flights booked, so we are stuck with this departure port.

I have looked on cruise critic, but this line doesn't feature on their message boards. I am logged in but most of the lines are greyed out, only a few showing as accessible for messages. Pandemic related possibly.

I am still waiting for a written response from Celelstyal. Either on facebook or twitter, or a written query online to their customer services. Silence on all fronts. They are really good at calling you back, almost instantly, but the agent really had no idea, I don't think he'd been asked the question before.

I have established with our travel insurers that in the event of all of us being bumped, and the cruise line not offering a refund - which they don't - we'd not be obliged to take the reschedule due to its possible inconvenience - and we could claim for the cancellation.

They do have a passenger locator/health questionnaire form that you have to fill in, this is a normal procedure for norovirus, and on there it does ask if you have been in contact with/caring for someone with covid in the past 14 days. Which clearly you would have if one of your fellow travellers is positive. However, it goes on to say that this form is collected after you've boarded? Which makes no sense at all. Either they haven't properly thought this through, or the whole explanation has lost something in the translation from the original Greek.