Barbara

every day it is a different story. today the story is that Carnival is not pulling out but is replacing the Fascination with a new ship, The Spirit. a smaller boat will be calling in between during the off season
the Disney Magic starts calling on Tuesday but will not be using the new docking facilities on the first trip.I guess they want to check things out
This is good news for the merchants in Philipsburg. The bad news is that the problems still have to be addressed or else St. Maarten really will lose cruise ship business.I hope this is a wake up call for the govenment to get its act together and start enforcing the regulations sot hat tourists getting off the cruise ships are not being harassed

John

Actually, Carnival IS dumping St M from April until November of 2001. Carnival claims that it may return in November, but a call to customer service resulted in the opposite. I was told that Carnival would NOT be stopping in St M for the "foreseeable future" due to "business issues" and "reguests from passengers." Who knows what the truth is, but surely the St M newspaper wants to put a positive spin on the issue.

Barbara

well, the St. Maarten newspaper directly quoted the Carnival line spokeperson so I don't think they are reporting what wasn't told to them
maybe it's Carnival who is giving everyone double messages here.

Marty

Thanx for the update Barbara

anon

I am guessing that is very possible that Carnival is pulling out because it couldn't come to terms with the "docking fees," etc. with the SXM gov't much like AA did with flights in/out of specific islands. AA was willing to cancel flights into some of the smaller islands unless the gov't coughed up big bucks for them to continue servicing the island! The "customer service/business issue" would be pax paying a fee, tax or an increase in fare to cover those fees and the other side of the coin is the island that has to maintain or increase services to handle the cruise ship hoards decending on the island. Caught in the middle are the merchants and business that are affected by the choice of stops.

who

St.Martin is better off not having to accommodate the type of people who travel on Carnival lines.