Carnival Cruise Line announced an extension to its sailing suspension, canceling cruises scheduled through March 31 in U.S. waters and pushing the line’s cruising resumption back to more than a year after the industry came to a standstill in the middle of March last year. 

Carnival also canceled select domestic itineraries into fall and one international cruise internationally in June, according to a statement provided by spokesperson Vance Gulliksen. 

While many of the schedule changes are in relation to pandemic-induced regulations, including voyage-length restrictions, some are also related to rescheduled dry-dock work.

The cancellations include: 

• All sailings from U.S. ports through March 31.
• Carnival Freedom’s April 10 sailing from Galveston.
• Carnival Miracle’s sailings from San Diego and San Francisco through Sept. 16.
• Carnival Liberty’s sailings from Port Canaveral from Sept. 17 through Oct. 18.
• Carnival Sunshine’s sailings from Charleston from Oct. 11 through Nov. 13.
• Carnival Spirit’s 15-day voyage from Singapore to Brisbane set to depart June 12.

“We are sorry to disappoint our guests, as we can see from our booking activity that there is clearly a pent-up demand for cruising on Carnival,” Christine Duffy, president of Carnival Cruise Line, said in the statement. 

Duffy added that the cruise line plans to resume operations in 2021 with a “phased-in approach,” a strategy the cruise line’s parent company, Carnival Corp., has referenced frequently since the onset of the pandemic. 

The cancellations come as the U.S. is seeing a continued upward trend in COVID-19 cases, reaching 21 million cases on Tuesday night, just over four days since reporting 20 million cases, Johns Hopkins data shows. And Georgia became the fifth state to report a case of the more contagious virus strain first identified in the United Kingdom, joining Colorado, California, Florida and New York. 

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Contributing: Adrianna Rodriguez and Jessica Flores

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