Apparently, Celebrity feels that its customers would prefer to sail from the Eastern Seaboard instead of visiting the Land Down Under, so the cruise line is discontinuing its voyages to beautiful and exotic Australia and New Zealand. The Millenium will finish her Alaska run completing cruises that were originally scheduled to be on the Mercury; then she will head down to San Juan, where she will sail to the Southern Caribbean for 10 and 11-night cruises. The Mercury will head to the Eastern Caribbean from Baltimore from November 2009 to February 2010, then she will sail to the Eastern and Western Caribbean from Charleston through April of that year.
Personally, I think this has both positive and negative impacts. A positive is that with the additional sailings to the Caribbean from the east coast and San Juan, clients have more choices for longer sailings to that area, as many cruises to the Caribbean are for 7 days only. With the economy the way it is, it seems that many people would prefer to sail out of ports close to home to avoid spending big bucks on airfare so this should work out well. However, the negative is that there will be fewer opportunities for clients to sail to Australia and New Zealand, especially for those clients that sail on upscale cruise lines like Celebrity. It's really a shame, but hopefully things will turn around and Celebrity will re-deploy some of its ships to that beautiful part of the world soon.
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