Carnival cruise passengers to return to Norfolk instead of Baltimore after Key Bridge collapse
Carnival Cruise ships will be rerouted to Norfolk, Virginia, after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge closed the Port of Baltimore for the foreseeable future.
Cruise passengers in the middle of a seven-day trip to the Bahamas on the Carnival Legend that was scheduled to return to Baltimore on Sunday will instead disembark in the southeastern Virginia city, according to Christine Duffy, president of Carnival Cruise Line.
Passengers will receive complimentary bus transportation back to Baltimore, a distance of about 233 miles, Duffy said in a news release late Tuesday.
In addition, future cruises on the Carnival Legend and Carnival Pride, including one scheduled to leave on Sunday, will depart and return from the southeastern Virginia city.
As the cruise industry struggles to reroute ships, at least one expert doesn’t think the damage done to the travel ship business — nationally or in Baltimore — will likely be permanent.
Carolyn Spencer Brown, a travel journalist, consultant and former editor of Cruise Critic, an online review website, said that the industry has rebounded from the losses it incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic resulting from social distancing mandates and well-publicized reports of shipboard illness.
“Cruises for the next few months are fully booked,” Brown said. “In the short-term, the cruise lines are scrambling like mad to figure out how to reroute their ships and how to minimize the inconvenience to travelers.
“The long-term effect will depend on how the bridge is rebuilt. Baltimore is never going to be a superpower port, but it has a lot to offer. It has the capacity to be a bigger cruise port than it is now.”
According to the Cruise Lines International Association, Baltimore is the nation’s 29th busiest port, moving about 378,000 passengers annually. Twelve ships were scheduled to dock at the port 115 times during 2024, the Association said.
The Port of Baltimore’s Cruise Maryland Terminal is home to four cruise lines: Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian and American Cruises.
Royal Caribbean is currently in the midst of a 12-night Caribbean cruise aboard the Vision of the Seas that departed March 23 and was scheduled to return to Baltimore April 4. The cruise line wrote in an email on Tuesday that “our port logistics team is currently working on alternatives for Vision of the Seas’ ongoing and upcoming sailings” and that updates would be communicated to passengers.
Norwegian, a relatively new line at the port which provides cruises between Baltimore and New England and Canada, Bermuda and the Caribbean, operates a fall and winter schedule and had no cruises scheduled immediately for Baltimore.
American’s cruises currently are departing from Washington, according to a spokeswoman; the earliest departures from Baltimore are not on the schedule until May.
Before Tuesday, the Port of Baltimore was responsible for 400 jobs and generated about $63 million in revenue annually for local businesses, according to a report issued last September by the Maryland Port Administration.
U.S. President Joe Biden has pledged federal resources to rebuild the Key Bridge.
More than 40 million people live within a six-hour drive of Baltimore, according to the Port Administration; Brown said that if the new bridge were taller, it could generate additional cruise business for the city.
“The biggest ships haven’t been able to come to Baltimore because they couldn’t pass under the bridge,” she said.
“What Baltimore offers is a very wonderful experience that is close to home. Cruising down the Chesapeake Bay is magical. You see parts of the bay you’ve never seen before.”
