Disney Cruise Line's New Temporary Cruise Date Flexibility Policy

Earlier this week, my family got an email from Disney Cruise Line regarding our upcoming cruise in January.  Since the COVID-19 pandemic has caused Disney to cancel all of their cruises until at least September, they've become more flexible with the cruises that are still going to sail.  Before I spoil the surprise, have a look:

Disney is letting people change their cruise date up to fifteen days before it sails!  This applies to any cruise through March 31st, 2021, booked before August 31st of 2020.  The rescheduled cruise has to start before April 1st, 2021, though.  Even with that limitation, this is a very generous policy.  Ordinarily, someone can't change their cruise date if it's only fifteen days away, unless they don't want their money back.  But with this change, Disney is allowing people to modify their cruise just over two weeks before it's going to happen, without a penalty.  However, this email doesn't say anything about a flexible cancellation policy.  It just says "Should you cancel your new sail date, any cancellation fees applicable to the original sail date will be deferred and applied as a minimum cancellation fee to the future sailing."  So, I'm guessing the standard fees for canceling that late still apply.

I'm really glad Disney created this policy.  This flexibility is giving thousands of their guests peace of mind about their cruises.  Also, this policy is a good sign for cruises to resume.  Since they made it, I think Disney is planning on resuming cruises by then.  If everybody keeps doing their part to minimize the spread of the virus, the world will hopefully be back to a somewhat normal state with cruises sailing by January, if not sooner.  I'm interested to see the health changes that'll surely be implemented on the Disney ships when they resume sailing, and I'll blog about what I discover.  What kind of changes do you think will be put into effect?  Leave a comment if you'd like to share.