The Fantasy is Coming Back!

Today, August 16th, Disney announced their plan for resuming cruises on the Disney Fantasy on the DCL website.  It'll resume cruises on September 11th.  Before this announcement, the Fantasy's next cruise was scheduled to begin on September 4th, but that cruise is now canceled.  No other cruises on the Fantasy have been canceled, but the remaining cruises in September and the one starting on October 2nd have been altered.  

Instead of 7-night Caribbean cruises, these cruise are now 4-night Bahamian cruises that only go to Castaway Cay.   According to the Disney Cruise Line Blog, these cruises will have two days at Castaway Cay.  This will work because the Dream will stop visiting Castaway Cay twice per cruise (this is true as of me writing this, but Disney could make changes) before the Fantasy starts cruising again.  However, unlike the Dream, the Fantasy won't be doing any 3-night cruises.  It'll be cruising for four nights of the week, then doing nothing for the remaining three nights of the week.  This seems like a missed opportunity for Disney to make more money, but only having one cruise per week, like what the Fantasy would've been doing, makes things simpler.  Everyone booked on the 7-night cruises that got changed was automatically booked on the 4-night cruise that starts on the same date as their original cruise.  Because they're now booked on a shorter cruise, these guests will be refunded for the amount of the cruise they're not going on.  These guests will also receive a $400 onboard credit per stateroom, which is super nice.  To make things even better, these guests will receive a 25% discount on a future cruise as well (once their cruise is over)!  That's significantly better than the normal 10% discount for booking onboard.  If none of these benefits make guests want to remain on the shorter, restricted cruise, they can cancel their cruise and receive a full refund.

These shorter cruises on the Fantasy will be available to book starting on August 25th.

The restrictions on the Fantasy are probably going to be just like those on the Dream, and I wrote about those here.  Be sure to check the DCL website for the latest information about restrictions and safety precautions.

Cruises on the Fantasy coming back is good, but when will it be able to resume its normal 7-night Caribbean cruises?  There's no definite answer yet, but Disney is hoping to resume them in October.  Currently, the Fantasy's next 7-night cruise is scheduled to start on October 9th, so we'll see what happens with that.

The Fantasy will be the second of Disney's ships to resume cruises from the United States.  Cruises on the Dream started back up earlier this month.  As of now, plans for the other ships' restarts in the US haven't been announced.  Disney's taking little steps toward fully resumed operations, but hey, at least they're not taking steps back!