Return to Cruise: Carnival Breeze – An Introduction

After a fifteen month hiatus, Carnival Breeze will sail her first cruise on July 15th from Galveston. Premier Custom Travel’s Chris Grum will be onboard and will chronicle the experience in our special blog series RETURN TO CRUISE: CARNIVAL BREEZE.

I cannot tell you how much joy it brings me to be able to write this blog. It means cruising is back – something that makes me very happy both personally and professionally.

From a business point of view, the return to service means a return to profitability. Over the last year plus, Premier Custom Travel has canceled over a year’s worth of revenue. For those who aren’t familiar with how a travel agency works, 100% of our revenue comes from commissions on our sales. None of us have salaries. So when we’re doing nothing but cancellations, we are not only not making any money, but we are in some cases giving back money we earned. Every time we had to notify a customer of a cancellation, it was heartbreaking. We can relate – we’ve had our own vacations canceled as well. We had customers who had two, three, some as many as nine cruises canceled during the shutdown. One encouraging sign during those long days, weeks, and months was the fact that the vast majority of our customers were ready to sail again as soon as possible.

From a personal point of view, I’m thrilled to have cruising back. I’ve sailed 36 cruises and cannot wait to be back onboard a ship. To be perfectly frank, the itinerary really doesn’t matter to me right now. I just want to again enjoy the vacation experience that cruising brings. I have no doubt that there will be tears walking up the gangway on July 15th. We were on the last cruise prior to the shutdown, and being on one of the first sailings from a U.S. port in over a year will be a fitting bookend to this long global crisis.

Over the next two weeks, I’ll be blogging about the first Carnival Breeze sailing since March of 2020. In the days leading up to our July 15th departure, I’ll share some fun facts about this amazing ship and talk about the pre-cruise process and protocols. During the cruise itself, I plan to provide daily updates chronicling what is happening onboard. I hope to be answer the most-asked questions regarding cruises in a COVID-19 world, including:

What are the rules onboard?

What is different about cruising in a post-COVID world?

What is the same about cruising in a post-COVID world?

Is the experience worth the price?

Is the warm chocolate melting cake still amazing?

Have questions you want answered or topics you’d like to see me cover? Send me an email and I’d be happy to include them in future posts.

The next blog will cover the pre-cruise experience and the protocols we’ve been told to expect during the cruise itself. Expect to see that post in the next couple of days.