Monday - February 27, 2012

There Goes The Tourist Money

Guess we won’t be taking that luxury cruise down to Mexico after all. Not that we’d do such a foolish thing. But I sort of get the feeling nobody else will be either. The Mexicali Blues Cruise is one carnival we can do without.

Hooded bandits robbed 22 Carnival Splendor cruise ship passengers at gunpoint as they traveled on a bus near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, several days into a cruise that left from Long Beach, Calif., the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.

The tourists, who departed California on Feb. 19 and returned Sunday, were traveling on a bus after going on a nature hike Friday when the bandits struck near the Mexican port city, according to local media reports.

...

The company has suspended the nature trail tour from its list of activities for cruise passenger.

Hooded gunmen intercepted the tourists’ bus about 5 p.m. Thursday as it returned from the pueblo of El Nogalito, known for its trail through the jungle, according to the Mexican newspapers El Norte and La Jornada. The gunmen took cameras, money, watches and other valuables before fleeing into the countryside, the papers said.

...

The Carnival Splendor ship generally carries more than 3,000 passengers and operates year-round weeklong cruises from Long Beach.

As of last fall, one cruise line had decided to suspend stops in Puerto Vallarta, a popular port of call, because of the country’s ongoing drug war. That decision was made by Santa Clarita-based Princess Cruises, which, like Carnival Cruise Lines, is a unit of Carnival Corp.

Carnival itself did not cancel stops on its namesake cruise line in Puerto Vallarta, and Princess Cruises was set to resume visits to Puerto Vallarta this month.

A port north of Puerto Vallarta has also experienced problems. After a February 2011 shooting left two dead in a hotel parking lot in the tourist area of Mazatlan, several cruise lines began canceling stops, including Carnival Cruise Lines.

Yup, it’s starting alright ...

Regular voyages to the Mexican Riviera, long a mainstay of San Diego’s cruise ship business, are likely to end by the fall of 2012 with the decision by Holland America to move one of its key liners to Australia.

The cruise line’s 1,926-passenger Oosterdam and the 2,500-passenger Carnival Spirit are the only two vessels that currently head to the Mexican Riviera on a regular basis, and both are now scheduled to leave San Diego after April of 2012. The Spirit as well will be relocated to Australia.

...

The redeployment of the Oosterdam, which makes seven-day cruises to Mexico, marks the third ship to leave San Diego waters in the wake of a prolonged economic downturn and rising violence in Mexico.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/27/2012 at 09:40 AM   
Filed Under: • Mexico •  
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