With the Russia-Ukraine conflict continuing, NCL-Norwegian Cruise Line is redeploying liners scheduled to call this year at Port Sankt-Petersburg (Russia), including Norwegian Getaway, which will instead be homeported in Port Canaveral (Orlando, Florida USA) starting in late June 2022.
On Tuesday, NCL cancelled a second 7-night voyage of Norwegian Escape from Port Canaveral that was due to depart on Saturday. Booked customers were emailed that repairs to the ship (after she ran aground on March 14 while leaving a port in Dominicana and was damaged) would take longer than expected.
Norwegian Getaway had been previously scheduled to sail this summer from Copenhagen (Denmark) on a Baltic itinerary that included an overnight call in St Petersburg.
The ship will instead sail from late June through to late November in the Caribbean out of Port Canaveral. The new program includes a total of 11x 7-night roundtrips, plus 2x 10-night, 1x 9-night, and 1x 5-night.
Asked about the redeployment, Port Canaveral's Chief Executive Officer John Murray said it would offer good continuity for the Port, filling in the summer-to-fall cruise season, after another seasonal NCL ship, Norwegian Escape, ended her winter-to-spring deployment there.
Last month NCL announced it was removing scheduled calls in St Petersburg from its 2022 schedule, "due to the escalated situation between Russia and Ukraine."
In a statement, NCL said that the safety and security of their guests, crew, and communities they visited was a top priority.
According to Murray, St Petersburg typically was "a highlight of Baltic Sea cruise sailings."
Next winter, NCL is scheduled to have two Port Canaveral-homeported liners - Norwegian Escape and Norwegian Prima. Prima starts in Europe in August 2022.
Escape's last voyage from Port Canaveral in 2022 departs on April 16th. She will be back to the Port in November, with cruises from November 19 through April 8, 2023.
Prima will sail from Port Canaveral from December 11, 2022, through March 19, 2023.
Norwegian Getaway is currently based in NYC New York and makes port calls at Port Canaveral en route to The Bahamas.