RCI-Royal Caribbean’s Vision of the Seas is now expected to continue operating from homeport Baltimore (Maryland, USA) through 2027, despite earlier indications that the vessel would reposition to Florida.
RCI recently scheduled summer and autumn itineraries for the ship from Baltimore, revising a plan announced in March to redeploy the vessel to Fort Lauderdale in 2026.
The ship has been based in Baltimore since 2023, completing 40+ voyages annually.
Current schedules show at least 20 voyages from the port in 2027, ranging from tropical routes to the Bahamas and Bermuda to seasonal passages northward to Canada. Royal Caribbean’s booking information indicates that Vision OTS will operate from San Juan, Puerto Rico, in late 2026 before beginning her Baltimore season the following May and continuing through October.
Whether the vessel will return to Baltimore in subsequent years remains undetermined.
Vision OTS is one of only two cruisers homeported in Baltimore regularly, the other is CCL's Carnival Pride, until 2030 under an existing agreement.
Following a meeting of the Maryland Port Commission, the port’s executive director, Jonathan Daniels, noted that negotiations with Royal Caribbean were ongoing and that both sides aimed to reach a long-term arrangement. He suggested that further statements would be made once terms were finalized and added that the port would pursue additional cruise calls during any months when the ship was away.
In the previous year, 444,000+ passengers embarked on cruises from Baltimore, marking the third-highest total in the port’s records and the largest since 2012.
Baltimore remains one of the East Coast USA’s busiest cruise gateways outside of Florida, though its access is constrained by the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, which offers only 185 feet of clearance—insufficient for many newer vessels that require more than 210 feet. According to Daniels, fleet trends favoring larger ships have led cruise lines to reassign smaller units to ports like Baltimore, a shift the port is seeking to capitalize on as it works to secure consistent cruise traffic for the region.