Should ANY cruises have left port on March 13?

[WonderMan3]

2 hours ago, Purplsmurf said:

I don’t believe that. We were supposed to sail on March 14 and the morning of the 13th we were told it was still sailing. It wasn’t until I arrived in Fort Lauderdale at 5:30 on Saturday did they announce it would be cancelled. Unfortunately. I had to find out from Facebook as I STILL have not received any notice from Celebrity. Regardless, the Reflection had already sailed when the announcement was made. Guess they could’ve turned them around to come back to port 

 

From what I can see on the posts on this board our first notice that Royal Corp. was suspending all cruises was from a post someone made at 3:52pm on Friday (you can scroll through the Celebrity board and see it there). The notice from the company I assume came out minutes before that. Notices like that do not get generated in an instant from corporate. Having worked for a worldwide tour operator/cruise company for 14 years I can say with confidence that it would've taken a couple hours at least to have generated that notice. It first has to be written by a copywriter, then go through a series of approvals from an editor, marketing manager and then to executives (all with potential edits and rewrites along the way). At minimum that process would likely take two hours, but probably longer. But in order for that letter to have been commissioned the executive decisions would already have been made, so that would've been at least by 2pm. Even though communication out to the public had not happened that does not preclude operational changes being made behind the scenes which would include contacting all the ship captains and letting them know what's up. Since Reflection was still in port at 2pm there was still time for Celebrity to stop it from sailing. But since they knew evidently before we did that the government's requested cruise ship cessation was to begin at midnight they saw a loophole opportunity to get Reflection out before that deadline. Clearly they got blow back from somewhere (likely the government as I have not seen media articles discussing Reflection sailing while the suspension was on) and decided to turn Reflection around two days later and send her back to Florida. Even at that though they decided to throw in an extra port at the last minute in Nassau. These decisions are mind boggling with everything that's going on and it does cause some of us to be concerned that Celebrity is putting profits over customer safety.

[Quo Vadis?]

1 hour ago, hvbaskey said:

 

And there is the problem  - they were unaware.  After the first case was tested and positive, people found out through social media and began self-quarantine like crazy.

 

One provincial government requested the manifest from the Summit in order to contact all passengers in their province of their potential exposure.  At this point, when a government health board is contacting the cruise line for a passenger manifest, you would think that “doing the right thing” by Celebrity would be at minimum let the passengers who sailed on the 29th, know there has been several COVID-19 positive cases.

 

Thank goodness for social responsibility, for when all those who did find out about this, they all voluntarily self-isolated themselves. 

The bad news?  many passengers are still unaware that there was an issue, as Celebrity has not reported or released information.

See screenshot below for an example from today:

We left Silhouette on Sunday for the long 22hr drive home.  When we got home we had a message from our provincial government that a previous passenger had tested positive.. Not a peep from Celebrity.  Only through Cruise Critic have we learned about the issues that threaten our well being.  Celebrity deserves an F-.  We are now quarantined as the border agent advised us when we crossed.