It’s a new day for cruising in Florida and the CDC, they’re out of here! Cruise lines in Florida will be able to self-regulate, and the CDC can’t do anything about it. Wow! Let’s talk about that.

The big cruise news is that the federal judge in Florida has denied the CDC’s appeal to stop the injunction of the conditional sale order. Oh, this is a hot story. The judge gets sassy with the CDC. The cruise line’s got options. The whole game’s changing down here.

Florida filed a sue case to get the CDC out of the cruise business and during that process they filed a motion for an injunction to make the conditional sail order go away right away.

The judge ruled in their favour and as of July 18th, the conditional sail order will be going away and the CDC said you should keep it in place, they appealed and then, just yesterday the judge said, “No. Appeal denied. Conditional sail order going away on July the 18th and look.

When the judge denied this appeal, he didn’t sugarcoat it. He said that the CDC’s argument in the three-page appeal was unpersuasive. This is a quote from the judge:

“Although CDC invariably garnishes the argument with dire prospects of transmission of Covid 19 aboard a cruise vessel, these dark illusions dismiss state and local health authorities, the industry’s self-regulation and the thorough and costly preparations and accommodations by all concern, to avoid transmission and to confine and control the transmission if one occurs. In other words, CDC can show no factor that outweighs the need to conclude an unwarranted and unprecedented exercise of governmental power.”

This is serious. Business is at stake. It’s life and death. It’s people’s jobs. But this is such an interesting thing to watch. This thing unfolds and I love the fact. So the CDC said, look we came out with all of this guidance to tell cruise ships how to crew safely and they did it and therefore you know, we’re the hero and that we should be in control still.

And the judge said well wait a minute, local health did all this stuff. You know, states, did all this stuff and the cruise lines did all this stuff and they’re doing it on their own.

So what does this all mean? Well on July 18th, the teeth of the conditional sail order, it’s no longer regulatory. It’s just recommendations and so now the cruise lines in Florida, they can do whatever they want. They will self-regulate and it opens up another can.

What will the cruise lines do? The cruise lines are no longer under the thumb of the CDC. They can do what they want. They don’t have to have test sailings, there doesn’t have to be social distancing masking, there doesn’t have to be a certain amount of vaccinated people on board. The cruise lines will now have a carte blanche ability to do whatever they want to cruise.

It could mean a lot of things. It could mean you’ll see a lot more cruises ships come online in Florida because there’s no requirement for test sailings. The whole conversation around vaccinated and unvaccinated could change or not. That’s an interesting thing.

What if the cruise lines like those regulations, there’s going to be a whole lot of wait and see. But what it does for sure is, it removes that yes or no power from the CDC and now cruise lines operating out of Florida will be able to determine how they run their business without some sort of oversight, without some sort of worry that they’re going to do the wrong thing.

And it’s all directly on their shoulders now. Their success is in their hands. The health of their passengers will determine whether or not their business is successful or not successful. The policies that they choose will determine whether their business is successful or not, whether consumers choose their policies.

There’s no more shield. They won’t be able to say, “Well, because of the CDC, we’re doing this”. No. It’s all going to be on them down there in Florida and it will really expose, to the consumer, the kind of the intentions of these cruise lines when it comes to health protocols. And we’ll be able to have that conversation, “Look, they said they would not compete over health protocols”.

But I can guarantee you this, there’s going to be a lot of different health protocols and the consumer will be able to choose which cruise experience that they want.

I think the judge made the best point. The CDC, they did kind of set up the parameters. A lot of people adopted those parameters and now that those parameters are in place, the CDC can move on and not have their finger in the pie. And now, it’s that’s kind of where we’re at.

The CDC is out now but the court case still goes on. That’s the thing. This was just a motion that’s been bantering back and forth. There’s still a court case that could go forward but it also could set precedent for other places around the country. This could just be the first domino to fall to see the CDC being moved out of the regulatory aspect of cruising. Which I think, we’re at a place where that makes sense.

How about that? The big question that still sits in my mind is: What do you think the cruise lines will do now that they’ve been given the autonomy to self-regulate, the ability to make their own decisions? Do you think we’ll still have all these restricted protocols or do you think they go another way?