Member Info for MrMagic

Looks like your Telegraph article is exagerrating. Follow its link regarding "sidestepping quarantining" and it doesn't say anything of the sort. Also it turns out that Greece will accept BOTH people who have been vaccinated OR who test negative for Covid. So all a bit of a red herring TBH. I've learned to take everything Carrots says with a generous pinch of salt as he's clearly never stepped foot on a cruise ship.

Wow that's truly shocking and any cruise line that adopts such a farcical strategy is going to really come a cropper. It's unthinkable that they might let ANYONE on the ship who has not been tested beforehand, the notion is utterly ludicrous. There are already thousands and thousands of cases of fully vaccinated people still getting SYMPTOMATIC Covid. Would they really risk lettign those people step onboard a ship??? That would be suicide.

I certainly would not take any cruise where vaccinated people were just being waved onboard without testing.

And think of the lawsuits the cruise line would face if they allowed an infected person onboard without testing and if that lead to others being ill or even being killed ? Doesn't bear thinking about.

No, just can't believe cruise lines would ever go there.

And here we go . . . . proof that people who have already had Covid and gained natural immunity are SAFER than people who have been vaccinated. Those with natural immunity generate 10 to 20 times more antibodies than those who haven't. So much so that scientists are now suggesting that naturally immune people don't need 2 shots of the vaccine.

"https://www.forbes.com/sites/mishagajewski/2021/03/10/people-who-already-had-covid-19-might-not-need-the-second-dose-of-vaccine-study-finds/

"new research shows that people who’ve already been infected by the virus might only need a single shot of the vaccine.
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, looked at 109 people with and without previous SARS-CoV-2 immunity. What they found was that those who had already contracted Covid-19 developed antibodies within days of the first dose of vaccine at a rate 10 to 20 times higher than those who were uninfected, and at a more than tenfold rate after the second dose.

“We showed that the antibody response to the first vaccine dose in people with pre-existing immunity is equal to or even exceeds the response in uninfected people after the second dose,” said co-author Viviana Simon in a statement. “For that reason, we believe that a single dose of vaccine is sufficient for people who have already been infected by SARS-CoV-2 to reach immunity.”"

Another nail in the coffin of cruise lines wanting to mandate vaccinations and discriminate against the naturally immune people. Naturally immune people will always be safer than those vaccinated.

lol Carrots

Nothing is "starting". Just a handful of "Toe in the water" cruises piled high with restrictions that cruises don't wnt nor wil ever accept. There will always be a contingency of people willing to go to sea at any cost, but those people won't sustain a cruise line business. The cruise industry is still lightyears away from getting anywhere near its former normality and thriving business.

Meanwhile CDC has confirmed there are 1000s of vaccine "Breakthrough cases" which are fully vaccinated people who still get Covid. CDC says 71% of them are symptomatic.

Carrots - "we are going to have to be able to proove we have had 2 doses in due course"

Nonsense. There's no justification whatsoever for mandating vaccines, the notion is ludicrous.

The CDC have announced that there are 1000s of "Breakthrough Cases" of Covid. Those are cases of FULLY vaccinated people who have nevertheless caught Covid, been Covid-Positive and had symptoms. The CDC have some 6000 cases reported but as we know the vast majority of people do not report their illnesses and just rest and get through them on their own. Hence we can be sure that the true number of Breakthrough cases is magnitudes of those reported 6000.

More worryingly, the CDC has stated that only 29% of those Breakthrough cases are asymptomatic which means a colossal 71% of them involve symptoms which in turn means those vaccinated people will spread virus to others.
Even so, in the context of cruise lines, the symptoms don't matter. They will simply test whether you are Covid positive or not regardless of symptoms and if you are then it's off to isolation for you and all your travelling party.

Everyone responds differently to vaccines just as we do to the virus itself. Huge numbers of older frail people with weak immune systems will be unlikely to have elicited a good response to the vaccines and thus have poor protection and will be an increased risk to others. Then there's all the actual immune-compromised people.

This whole notion is farcical in the extreme and no-one should be supporting it. The people who have actually had Covid already and gained natural immunity are by a country mile the safer demographic to be around.

Thus any introduction of such dystopian regimes is little more than just a backdoor attempt to usher in Digital ID which, just as has happened in China, will end up moving to a social credit score system. A rather totalitarian Communist practice. We should in no way be supporting anything of the sort here and I question the morals of anyone who gives such companies their support.

We can not discriminate against the naturally immune. They are far safer than vaccinated people.

Thriftygirl - "just need to wait a bit longer. Maybe 2 years? "

Yep. And in those 2 years the company will have haemorrhaged tons more money and maybe shouldered more debts and god forbid that any of these up coming test cruises (Seacations etc) end up with Covid on-board because the meia will be all over it and the SP will drop faster that a lead balloon.

Keithlard - "A recent RNS stated that bookings for 2022 are already ahead of pre-pandemic 2019. "

The vast majority of these will be people who were given Future Cruise Credits from previously cancelled cruises. They will be keen to get their monies worth from those credits. Using that as any kind of indication of genuine demand is disingenuous. People won't want to lose those credits and they have time limits attached.

Keithlard - " You can talk all you like about the share falling from £18 blah blah, this is a no-brainer long term. It was £30 per share before March 2020."

Comparisons with pre-pandemic time are not relevant and equally disingenuous. The company has shouldered immense amounts of debts since the pandemic started and has sold off lots of ships. It's never going to go back to £30 levels. It will just establish a new normal level for the company that it has now become. It is still haemorrhaging vast amounts of cash every month and I personally can't see that the cruises on offer today will ever sustain the business going forward. Too many past cruisers just are not interested in this new offering that has so many restrictions and which cuts out pretty much all of the things people chose a cruise for in the first place. It's going to be a very long hard slog to recover and will imo take years.

One can almost sense the desperation in the rampers here, clutching at any snippet or made up fantasy to try and plug the share for their own ends. Meanwhile, since the start of April the share has dropped from 1800 levels to the current 1580, a loss of some 12%. Hope Carrots and Co didn't sucker too many in. Cruise sector has years to go yet before any return to normality. It's not going to survive on the basis of the new "cruises that are not cruises" offerings.

lol Carrots on form as usual

https://www.nation.sc/articles/8463/resumption-of-cruise-ship-calls-in-seychelles

Resumption of cruise ship calls in Seychelles |06 April 2021

"Taking into consideration the associated risks of the Covid-19 pandemic, Cabinet approved that, as a starting point, only small, sustainable cruise ships with a maximum capacity of 300 passengers will be allowed to dock in Port Victoria and cruise in the waters of Seychelles. These ships will be on the luxury end attracting high-end clients with elevated spending power, thereby offering greater value addition."

"Cabinet further approved that, under strict guidelines, only a number of visitors will be allowed to disembark on certain designated islands so as not to disturb the environment and tranquillity enjoyed by the islands’ high-paying premium guests."

Max capacity 300 passengers !!! lol So basically super yachts rather than cruise ships.

Wiltshireman - "Nevertheless how do you keep good employees onboard if you don't dangle 'carats' in front of them?"

Do you realise how many employees there are and what they get?!!!!!

The Annual Results stated:

"The Group retains a lean operating structure, with only three employees and both accounting and geological services outsourced. "

It also listed the average number of employees for the year as 4 Executives and 1 Administration.

This TINY collective of spivs burned through £597,000 in Administration Expenses alone last year and this is a regular occurrence. Over the years they have squandered £millions and £millions on their Admin and Expenses.

In fact between 2012 and 2019 old Belly Boy raised over £16 million cash from various share issues and dilution.
In that same period he frittered away over £12 million just on Admin and expenses.

The situation is patently ridiculous, preposterous and just a bared-faced totally flagrant self-serving life-style outfit.

Anyone who still puts their money into this POS simply deserves to lose their money .

As if this were not bad enough of it's own accord, the company has now demonstrated a callous disregard for shareholders in failing numerous times to RNS key loans, transactions and events.

They agreed loans and transactions with Amulet Diamonds which were not RNS'd and which appeared in the Annual Report 5 months later.

They failed to RNS that the Steelmin venture had ceased production

They failed to RNS a £1.1 million loan to the failing Steelmin venture which was ultimately lost

They failed to RNS Steelmin going into Administration despite RRR holding a 22% stake there.

The whole thing is a total joke and has been for years. The modus operandi never changes. Just endless carrot dangling "jam tomorrow" BS to lure in mugpunters and endless issuing of shares with crony lenders like Cornhill.

Nominal share value has already been lowered from 0.1p to 0.01p so dilution could continue

Shares have already been consolidated

There will never be shareholder value to be had while ever this BOD are in place.

There are so many better shares out there to even give this lifestyle outfit a second glance

DYOR

Carrots - "Well. Swimming pool, bar, and with luck sunny 26 degree weather "

yep but you'll have to book a slot in that swimming pool because social distancing rules will mean only a very limited amount of people allowed in at any one time. The days of just jumping in and enjoying yourself are gone.
It will be the same for using the gyms, and spas and other communal areas. There will be big queues / long waiting lists to book a slot in them. Same will likely be true of the theatres which will no longer be able to accommodate most of the passengers with half the seats having been ripped out to maintain the stupid social distancing rules. Book a slot or else no entry. No self-service buffets any more, masks to be worn anytime you're inside the ship except in your own cabin, repeated swab testing, no freedom to wander off the ship, no more dining with lots of different interesting people, you'll be forced to dine alone with your partner or travelling group for the duration.

I'm afraid as desperate as you are to try and polish this turd it's not going to be a good result. HUGE numbers of past cruisers are not remotely interested in this poor excuse for a "cruise " type of restricted holiday being offered. Plus it's only a matter of time before another outbreak of Covid occurs on one of the ships that sees everyone quarantined to cabins and that will see cruisers rushing for land based holiday cottages and lets.

There's just very little light at the end of the tunnel yet and I fear some cruise lines will never emerge at the other end.

DYOR

Carrots - "If already docked a cruise ship could just sail to the next destination. If en-route could divert to another destination."

lol

Still showing a complete ignorance of cruising.

You can't just sail to the next destination because of timings. Cruise ships, for years now, determine the distance they have to travel between ports and the time they need to arrive and steam along at a constant average speed to get there.

Missing a designated port completely has massive consequences which you would know if you knew the first thing about cruising. The consequences would be staggeringly more impactful in the "new normal". For example, nobody at the moment is allowed to leave ships at ports and wander feely. The only way you can get off the ship is with a ship excursion which typically means coach trips that take you to various places. Given this is now the ONLY way passengers can get off, cruise lines will have to make arrangements with local coach firms well in advance to be sure they have literally loads of coaches lined up ready to receive passengers. Each coach will hold about 50-60 people. So with a ship that has say 1500 passengers you will need 30 coaches, with a ship with 3000 passengers you will need 60. Each coach will have to have gone through rigorous disinfection and preparation and the cruise lines will have had to book them in advance as well as having organised all the tours and places the coaches will go to which themselves will likely involve ticket entries to attractions like cathedrals or parks and so on.

The notion that a cruise ship can simply up sticks and say "nah, we won't stop at Barcelona tomorrow we'll just stay at sea" is utterly deluded. The consequences and financial costs and practicalities are now enormous.

Trying to go to an alternative port is equally utterly deluded. Port berths are booked well in advance by numerous cruise lines and will have been secured months or years ago. The nearest free berth could be miles from where you are which will affect the vital business model for fuel usage. Not to mention of course that trying to then organise 30-60 coaches and associated trips and tours at this new destination, overnight, is going to be utterly impossible.

You're simply clueless Carrots and making a complete fool of yourself. You don't know the first thing about cruising. You've never stepped foot on a cruise ship. You're here to ramp the share for your own ends, but you can't even put a cohesive argument together because you're totally out of your depth with this share and industry.

Cruise lines are in for a very hard time. It will be years before they recover. DYOR

Carrots - "As I have said sailing to Green labeled destinations in the med and around the world is obviously what they will be planning"

This continues to be utter ramping nonsense. How can any cruise line possibly know 18 months from now which countries will be Red, Amber or Green. They have no idea. Yet they will be needing to create itineraries for cruises that far ahead and to secure port berths. The traffic light system is a complete nonsense for cruise lines. In fact a bit of a nightmare.
And again I will ask you, do you have any citation or anything in writing that confirms that cruise lines would NOT dock at ports in "Amber" counties? Unless you do, I choose to believe that they would just stay with the planned itinerary. I have yet to read any cruise line response to the traffic light system announcement.

Comical seeing Carrots just keep trotting out the same nonsense about cruise lines vs airlines here. Almost as if he's been given a script !

Fact remains that cruise lines are like rogue entities. They register themselves in off-shore tax havens so they don't have to pay US corporation taxes. Not something governments are happy about. Hence when the US government created it's $2 trillion CARES Act economic stimulus package last year, cruise lines were not included. The US gov allocated $500 billion of the money to large corporations like airlines, but cruise lines didn't get a look in. Consequently cruise lines had to go find their own funds and shouldered massive amounts of debt in the form of loans and bonds as a result.

Airlines of course WERE included in that bailout because of course they are part of the country's fabric and pay their taxes.

The powers that be have the cruise lines by the short and curlies. They issue the "no sail" orders and that cripples the cruise industry. Now any resumption of cruising will have to dance to their tune. The CDC Conditional Sail orders effectively force cruise lines to follow protocols that the CDC lay down. Such as the quarantining of all passengers to their cabins if a given threshold of Covid cases is reached on the ships and quarantining of individual passengers and their entire travelling party/group if one of them gets positive for Covid.

Of course this isn't a problem you get with airlines where your existence on the plane is just a couple of hours, rather than 2 weeks on a ship ! You don't get quarantined in some back room on an airplane lol!

The plight of the cruise industry will be a poor one for a long time to come because of the plethora of utterly Draconian restrictions and protocols that have to be put in place which are totally off-putting to the loyal customer base. Everything that was previously the heart and soul of a cruise is now gone except just bobbing up and down in the water of course !

Airlines on the other hand, are largely unchanged and well supported by the US government.

Clearly people will book in their droves, cheap flights to warm destinations when travel restrictions are lifted. They will be free to roam and enjoy a normal holiday. Cruisers won't have that freedom and can't even walk off the ships and will have to pay for expensive ship excursions to go anywhere which is not remotely what most customers want. A handful will put up with it, but the vast majority will not imo. Cruise lines will therefore continue to struggle and thus so will the SP. DYOR

Demand will be way down from pre-pandemic era purely because what they are now offering isn't a cruise per say but something altogether different.

Demand will be further reduced because many of the restrictions are simply unpalatable/unacceptable to many cruisers.
Want me to shell out £1000s to travel to different ports but then won't let me wander off the ship at my own leisure? Nope. Not happening. That's a total showstopper for a great many cruisers.

Demand will further be limited for the cruise lines who foolishly mandate vaccinations thus cutting out another section of their past customer base.

Demand will plummet further the moment the first ship comes down with a Covid outbreak, which is of course utterly inevitable. There will be tales of passenger isolations/quarantines and the media hyenas will lap it up.

At what point will Carnival need to take out more loans or issue more shares? What happens to the SP at that point?

I think if you are prepared to take the very long view here then you'll make money via that long slow plod assuming that cruising does turn out to be successful going forward, but it's by no means guaranteed at this stage. Personally I see more lockdowns coming later in the year. Chris Whitty already set the nation up to expect it saying further waves are inevitable.

So enjoy the summer sun whilst it shines. Make hay as they say but we are nowhere near the end of all this and it ought to be clear to most that governments will try to perpetuate the situation as long as possible in order to maintain their new found emergency powers which they will be loathe to give up for years.

So in short they're all each trying to get people to support their trading positions !!

Reality is the company is hemmorhaging countless $millions every month and has very little income whilst ships are sat bobbing up and down in the water. Even then it has to first plough through 1000s of FCCs before real money starts coming in.

Common sense imo says the SP will get worse before it gets better.

2021 will be a very difficult year imo. Really a bit of a testing ground which they will be desperate to get right. The first sniff of a Covid case onboard though will hit the papers faster than a rat up a drainpipe and that will sink the SP. It's massively risky imo and there are too many better shares out there without that risk which are giving better returns.

The simple conclusion is as previously stated. That we are at the top of the trading range peak. Thus people like yourself are keen for mugpunters to buy at the top so you can sell and then wait for the SP to fall back to 1500 so you can buy again and rinse repeat.
Thankfully I don't fall for such lame trader tactics.

Carrots it's getting tedious having to enlighten you on how cruises operate. Why don't you admit to readers here that you have never stepped foot on a cruise ship yourself yet are trying desperately to tell people how it all works? It's laughable.

I will say again what every person who has ever cruised already knows. Cruises are booked 1-2 years in advance and the itineraries are set out in the brochures. Thus in normal circumstances, I can choose a cruise that will depart say 18 months from today and know which ports it will be calling at. Indeed that itinerary selection is likely the primary reason why I will have chosen that cruise.

Now 18 months from now any of those ports/countries might slip from Green status to Amber or Red status. You have no way of knowing. The cruise line will have long since booked the berths at the ports at considerable costs. Elsewhere other ports have likewise taken bookings from a multitude of other cruise lines. So the notion that you can just detour and go dock at any other convenient port is a fantasy you are peddling. It's sometimes possible but not always.

That said, do you have any citations or written proof that a cruise ship would not STILL choose to dock at an Amber port if it was on the itinerary? If is did, presumably that would consign all passengers to the 10 day mandatory quarantining on return to the UK.

What happens is only some passengers choose to get off the ship at an amber port? Does that automatically mean everyone else suffers quarantining on return to the UK?

If you read cruise related forums you'll realise that this traffic light system is a total dog's dinner and will probably be totally unworkable for cruise lines. That's the difference between flying and cruising. Cruise trips are booked/organised years in advance. Flights can happen on a whim. If I want to fly to Germany I can decide to do so with very short notice. If Germany suddenly becomes Amber or Red then I can easily just choose a flight to another country. With a cruise you book so far in advance and people have to schedule their holidays in with work colleagues. Chopping and changing at the last minute just isn't feasible. Sure you could cancel your cruise but finding another quickly and getting any kind of decent cabin at the last hour will be impossible.

You really ought to take a cruise one day and actually start to get some appreciation of what it's all about and what it entails instead of just lamely trying to promote your investment position and duping PIs. DYOR

Yep, all quite laughable really and a total joke for cruising. People book cruises up to 1-2 years in advance. So how can anyone possibly know that far ahead whether any of the destinations on the itinerary are classed as Red, Amber Or Green?
It's patently ridiculous.

So come the day of sailing you're likely to find that one or more destinations are actually Amber which will mean a mandated 10 day quarantine when you get back to the UK in some crappy hotel at your expense. Even if your ports are "Green" you could still find that there are Covid cases on-board and you test positive yourself and thus get quarantined on return to the UK, even if you have no symptoms and feel fine (asymptomatic).

This just isn't going to fly for most cruise passengers imo. It's just not practical. Retirees might have the luxury to expend 2 weeks on a cruise and then a further 10 days stuck in quarantine on return to the UK. But the young up and coming cruise audience who are still working simply can not afford to lose 10 days of their annual holiday allowance being wasted on quarantine.

I'm sorry Carrots old bean but you really have backed the donkey in the Grand National here.

There's just no way that loads of people are going to consider a (cough) "cruise" holiday with all these ridiculous restrictions and enforced quarantines on return. They are instead simply going to book land based breaks in hotels, holiday cottages and lets in their droves or else will just not go away at all. We will probably also find that the sale of caravans and motor homes takes off massively too.

One can not help but feel that the cruise lines are being bled dry to the point of bankruptcy. It almost feels like they are being punished by higher powers. They are being forced to offer a holiday experience which is not remotely "cruising" and which comes with all manner of undesirable restrictions and complications. It's all very sad.

SP here won't respond well to this traffic light system imo. DYOR

BucketShopBilly - "Your post below about airline bookings has a link to an article dated 23rd FEBRUARY. LOL!"

That's only 6-7 weeks ago !!! What of it ?!!!!

Here's another from just 10 days ago, 30th March:

https://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/news/2021/03/30/alaska-airlines-american-airlines.html

"As of March 26, the company’s seven-day moving average of its net bookings is approximately 90% of the (pre-pandemic) level experienced in 2019, with a domestic load factor of approximately 80% during that same period"

and this from today:

Qatar Airways says it operated the world’s first fully vaccinated flight

https://nypost.com/2021/04/09/qatar-airways-says-it-operated-the-worlds-first-fully-vaccinated-flight/