Carnival Sells Two More Ships: Fascination and Imagination

Carnival Corporation — parent of Carnival Cruise Lines — announced today that it has sold two of its older ships — Carnival Fascination and Carnival Imagination.

Carnival Fascination
By Jonathan Schilling – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 

As we told you yesterday, the cruise company recently upped its plans to remove older ships from its fleet. In July it announced plans to dispose of 13 cruise ships in 2020 as it sought to become “leaner” in the face of the health crisis. Yesterday the company bumped that number to 18 ships across its many cruise lines.

“The sale of Carnival Fascination, launched in 1994, and Carnival Imagination, introduced in 1995, is in line with Carnival Corporation’s plan to accelerate the removal of less efficient ships from its fleet,” the company said in a statement.

The sale of the ships isn’t a surprise. Previously the company had put them in a “long-term lay-up” and had already taken them down from the booking engine on the Carnival website.

Carnival ships not allowed to be booked

This move comes just a couple of months since Carnival removed the Fantasy and Inspiration from their ship lineup. Those two sister ships moved to Turkey where they are being dismantled.

It appears that a similar fate could come to the Fascination and Imagination.

Carnival Fascination is currently docked in Cadiz, Spain, according to CruiseMapper.com. Carnival Imagination is in Turkish waters, according to the site, off the coast of Aliaga. This city is where the Fantasy and Inspiration were sent to be dismantled.

A YouTube video posted yesterday reportedly shows the Fascination sailing near Aliaga as well.

Updated Itineraries Also Announced

In addition to the news about the Fascination and Imagination, Carnival also said that four ships will be held out of service until they can be dry-docked. Maintenance and update schedules have been heavily impacted as a result of the pandemic, causing delays in newbuilds like Mardi Gras, as well as updated to older ships.

As of now, the following changes have been announced:

  • Carnival Magic sailings cancelled until March 13, 2021
  • Carnival Paradise sailings cancelled until March 19, 2021
  • Carnival Valor sailings cancelled until April 29, 2021
  • Carnival Spirit sailings cancelled until June 12, 2021

These cancellations are in addition to the fleetwide pause through the end of October 2020. There is no word yet if that suspension will be extended due to the health crisis or if the cruise line will have to cancel more cruises before it returns to sailing.

Notably, Carnival Corporation’s Costa did begin sailing this month in Italy, and its German brand AIDA is slated to return soon as well. 

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