Carnival Cruise Lines “new” ship, the Carnival Luminosa is close to setting sail. I say “new” because it’s not technically a new ship. The ship, formerly the Costa Luminosa, launched in June 2008.
The Costa Luminosa Has A Deadly History
Perhaps most notably, the Costa Luminosa is credit/charged/blamed for spreading COVID to several countries. In February 2020, an Italian man was transferred from the Costa Luminosa to a hospital in the Cayman Islands with heart issues. Two weeks later, the Cayman Islands Health Services Authority announced the man was the Cayman Islands first COVID case. He died two days later. It should be noted that the ship was scheduled to dock the day before in Jamaica but was refused entry.
In March 2020, the Costa Luminosa then left Ft. Lauderdale on a transatlantic sailing to France. Two people on board were exhibiting COVID symptoms when they disembarked in Puerto Rico two days later. These two people were the first confirmed COVID cases in Puerto Rico. (One of the two passengers died several days later.)
By now, the ship had a full-fledged outbreak going on and several sick passengers were left in Tenerife. The rest of the passengers were quarantined in their rooms. The ship was denied docking in Spain. It was allowed to dock in Marseilles, France where American and Canadian passengers (as many as 400) were discharged. They flew home and continued to spread COVID once they were home. It continued on to Savona, where the rest of the passengers disembarked.
In April 2020, passengers on this sailing filed a class action lawsuit. In April of 2021 the lawsuit was dismissed.
Carnival Corp. Makes A Move To Shed The Costa Luminosa’s Reputation
Fast forward to June 2022 and Carnival Cruise Lines announces the Costa Luminosa will join its fleet in September and will begin sailing in November 2022 from Brisbane, Australia. The ship will focus on Australian & Alaska itineraries.
It can only be assumed that Carnival Corp. (which owns both Costa Cruises and Carnival Cruise Line) was looking to kill two birds with one stone. The obvious name change would stop the bad press on beleaguered Costa Luminosa; and Carnival Cruise Line, could add a smaller vessel capable of navigating the ever-popular inside passage on Alaskan cruises.
Bookings Open For Carnival Luminosa
On August 23, 2022 Carnival announced bookings for the Luminosa were open. As of 1:04 p.m. CST, the bookings were not yet visible. Carnival’s Brand Ambassador John Heald posted on his Facebook page that technical issues were delaying booking availability.
As per Heald, “I’m still waiting for news on Costa to be Carnival Luminosa. We’re ready to share but there’s a small IT problem apparently so please standby.”
The Luminosa is set to sail this fall and will remain in Brisbane for most of the year with breaks coming for summer Alaska cruises from Seattle.
Free Cabins Offered As Part of Casino Offers
With what I assume was supposed to be a simultaneous release, a casino offer appeared in our Carnival account this morning. While I am sure that the offer varies by person, our offer is below. We don’t gamble much so I imagine others got better offers. Since the IT issue is preventing sailings from appearing on the site, the casino offer is currently non-functional.
For tips on how to get casino offers from Carnival, check out our how-to post.
