Cruise line reason for nix of Mex ports undefined, for now, sort of

  By Chris Owens of  http://www.chriscruises.net/

Last month Disney Cruise Line canceled its last four Mexican Riviera cruises out of the Port of Los Angeles for next December without giving a reason for the change. Disney was still silent earlier this week about what’s next for the Disney Wonder, normally sailing from the west coast port. Port officials hope to find out by the end of the month whether the move signals a permanent departure from Los Angeles or if Disney is considering a new route, possibly extra sailings to Hawaii.

Rebecca Peddie, a spokeswoman for Disney Cruise Line, declined to provide specifics to DailyBreeze.com but said “We look forward to making an announcement regarding these sail dates when the time is right for us to do so,” noting the schedule change will allow the company to prepare its itinerary for 2013.

   After making $2.5 million worth of upgrades to the aging cruise terminal, the port struck a two-year deal with Disney that includes an option to extend the stay through the end of 2015. Still, Disney, like some other cruise lines, has abandoned Mexico and y0u can bet that the “safety” topic will come up once reasoning is announced.

   “Mexico is relatively unstable and the general feeling is that people aren’t jumping up and down to go there right now,”said Chris Chase, business development manager for the Port of Los Angeles adding “It’s a much bigger problem than the Port of Los Angeles” Is it? Really?

   On our recent visit to Mazatlan, Mexico it was clear that safety is of primary concern to the port authority as well as the government of Mexico.

   The notion that Mazatlan is not safe comes from real-life horror stories involving drug-related incidents mostly in the far-away (like 20+ hours drive time) Northern part of the country. Tourists visiting Mazatlan by air or sea (nobody really drives there from the US) would have to try really hard to get in trouble.

   Still, all of Mexico continues to be picked on by the press in a guilt-by-association sort of way which is really unfair. After visiting Mazatlan and seeing the place first-hand, I felt a whole lot safer walking down the street at night there than here in our suburb of Orlando where real shootings occur rather frequently.

   We suspect its more a profit-oriented decision at this point. Experts agree.
In a recent interview with top cruise information source CruiseCritic, industry expert Stewart Chiron of Cruise Guy calls it.

“It’s obvious Disney is planning to begin its 2013 deployment of Disney Wonder earlier than expected,” said Chiron in an e-mail. He added that, given the recent low demand for Mexico cruises, he “wouldn’t be surprised” if Wonder ended up on a higher priced Caribbean itinerary when all is said and done."