Carnival Will Return to Norfolk and Baltimore in 2015

Posted January 31, 2014

Within the past two weeks, Carnival Cruise Lines has announced that they will return to both Norfolk and Baltimore in 2015. This is exciting news for each region as Carnival previously announced they would not operate any departures from these two ports upon revealing their 2014 deployment schedule.

Norfolk

There was very little revealed about Carnival Cruise Lines' impending return to Norfolk other than, "a series of cruises will operate in the spring and fall of 2015." Additional details, such as specific ship, date and itinerary information, is slated to be announced this spring.

Cruises from Norfolk operate out of the Half Moone Cruise and Celebration Center, which opened in April 2007. The state-of-the-art facility was designed to be much more than just another terminal and boasts one of the nation's largest privately-owned ocean liner collections as well as 400-year-old artifacts from historic Jamestown.

Baltimore

Just announced Thursday, Carnival Cruise Lines will return the 2,124-passenger Carnival Pride to year-round service out of Baltimore in March 2015. The Carnival Pride is currently operating cruises from Baltimore, but is scheduled to reposition to Tampa in October 2014 to launch seven-day cruises from December 2014 through March 2015.

Beginning March 29, 2015, the Carnival Pride will resume service in Baltimore and depart every Sunday. The ship will sail two seven-day itineraries, one to the Eastern Caribbean and the other to Florida and the Bahamas. The Eastern Caribbean itinerary includes calls to Grand Turk, the private island of Half Moon Cay and Freeport. The other itinerary includes visits to Port Canaveral, Nassau and Freeport.

A second exciting piece of the statement was the announcement that the Carnival Pride will undergo a major, three week-long renovation from October 19 to November 9, 2014 and incorporate popular Fun Ship 2.0 features like Guys' Burger Joint, BlueIguana Cantina and Tequila Bar, Bonsai Sushi, EA Sports Bar, WaterWorks water park, Playlist Productions and Hasbro, the Game Show. The vessel will also receive new exhaust gas cleaning technology, known as scrubbers, that is designed to reduce air emissions and enable the ship to exceed stricter air emission standards and mitigate escalating fuel costs.