We are scheduled on the June 13th Disney Magic cruise from Rome to Greece. Ironically, this cruise was so oversold last summer that we had to check back every week for 16 weeks in the fall, before we could secure a verandah room. Now every category is available at lower price points.
Evaluating the real objective risks versus the media fears and pandemic panic has proven challenging for us, as all of you know.
We are not at all concerned about contracting or dying from the corona virus, as our odds of dying in a car accident or from the regular flu are thousands of times greater (flu 1:5400, car 1:8900, corona 1:20M). That said, our real concern is the risk of quarantine, sailing forced cancelation, or state quarantine.
We think getting quarantined for weeks is our biggest risk, since a boat population gets treated as a single isolated community -- one person infected, requires the assumption of all infected. Those odds right now are about 1:100 and increasing with each ship quarantined. Also, our cruise is leaving from Italy -- the second highest infected zone in the world, so the odds of quarantine are substantially higher.
The other risk is trip cancelation, which would be unfortunate, but not a big deal for us. There is risk that Italy's travel ban could expand to the south or the government prohibits cruise ship departures/arrivals from their ports. It is also plausible that
DCL could decide to change the sailing or take the boat offline if too many people cancel (like the airlines shut down entire regions/legs). That is less likely, but possible.
At this time the odds are still in our favor and risks are low, but things can change fast if outbreaks are not contained. We are not making any changes and will re-evaluate in a month or if new situations arise.