Galveston Pier Closed - Carnival To Sail From Houston Temporarily
Carnival Cruise Line announced today that since Hurricane Ike damaged the pier in Galveston, the two ships will now sail temporarily out of Houston from the Bayport Cruise Terminal effective September 20, 2008 for the Carnival Esctasy and September 21, 2008 for the Carnival Conquest. The Houston terminal recently underwent a multi-million dollar state of the art renovation after Norwegian Cruise Lines discontinued sailing from there a couple of years ago. The two Carnival ships will be the first ships to sail from the new facility.
I'm actually thankful the cruises will still be sailing from the Houston area because there was a good chance that Carnival might have moved both to New Orleans. Luckily, Carnival realizes that the Texas/Oklahoma market is too big and popular to change the embarkation ports too drastically. If you recall, the 7 night Carnival Conquest was actually sailing out of New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina. It moved to Galveston out of necessity and has been there ever since. While other cruise lines have sailed out of Galveston in recent years, Carnival is now the only one that offers year round sailings from there (Royal Caribbean offers 7 night sailings from Galveston from December through April only).
On a sad note, the passengers who were brave enough to sail on last weeks' Ecstacy and Conquest out of Galveston have lost their cars if they parked at the Galveston pier. From what I've heard and read, the cruise terminal flooded very badly and The Strand (historical 'old town' portion of Galveston) flooded by about 6-8 feet. The cruise parking lots are are mostly surface lots and not structures, so the cars got completely flooded.