Contract cut?
Here one day, gone the next: Disney Cruise Line will pull out of Galveston atthe end of 2013
Disney Cruise Lines came into Galveston with a bang in September with seven-night cruises to the Western Caribbean, announcing additional itineraries throughout the fall and into the 2013 season and indicating big future tourism dollars for our local port.
But that's where the expansions end: Although Disney signed a two-year agreement with the Port of Galveston, the Galveston Daily News is reporting that the cruise line will cut off its contract at the end of 2013.
"[Disney] hadn't formally scheduled cruises out of Galveston for 2014, but we had a tentative schedule for 19 cruises during the first four and a half months of 2014," said port director Mike Mierzwa, who told the Daily News that he "got the call" from Disney in November.
Mierzwa said that Disney was scheduled to sail from Galveston through May 2014. Disney maintains that the cruise line's contract was only through the end of 2013.
A recent news release indicated that the Walt Disney Co. would be bringing all four of its ships — the Magic, the Dream, the Fantasy and the Wonder — back to Florida during the first half of 2014. The Orlando Sentinel cited a weak European economy as factoring into the decision to sail from only Port Canaveral and Miami.