Carnival Adventure cancels cruises for 15,000 passengers but won’t say why

• Carnival Cruises has cancelled six cruises on Carnival Adventure.
• These cruises were set to take place to mid 2027.
• It’s not yet sure why the cruises were cancelled, with possible explanations ranging from a private charter to new Aussie homeports.

Carnival has cancelled around a month’s worth of sailings on the new Carnival Adventure for mid-2027. Intriguingly, at this point, the line is refusing to say why.

Carnival announced that all sailings on Carnival Adventure between May 17 and June 14, 2027, would be cancelled, affecting a total of six voyages. Passengers on affected voyages will be offered refunds, or the option to rebook with a bit of onboard credit added. 

So far, the only reason given was a “short-term change in itinerary plans for Carnival Adventure”. 

The cancellations have sparked a rash of rumours, with some cruisers fearing that the ship could be leaving Australia. This is because the voyages that were cancelled were also the furthest out voyages available to book. This means that now the ship has no cruises scheduled beyond May 2027, leaving some to worry that the ex-P&O Australia ship won’t be sticking around on our shores. 

However, this is just one of many possibilities, for example, the ship could be moving to a different Aussie port, trialling some new itineraries, charted privately or any of many more possibilities that don’t involve the ship leaving Australia.

Here’s some speculation of some of the possible reasons for the cancellation based off what we know about Carnival Cruise Lines and the Australia Cruise Industry.

Why cancel the sailings? 

Below are a few potential reasons for why Carnival could have cancelled the sailings.

1. Carnival Adventure is leaving Australia: This seems highly unlikely given that the ship currently is mostly made up as a P&O Australia ship, which are designed directly for Aussies and already have plenty of goodwill and reputation here. However, the ship will drydock in 2027, meaning it’s possible that the ship will be re-done for a different market.
2. A private charter: It’s common for private companies and people to pay to charter out large cruise ships for extended periods. This could be to run cruises as part of a different line, host private events or for other reasons. While Carnival isn’t known to do this with much frequency, it’s a possible explanation for the cancellations, and perhaps the most likely.
3. Carnival Adventure is moving to a new port: Shortly before the cancelled period, Carnival Adventure will be running some cruises out of Melbourne. This is significant as all other scheduled Carnival sailings across all ships in Australia are only based out of Sydney and Brisbane. Pacific Explorer used to sail cruises out of different regional ports as part of P&O Cruises Australia, it’s possible that Carnival wants to repeat this model with Carnival Adventure.
4. A simple itinerary change: It’s also possible that Carnival is simply looking to shuffle around some itineraries, and given that the cruises in question are more than two years away, they didn’t mind canceling them to do this.

At this stage the true reason behind the cancellations simply isn’t known, but Carnival has advised that there will be news coming soon.