Carnival Shuffles Ships: Arcadia Heads to Holland America, Queen Anne to P&O in 2029
If you hold a booking on Arcadia or Queen Anne, the article says your scheduled cruise is not affected, and all currently published voyages before each transfer are set to operate as planned. If you want Queen Anne with Cunard, note that she remains in Cunard service through the 2028/29 World Voyage beginning in January 2029. She also joins the Four Queens celebration in Liverpool in May 2028. After that she is renamed and enters P&O service in May 2029. Holland America has not said which Evolution upgrades Arcadia will get.
My read is that this is a tidy piece of portfolio housekeeping, and the irony is hard to miss. Arcadia was ordered by Holland America in 2000, redirected toward Cunard as Queen Victoria, then handed to P&O, which has run her since 2005. Now she lands at Holland America nearly three decades after the original order. Holland America clearly wins: a twelfth ship, room for more than 2,000 additional guests, and a Vista Class hull that fits its Evolution program, which Cruise Hive reported as a $500 million investment. P&O gets the newer, 113,000-gross-ton Queen Anne, though the article does not say why Carnival chose this swap. Cunard shrinks to three ships, which Paul Ludlow frames as a more unified identity, and I would treat that as company framing. If I held a Queen Anne booking, I would not panic, since published voyages are set to operate as planned. I would also watch for Holland America's details on which Evolution upgrades Arcadia receives.