With the Alaska season just getting underway for Carnival Cruise Line, guests are eager to get right into the fun and enjoy their voyages in the Last Frontier. One very special voyage, however, will not be offering the loyalty benefits high level members of the cruise line’s VIFP program might expect.

Platinum guests booked on the May 5, 2026 sailing of Carnival Spirit have been notified they will not be receiving key perks typically associated with their loyalty status.

“Due to the high number of Platinum guests joining us on this voyage, we will not be able to provide the following benefits,” the email explained.

The benefits that will not be available for the 7-night cruise include priority embarkation and debarkation either in Seattle or at any ports of call, the early stateroom access to drop off luggage, or priority luggage delivery to guests’ staterooms.

Furthermore, the cruise line may not be able to offer the priority line at Guest Services portside on Deck 2 or priority phone assistance when calling Guest Services.

“These operational changes are consistent with other voyages where we have a very large number of Platinum guests,” the email continued. “We apologize for any disappointment and thank you for your understanding.”

It should be noted that Diamond guests will still receive all of their benefits for this sailing.

Carnival Cruise Line does not disclose the number of VIFP guests on different sailings. Carnival Spirit can welcome up to 2,124 guests at double occupancy.

Cruise Hive has reported frequently on different Carnival cruises losing loyalty benefits due to large numbers of loyal guests on specific sailings.

While many of those cruises-without-perks are longer voyages, such as repositioning sailings or transatlantic cruises, any sailing might be impacted depending on its overall bookings.

Carnival Spirit will depart Seattle on Tuesday, May 5, and will enjoy visits to Skagway, Juneau, Ketchikan, and Victoria before returning to the Evergreen State on May 12.

Read Also: Carnival Cruise Ships in Alaska – Which One to Choose?

The 85,920-gross-ton ship will remain in Alaska through mid-September, offering weeklong cruises throughout the summer.

At the end of the season, she will first offer a 15-night roundtrip sailing from Seattle to Hawaii before repositioning back to Mobile for the winter. Carnival Spirit will be back to Alaska for the 2027 sailing season.

A Very Special Cruise Impacted

While all Alaskan cruises are immensely popular, this particular sailing, the May 5, 2026 departure of Carnival Spirit, also happens to be the 2026 “For Fun’s Sake” (FFS) cruise with John Heald, the cruise line’s brand ambassador, hosting special events all week long.

Typically, Heald only hosts one FFS cruise per year. This is the first time the themed cruise has been in Alaska. Previous sailings were in the Caribbean, though different options are offered each year. The 2026 sailing is the eighth FFS cruise, and they all sell out remarkably quickly.

To be clear, the FFS cruise is not a full-ship charter. Instead, guests must book the sailing separately and then opt in to the FFS evens with an extra registration and nominal fee.

Depending on the ship, anywhere from 500 to 800 spaces will be available for guests to join the unique events and activities. The full itinerary of FFS events is not revealed until guests are onboard, but there are often themed activities to the itinerary.

“We will have a private viewing deck during the transit through Tracy Arm Fjord with some special food and lashings of hot soup,” Heald said when the cruise was announced. “That’s just one thing I am planning.”

Of course, in March 2026 Carnival Cruise Line removed Tracy Arm Fjord from all sailings this season due to safety concerns related to avalanche risks. There will still be scenic cruising in Endicott Arm Fjord, where such viewing can be offered.

Other exclusive events include meet-and-greets, photo ops, autographs, and more, and all FFS guests also get limited edition swag to commemorate the very special cruise.

The loss of Platinum VIFP perks will not impact the FFS activities onboard, and all guests are sure to have an exciting and very memorable cruise vacation.

Service on four new nonstop domestic routes began this month, with two more to come by the end of the summer, San Diego International Airport officials said Tuesday.

The new direct flights by Alaska and Southwest airlines include three California destinations, along with service to Dallas/Fort Worth and Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina. Flights to Boston are set to follow.

The new nonstops began on April 7, when Southwest Airlines added service to Santa Rosa. On April 22, Alaska Airlines began nonstops from San Diego to Oakland, Dallas/Fort Worth and Raleigh-Durham and also resumed nonstops to Santa Barbara after a three-year hiatus.

Southwest is set to add a direct flight to Boston on June 4 and one to Santa Barbara two months later.

Airport officials also announced the seasonal return of domestic routes and expanded availability of international routes:

The returning domestic routes, all set for May and June, are:

• May 6 – Jacksonville, Florida and Norfolk, Virginia (Breeze Airways)
• May 7 – Cincinnati and Raleigh-Durham (Breeze)
• May 8 – Pittsburgh (Breeze)
• May 16 – Anchorage (Alaska)
• June 4 – Pittsburgh (Southwest)
• June 11 – Kalispell/Glacier, Montana (Alaska), and
• June 13 – Missoula, Montana (Alaska).

The expanded international flights include two that already began. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines resumed service three times per week to Amsterdam on Feb. 21 and Lufthansa, on Saturday, began flying daily to Munich, Germany out of San Diego.

International expansions to come include:

• Friday – London-Heathrow, United Kingdom (British Airways), increasing to twice daily, and Calgary, Alberta (WestJet), increasing to nine weekly flights in July.
• Saturday – Montreal, Quebec (Air Canada), resuming daily, and Vancouver, British Columbia (Air Canada), increasing to three times daily.
• July 1: Panama City, Panama (Copa Airlines), increasing to five times per week.

The airport now offers 87 nonstop destinations, the most in its history.

“Nonstop flights offered this spring and summer are up by more than 10% over last year,” said Atif Saeed, president and CEO of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority.

Late every summer, hulking white bears gather outside a tiny Alaska Native village on the edge of the continent, far above the Arctic Circle, to feast on whale carcasses left behind by hunters and to wait for the deep cold to freeze the sea.

It’s a spectacle that once brought 1,000 or more tourists each year to Kaktovik, the only settlement in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in a phenomenon sometimes called “last chance tourism” — a chance to see magnificent sights and creatures before climate change renders them extinct.

The COVID-19 pandemic and an order from the federal government halting boat tours to see the bears largely ended Kaktovik’s polar bear tourism amid concerns that the tiny village was being overrun by outsiders. But Kaktovik leaders are now hoping to revive it, saying it could be worth millions to the local economy and give residents another source of income — provided the village can set guidelines that protect its way of life and the bears themselves.

“We definitely see the benefit for tourism,” said Charles Lampe, president of the Kaktovik Inupiat Corp, which owns 144 square miles (373 square kilometers) of land. “The thing is, it can’t be run like it was before.”

As far back as the early 1980s, anyone in Kaktovik with a boat and knowledge of the waters could take a few tourists out to watch the bears as they lumbered across the flat, treeless barrier islands just off the coast or tore into the ribs of a bowhead whale left by subsistence hunters.

Tourism in Kaktovik soared in the years after federal officials declared polar bears a threatened species in 2008. The rapid warming of the Arctic is melting the sea ice the bears use to hunt seals, and scientists have said most polar bears could be wiped out by the end of the century.

As visitation boomed, the federal government imposed regulations requiring tour operators to have permits and insurance, and that began to squeeze locals out of the industry, Lampe said. Larger out-of-town operators moved in, and before long crowds of tourists were coming to Kaktovik — a village of about 250 people — during the six-week viewing season.

The town’s two hotels and restaurants lost out on some business when large operators began flying tourists in from Fairbanks or Anchorage for day trips. Locals complained tourist gawked at them or traipsed through their yards.

Small plane capacity became an issue, with residents sometimes battling tourists to get on flights to or from larger cities for medical appointments, forcing those left stranded in the cities to get expensive hotel rooms for the night.

When the pandemic struck, Kaktovik paused visitation. Then in 2021, the federal government, which manages polar bears, halted boat tours, mostly over concerns about how tourists were affecting bear behavior and overrunning the town.

Now Alaska Native leaders are in talks with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to address those concerns and reignite the industry, perhaps as early as 2027. The agency told The Associated Press in a statement that it’s working with Kaktovik “to ensure that any future opportunities are managed in a way that prioritizes visitor safety, resource protection, and community input.”

Among the changes Kaktovik leaders want to see is a limit on how long a boat can sit in the water near the bears. Too long, Lampe said, and the bears get used to humans — making for a dangerous situation when bears wander into town looking for food.

During the height of the tourism boom, it became tougher to haze bears out of town, even with the town’s bear patrol shooting at them with non-lethal rounds. The patrol had to kill about three or four bears per year, compared to maybe one per year before the boom, Lampe said.

“Our safety was at risk,” Lampe said.

In 2023, a 24-year-old woman and her 1-year-old son were killed in a polar bear attack in Wales, in far western Alaska. It was the first fatal polar bear attack in nearly 30 years in Alaska, the only U.S. state home to the species.

Since the boat tours in Kaktovik were halted, the bears once again seem more fearful of humans, Lampe said.

Polar bear tourism coincides with Kaktovik’s subsistence whaling season. When a crew lands a whale, it’s usually butchered on a nearby beach. While the community encourages visitors to watch or even help, some were recording or taking pictures without permission, which is considered disrespectful, Lampe said.

Sherry Rupert, CEO of the American Indigenous Tourism Association, suggested that Kaktovik market itself as a two- or three-day experience.

Native communities that are ready for tourists “want them to come and be educated and walk away with a greater understanding of our people and our way of life and our culture,” she said.

Roger and Sonia MacKertich of Australia were looking for the best spot on the planet to view polar bears in the wild when they came to Kaktovik in September 2019. They spent several days in the village, took a walking tour led by an elder and bought souvenirs made by local artists, including a hoodie featuring a polar bear.

For Roger MacKertich, a professional wildlife photographer based in Sydney, the highlight was the boat tours to see bears roaming on the barrier islands or taking a dip in the water. The bears paid them no attention.

“That’s nearly as good as it gets,” he said.

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