Hurricane Melissa and the Caribbean Cruise Fleet: The Full Record

How we work: facts are checked against original sources and linked, cruise prices are verified on the cruise line’s own website the day we publish, and we earn no commissions. Spotted a mistake? Tell us and we will correct it. Last updated October 20, 2026.

At 1:00pm Eastern on Tuesday 28 October 2025, the National Hurricane Center issued a special update in capital letters: “CATEGORY 5 MELISSA MAKES LANDFALL IN JAMAICA…ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE LANDFALLS ON RECORD IN THE ATLANTIC BASIN.” The storm came ashore near New Hope in the southwest of the island with maximum sustained winds of 185 mph and a central pressure of 892 millibars.

For the Caribbean cruise industry, that Tuesday was the culmination of a week in which dozens of ships quietly rewrote their itineraries. Nearly a year on, the interesting part is not the panic. It is how little of it there was — and how long Jamaica’s cruise ports actually stayed shut afterwards, which was considerably longer than the storm coverage suggested and is the part almost nobody followed up.

This is the documented record: what the storm did, which ships went where, and when the ports came back.

What Melissa actually was

Melissa was the third Category 5 hurricane of the 2025 Atlantic season. According to the National Hurricane Center’s tropical cyclone report, it made landfall near New Hope, Jamaica at 1725 UTC on 28 October as an estimated 160-knot Category 5 hurricane — the strongest hurricane on record to make landfall in Jamaica, and tied for the strongest Atlantic landfall by maximum sustained wind alongside Dorian in the Bahamas in 2019 and the Labor Day hurricane of 1935.

It did not stop there. The same report records a second landfall near Chivirico, Santiago de Cuba, at 0720 UTC on 29 October at an estimated 100 knots and 954 millibars, then a landfall on Long Island in the Bahamas at 2215 UTC the same day at 80 knots, and a second Bahamian landfall on San Salvador Island at 0200 UTC on 30 October.

The fleet turned west, and said so in writing

The striking thing about the cruise response is that almost nothing was cancelled outright. Ships moved. An Eastern Caribbean week became a Western Caribbean week, and passengers found out by letter under the cabin door.

Royal Caribbean’s message to guests aboard Icon of the Seas, reported by Royal Caribbean Blog on 27 October, named the person doing the watching: “Our Captain, along with our Chief Meteorologist, Craig Setzer, has been tracking Tropical Storm Melissa… [we] have decided to switch our itinerary to the Western Caribbean instead of the Eastern Caribbean for this sailing.” Celebrity Beyond guests got near-identical wording: “To safely avoid the impacts from the storm, we have decided to switch our itinerary to the Western Caribbean instead of the Eastern Caribbean.”

The pattern repeated across the industry. Cruise Hive’s 27 October roundup and Royal Caribbean Blog independently record the same westward swing, with Cozumel, Roatán, Costa Maya and Belize absorbing the traffic that would otherwise have gone east or to Jamaica.

Ship	Dropped	Substituted
Icon of the Seas (25 Oct)	Eastern Caribbean, incl. St Maarten	Cozumel, Roatán, Perfect Day at CocoCay
Celebrity Beyond	Dominican Republic, St Thomas, St Kitts	Costa Maya, Belize City, Roatán
Carnival Dream (18 Oct, 14 nights)	Ocho Rios, Jamaica (29 Oct)	Sea day, altered return to Galveston
MSC World America (25 Oct)	Eastern Caribbean	Roatán, Costa Maya, Cozumel, MSC Ocean Cay
Disney Treasure (25 Oct)	Eastern Caribbean	Cozumel, two Castaway Cay calls
Freedom of the Seas (23 Oct)	Grand Turk	Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic
Rhapsody of the Seas (26 Oct)	St Croix	La Romana; St Thomas moved to Tuesday
Margaritaville at Sea Islander (19 Oct)	Jamaica, Grand Cayman	Belize, Roatán
Odyssey of the Seas (22 Oct, transatlantic)	Azores (30 Oct)	Santa Cruz, Tenerife

That last row is worth a second look. Odyssey of the Seas was crossing the Atlantic from Rome, thousands of miles from Jamaica, and still lost a port to Melissa’s remnants. A Category 5 in the western Caribbean reshapes sea states and shipping decisions across an ocean.

The timeline nobody followed: how long Jamaica was actually closed

Here is the part that got almost no coverage once the storm left the headlines. Jamaica’s cruise ports did not reopen together, and they did not reopen quickly. They came back one at a time over roughly six weeks.

• 28 October — landfall near New Hope. All four cruise ports out of action.
• Mid-November — Ocho Rios first, with Holland America’s Zuiderdam reported calling on 11 November, roughly a fortnight after the storm.
• 24 November — Montego Bay, receiving close to 2,900 passengers from Mein Schiff 1.
• 2 December — Falmouth, the last of the big three, with Princess Cruises’ Caribbean Princess the first ship back.
• 8 December — Cruise Industry News reported all four ports working the same day, including a homeporting operation by Vasco da Gama at Port Royal.

A note on where sources disagree. Reports do not line up perfectly on which ship was first at each port. Cruise Industry News, writing on 10 December, names Resilient Lady at Ocho Rios and Mein Schiff 1 at Montego Bay on 8 December, while Royal Caribbean Blog’s 3 December piece has Ocho Rios reopening in mid-November and Montego Bay on 24 November. The likeliest reading is that individual ports resumed calls in stages through November while 8 December was the first day all four operated together — but we cannot confirm that from a single authoritative source, so we are flagging the discrepancy rather than papering over it.

Jamaica’s tourism minister, Edmund Bartlett, framed the recovery in terms of people rather than infrastructure: “Tourism’s strength lies not just in its product offerings, but in its people and partnerships. The speed and synergy of our response show the industry’s resilience.”

What it means if a hurricane hits your sailing

Melissa is a useful case study precisely because it was so severe and yet so few passengers lost their holiday. The industry’s default response to a hurricane is not cancellation — it is substitution. That has a direct consequence for your wallet, and it is not the one most people expect.

• A changed itinerary is not a cancelled cruise. Every passage contract reserves the right to change ports for weather. Swapping St Maarten for Cozumel is the line doing what it said it would do, and it generally carries no refund — we set out what a skipped port does and does not entitle you to in our guide to skipped ports.
• The rules change if the cruise itself is cancelled. That is a different question with different money attached, covered in what happens if your cruise is cancelled due to a hurricane.
• Book the port, or book the ship — know which you are doing. If a single destination is the entire point of the trip, hurricane season in the western Atlantic runs June to November, and Melissa landed at the end of October.
• Ports can stay shut long after the storm. Six weeks elapsed between landfall and all four Jamaican ports working normally. A sailing booked for late November 2025 was still affected by a storm that had passed a month earlier.
• Watch the line’s meteorologist, not the forecast. Royal Caribbean names its chief meteorologist in guest letters for a reason. The decision to move a ship is taken days ahead, on commercial and safety grounds, and it is rarely reversed because the forecast improves.

Quick Answers

How strong was Hurricane Melissa when it hit Jamaica?

It made landfall near New Hope on 28 October 2025 as a Category 5 with maximum sustained winds of 185 mph and a central pressure of 892 millibars — the strongest hurricane on record to make landfall in Jamaica, and tied for the strongest Atlantic landfall by wind speed.

Were cruises cancelled because of Hurricane Melissa?

Very few. Lines overwhelmingly rerouted rather than cancelled, switching Eastern Caribbean itineraries to the Western Caribbean and substituting Cozumel, Roatán, Costa Maya and Belize for Jamaica and the eastern islands.

When did Jamaica’s cruise ports reopen after Melissa?

In stages over about six weeks. Ocho Rios received ships from mid-November, Montego Bay on 24 November and Falmouth on 2 December, with all four ports — including Port Royal — reported operating together on 8 December 2025.

Do you get a refund if a hurricane changes your itinerary?

Usually not. Passage contracts allow the line to change ports for weather, and a substituted port is not treated as a failure to deliver the cruise. A cancelled sailing is a separate case with separate entitlements.

---

Storm data in this article comes from the National Hurricane Center’s tropical cyclone report on Melissa (AL132025) and its landfall update of 28 October 2025. Itinerary and port-reopening details are drawn from contemporaneous trade reporting by Cruise Hive, Royal Caribbean Blog and Cruise Industry News, which disagree on some first-call dates as noted above. This article replaces two earlier, thinner posts on the same storm. Cruise Chaos earns nothing from cruise lines, ports or tourism boards. If we have something wrong, tell us and we will correct it.