The Mariner of the Seas and its 250,000 passengers annually have made up 30 percent of the Port of Los Angeles' cruise business. Starting in January, it will be based in Galveston, Texas, and sail to Europe and the Caribbean. Cruise lines are also scaling back their trips to Mexico from San Diego and Alaska.
The West Coast’s biggest cruise ship, Royal Caribbean’s 3,835-passenger Mariner of the Seas, is leaving the Port of Los Angeles next year, in large part because of fears of violence in Mexico.
The widely publicized war between the country’s federal government and its powerful drug cartels has led to nearly 30,000 deaths since 2007. And on the West Coast – where 90 percent of cruises depart for the Mexican Riviera and other points south – the number of passengers in the last two years has dwindled by 21 percent.
Norwegian Cruise Line announced last year it will no longer offer cruises to Mexico from Los Angeles after May 2011. The Port of San Diego recently lost the only luxury cruise liner based there: Carnival Cruise’s Elation. And five ships that had summered in Alaska and were scheduled to pick up passengers in San Francisco en route to Mexico changed their itineraries earlier this year.