CruiseStar
Passengers who packed for Bermuda are packing sweaters instead. Royal Caribbean has rerouted the October 24, 2026 sailing of Independence of the Seas, swapping its overnight Bermuda stop for an overnight stay in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.
Guests were told late on Thursday, October 22, less than 48 hours before embarkation from Cape Liberty, New Jersey. The 5-night sailing carries 3,858 guests, and the change affects the whole itinerary, not just one port day.
What changed
The original plan was an overnight visit to King's Wharf at the Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda, from 9 a.m. on Monday, October 26 until 5 p.m. on Tuesday, October 27. That stop is now off the schedule entirely.
Instead, the ship will arrive in Saint John at approximately 10:30 a.m. on Monday and stay docked until 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, an overnight stay that gives guests a full day ashore plus a second morning in port.
Royal Caribbean told guests its meteorology team had been tracking inclement weather off the East Coast, and that the weather's impact made it hard to provide a safe and comfortable journey to Bermuda. The National Weather Service has a gale warning in place for mid-Atlantic waters in the wake of Post-Tropical Cyclone Josephine, with winds building to 25 to 35 knots on Saturday and as high as 40 knots through Saturday night into Sunday, and seas of 7 to 19 feet over the next several days.
What guests get for the swap
Royal Caribbean is providing a refundable onboard credit per stateroom: $150 for inside staterooms, $200 for outside staterooms, $300 for balcony staterooms, and $500 for suites. Staterooms with a third or additional guest get an extra $50 added to the credit.
Any pre-paid shore excursions booked through Royal Caribbean for Bermuda will be automatically cancelled and refunded to guests' onboard accounts. Any credit left at the end of the sailing will be refunded to the card on file for that onboard account.
Pack for Canada, not the beach
This is the part that stings most for guests who packed swimsuits. Royal Caribbean's email flagged daytime temperatures in Saint John in the mid-50s and recommended light sweaters and layers.
The line's own suggestions for the replacement port lean into the local character: the New Brunswick Museum for the region's industrial and maritime history, and the Reversing Rapids, where the Saint John River meets the Bay of Fundy. It is a very different day from a Bermuda beach, but an overnight stay means guests are not rushed through it in a few hours.
If you are on this sailing, check the ship's daily planner once on board before rebooking anything, and treat the posted all-aboard time in Saint John as firm. Port days that replace a planned stop can still shift if the weather moves again.
The third Royal ship to change course in a week
Independence of the Seas is not an isolated case. It is the third Royal Caribbean ship to have its itinerary changed by the same stretch of bad weather in about a week.
The October 18 departure of Oasis of the Seas from the same port, Cape Liberty, was rerouted to Halifax, Nova Scotia instead of Florida and the Bahamas. The October 17 departure of Vision of the Seas from Baltimore was also rerouted to Saint John instead of Bermuda, but in that case guests were not permitted off the ship in Saint John, which makes the Independence overnight stay a notably better outcome. A third ship, Harmony of the Seas, had its Bahamas port order rearranged to dodge the worst weather, but its guests are still expected to visit all of their originally scheduled destinations.
The pattern is worth knowing for anyone sailing the East Coast this fall: when a storm parks itself between the coast and Bermuda, the line will move the ship, and it will do it fast, sometimes with less than two days of notice.
If your cruise gets rerouted
A reroute is disappointing, but it is also the system working as intended. A ship that can move out of a storm's path is doing exactly what it is built to do, and a Bermuda itinerary is never guaranteed when the Atlantic turns rough.
The practical checklist is short: read the line's email in full before you travel, check what happens to your pre-paid excursions, confirm any compensation on your onboard account once you board, and pack a layer even for a warm-weather sailing in late October. If you are still counting down to a sailing of your own, the free cruise countdown tool keeps the date front and center while the weather does whatever it wants.
And when you are back home, rate the ship you sailed so the next sailor heading out in storm season knows what the experience is actually like.