Things To Do In SW Florida

Carnival Cruise Line’s parent company inked a deal for three new ships powered by liquefied natural gas that will be the largest ever built for the fleet.

Carnival Corp. signed an agreement with Italian shipyard Fincantieri for the three LNG-powered ships that will be delivered in 2029, 2031 and 2023. The deal is contingent on financing, which the company expects to complete by next year.

Their addition would build on a fleet of 13 LNG ships already sailing among Carnival and its sister brands including the new Sun Princess from Princess Cruises that is set to sail from Port Everglades later this year. LNG is a cleaner burning fuel the cruise industry has been trying out on its ships in an effort to reduce carbon emissions.

Cruise leaders tackle carbon conundrum on board Royal Caribbean’s Utopia of the Seas

The first LNG-powered cruise ship in North America was Carnival’s Mardi Gras, which debuted out of Port Canaveral in 2021. It was followed in 2022 by the Disney Wish at the port, which also just welcomed its third homeported LNG-powered ship with the debut of Royal Caribbean’s Utopia of the Seas last week. read more

Seminole voters will decide in November if it should be tougher for developers to remove property from the county’s protected rural area and whether to strengthen protections for its natural lands.

“If they pass, they will continue to enhance the natural lands and conservation areas in the county and preserve the rural area that so many residents support,” resident Marilyn Crotty said to county commissioners Tuesday in support of the ballot questions.

Moments later, commissioners voted unanimously and without comment to place the charter referendums on the Nov. 5 ballot.

The first one asks if it should require a supermajority of four votes from the commission to take land out of the rural area — such as for a high-density development. The second asks if it also should require a supermajority vote to remove or change protections on any of Seminole’s designated natural lands.

It currently requires three votes from the five-member board to take land out of Seminole’s rural boundary — which covers nearly a third of the county — or to remove conservation protections from any part of the 7,300 acres of natural lands. read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — It’s still covered up in what looks like the world’s largest PEZ dispenser, but the core stage booster for NASA’s Space Launch System rocket for the Artemis II moon mission arrived by barge to Florida on Tuesday.

The 212-foot-long tank still sits sheltered within NASA’s Pegasus barge with its ridged, football-field-length silver dome protecting the Boeing-built hardware that cost more than $1 billion to manufacture.

The barge is docked at KSC’s Turn Basin after completing the 900-mile trip from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. Plans are to haul the stage over to the neighboring Vehicle Assembly Building on Wednesday.

It still has months of checkouts laying on its side before it will go vertical to be stacked alongside the two solid rocket boosters from Northrop Grumman that remain stored in segments at the nearby Rotation, Processing and Surge Facility. Stacking won’t begin until at least September, Artemis II Mission Manager Matthew Ramsey said. read more

Revenue at Universal’s theme parks was down nearly 11% in the second quarter,  Comcast revealed during an earnings call with analysts Tuesday.

Executives blamed the revenue drop on lower attendance following the post-pandemic surge and the lack of new attractions in Orlando. Two-thirds of the decrease was tied to lower attendance at the company’s parks in Florida and California.

“Going back to 2022 and 2023, parks were clearly the early beneficiaries of substantial rebounds in tourism and travel after the pandemic, resulting in a surge in demand that contributed to us reaching record results for both of those years,” said Michael Cavanagh, president of Comcast Corp., the parent company of NBCUniversal.

“More recently, other travel options, including cruises and international tourism, given the strength of the dollar, have experienced their own surge in demand, which caused visitation rates at our parks to normalize,” he said.

The most recent quarter — spanning April, May and June — is caught in the lull between the record post-pandemic years and the scheduled opening of Epic Universe theme park in Orlando in 2025, said Jason Armstrong, Comcast’s chief financial officer. read more

By DAVID KOENIG and MATT OTT

U.S. regulators are investigating how Delta Air Lines is treating passengers affected by canceled and delayed flights as the airline struggles to recover from a global technology outage.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced the Delta investigation on the X social media platform Tuesday “to ensure the airline is following the law and taking care of its passengers during continued widespread disruptions.”

“All airline passengers have the right to be treated fairly, and I will make sure that right is upheld,” Buttigieg said.

Delta and its Delta Connection partners canceled about 500 flights on Tuesday by midday on the East Coast, accounting for about two-thirds of all cancellations in the United States, according to FlightAware.

The outage began Thursday night into Friday morning, after a faulty software upgrade from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike to more than 8 million Microsoft computers around the world.

The Atlanta-based carrier has canceled more than 6,600 flights since the outage started, far more than any other airline, according to figures from FlightAware and travel-data provider Cirium. read more