If you're booked on Sun Princess's November 22, 2026 departure from Fort Lauderdale, your beach day just changed. Princess Cruises has dropped the scheduled stop at its own private Bahamas retreat, Princess Cays, and replaced it with Relax Away, Half Moon Cay — the private island it shares with sister brands.
The seven-night Eastern Caribbean roundtrip still calls at Amber Cove in the Dominican Republic, San Juan in Puerto Rico and Grand Turk in Turks & Caicos, so the swap only affects the Bahamian portion of the sailing. Booked passengers were notified directly, and anyone who had already paid for a Princess Cays shore excursion will see an automatic refund to their original payment method. Replacement tours for Half Moon Cay are being loaded onto Princess's website, with the full range expected within a fortnight of the announcement.
So what's actually different ashore? Half Moon Cay has just been upgraded with a new pier, meaning ships can dock directly rather than tendering passengers to the beach — usually the biggest frustration at private island stops. Princess is pitching it as an 'expanded' Bahamian day, with more time and facilities than the Princess Cays setup. That island, at the southern tip of Eleuthera, has been welcoming the line's ships since the early 1990s and got its own refresh in 2018, but it lacks the pier capacity that Half Moon Cay now offers.
For travellers, the practical takeaway is to keep an eye on the excursion portal over the coming weeks if this sailing is on your calendar. Half Moon Cay tends to be popular for its long, quiet beach and calmer lagoon-side swimming, so tours and cabanas can book up once they go live. If you were specifically attached to Princess Cays, it hasn't disappeared — Princess ships still visit regularly, and Carnival vessels are scheduled there through the end of 2026 as well — but this particular date now belongs to Half Moon Cay.
The switch is also a small window into how the big cruise groups manage their private islands. Half Moon Cay was originally a Holland America property, and its recent pier project is part of a broader push across the industry to give passengers a full day ashore with less dependence on weather-dependent tender operations. Whether the change is permanent for this itinerary pattern or a one-off for this sailing hasn't been detailed, so anyone booking later Sun Princess Caribbean dates should double-check the posted itinerary before locking in plans.