Brilliant Lady Replaces Cabo San Lucas With Ensenada After Rachel
Cabo San Lucas has been closed since September 30 with no reopening date announced; cruise ships anchor offshore there and tender passengers to the marina.
Virgin Voyages warned guests on Brilliant Lady’s October 3, 2026, departure from Los Angeles that Hurricane Rachel could force a reroute of their seven-night Mexican Riviera cruise. The line has since confirmed a port substitution: Ensenada will replace Cabo San Lucas because lingering swell has made tendering unsafe.
The revised itinerary keeps three days ashore in Mexico, and the other two Mexican Riviera calls are unchanged. Cabo’s port has been closed since September 30, and no reopening date has been announced.
Brilliant Lady will now visit Ensenada on October 4 and spend October 5, originally assigned to Cabo, at sea. The ship will call at Mazatlan on October 6 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Puerto Vallarta on October 7 from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., before returning to Los Angeles on October 10.
“Hurricane Rachel has safely moved away from our route,” Virgin Voyages told passengers in an email explaining the change. At Cabo, cruise ships anchor offshore and tender passengers to the marina.
Planning around Rachel
Virgin first raised the possibility of a reroute in a September 29 website notice, when Rachel was still a tropical storm. The planned southbound passage would have brought Brilliant Lady near Baja California overnight Sunday into Monday, close to the storm’s projected path.
The line prepared an alternative itinerary without identifying its ports and advised passengers to bring extra layers and a light jacket in case the voyage shifted to cooler destinations. Virgin was consulting weather experts and initially expected to make its final routing decision on October 1.
A replacement round-trip itinerary would still have required the Bahamas-flagged vessel to make at least one foreign-port call under the Passenger Vessel Services Act if all its original Mexican stops were removed.
The National Hurricane Center upgraded Rachel to a Category 1 hurricane early on September 30. At 8 a.m. Eastern that day, the storm was 380 miles south-southeast of Cabo San Lucas, carrying maximum sustained winds of 85 mph and moving northwest at 10 mph. Hurricane-force winds reached 25 miles from the center, while tropical-storm-force winds extended as far as 160 miles.
Virgin had acknowledged during its contingency planning that Rachel could turn farther into the Pacific and clear the ship’s route.
Back-to-back storms on the Mexican Riviera
Brilliant Lady’s September 26 departure was substantially altered by Hurricane Polo. All three Mexican Riviera calls were canceled, and the ship instead visited San Francisco, San Diego and Ensenada. The ship completed Virgin’s first summer season in Alaska earlier in September before beginning its fall West Coast deployment, which runs through late October ahead of a repositioning voyage to the Caribbean.
Rachel has also disrupted other operators’ Mexican Riviera schedules. Carnival Panorama canceled La Paz and Cabo San Lucas on its September 26 sailing from Long Beach after Polo had already forced the removal of Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan. Its revised voyage includes two visits to Ensenada before an October 4 return. Carnival is providing a $300 onboard credit per stateroom and additional onboard activities.
Grand Princess also canceled its October 2 Cabo San Lucas visit. That call had already been moved from September 27 as part of earlier itinerary changes caused by Polo.
It remains unclear whether Cabo’s closure will disrupt Brilliant Lady’s following voyage. That sailing is still scheduled to visit the port on October 12.
See current Brilliant Lady fares and itineraries on Cruise Lookup.
