Although the cruise industry and ROPAX ships have achieved steady growth with increased capacity, innovative service provisions and constantly being prepared for events of emergencies, they were not prepared for the sudden COVID-19 pandemic, and the travel restrictions and No Sail order put a halt to their services. Organisational resilience has received a growing interest in the world since its capabilities can support organisations to anticipate, cope and adapt to internal or external changes due to a crisis or unexpected event. This exploratory scenario study seeks to examine the cruise ships organisational resilience and service attributes in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.The empirical findings have been collected by using qualitative semi-structured interviews with four key managers and decision makers within the industry. The findings were themed to find qualitative variations and then analysed in relation to the presented literature through the adaptive change cycle. The adaptive change cycle has been used to explain the drastic and partially chaotic crisis and recovery of cruise services.