samfeline

Thanks so much for all the great replies and suggestions. Regarding another New Zealand cruise, there was really not another one in our time period that only focused on New Zealand. I do believe that the best way to see New Zealand would be a land tour; but, because of the extensive land tour we are taking in Australia, it was too much and we wanted some variety, even though the cruise probably wasn't the best choice. I questioned our travel agent three times about contacting Princess Cruise lines about this and she told me three times that they would offer nothing in terms of compensation for our inconvenience because we were not out any money for the mileage tickets and we did not buy insurance with them. We got our $200 deposit back. I guess Princess feels that they told us so early on that this was going to happen that perhaps they thought it would be easy for us to change or modify our plans. Unfortunately it was not with the planning that went into the Australia portion of our trip. However, I probably will write a letter or email to Princess Cruise lines like a reader had suggested explaining what had happened and how it totally affected our trip. Chances are that we will not return to visit New Zealand, which is very disappointing. I will say that I most likely will never book a cruise with Princess again. Out of all our cruises we have taken, our most favorite cruise line has been Oceania. Once again thank you all for your great replies!:)

Has anyone experienced what we just had happen...we were working on my husband's retirement trip to New Zealand and Australia--6 week trip. New Zealand was the cruise portion and Australia was the land portion that we researched and put together. We booked this cruise around New Zealand a few months ago, got our mileage flight tickets--business class, which in this day and age are difficult to come by and were in the process of putting our money down for the Australia portion of the trip and then we get a call from the travel agent that had booked our cruise and she told us someone or a company had chartered our Princess Cruise ship and we were bumped off our cruise and told we could go on the same cruise two weeks later. We did not get any notification from Princess Cruise lines personally saying they were sorry for the inconvenience...we did not get any extra compensation like a voucher saying we could get an upgrade on our room in the future or a ship credit voucher...Nothing. This cruise line totally inconvienced us and we no longer can visit New Zealand because of our Australia land tour. Cruise lines don't offer that many New Zealand only cruises and they did not have any other choices for our time period. Our mileage flight tickets could not be used. It is very discomforting to see how a major cruise line like Princess can do this to people and not really care about how it might affect a person's trip. Traveling from the United States to Australia isn't something one does that often. We have been on previous cruises with Princess and have enjoyed that particular cruise line; but, we will never use them again. Has anyone ever experienced anything like this before? Just curious.