tetleytea

Have to vent. United is DENYING us a refund. They flew us to our first connection, then left us stranded and unable to reach Anchorage 72 hours later for the cruise, forcing us to book tickets on Southwest just to fly back home. Our bags are still in Anchorage (and we are not...). i really, really hope our travel insurance doesn't try the same thing. Completely unacceptable.

I didn't think Shrine of St. Therese was a must-visit. But if you've got 13 hours in port and a car, St. Therese is a good use of it. We enjoyed spotting the rodents (pikas?) on the rock spit. We were much more pleased with our stop at Glacier Gardens.

Maybe I should blog my life back at home. Getting to tell my boss, "Hey, in fact I won't be on vacation. All that coverage for me we set up at work, we don't have to do that. However you might not want to talk to me right now." Waiting 2.5 hours on the phone for a United rep to find out what's going to happen to our bags, then have him transfer us to another 1 hour wait to reservations department for a refund, only for the reservations guy to say there's a refund department that's separate from reservations. All the excursion companies and Airbnb who say our prepays are nonrefundable, and are actually refunding it when they hear our situation.

That is true about Juneau. You can pick up/drop off people near the ship, but you cannot park. So you have to split up your party and leave at least 1 driver with the car, until you are done with it. Three stops of note that we made with the car were Glacier Gardens, Alaskan Brewery, and McDonald's. If you're like me, I'm not interested in using limited port time for a nice, sit-down restaurant when we've already got that on the ship. Also, a number of ravens liked to hang out right by the drive-through. They were huge.

I was looking in terms of Vancouver and Victoria, instead of Salt Lake. It was a chaotic scene at the airport--sometimes you had the entire six hours in line to make decisions, and other times you had seconds--with just your cell phone in hand. That's why you have customer service. Except we didn't.

The connection from RDU was not the problem for me--although I was East Coast, and East Coast is where it is the worst. The problem was Denver. United was able to fly us into Denver, and then our connection to Anchorage was cancelled. From there, United was missing-in-action. 6-hour wait times to customer service, the United phone/email/chat lines were unresponsive. The only way out of Denver was on other airlines, and they were all sold out because everyone else was in the same situation. But even though we were able to get back home (not to Anchorage) on another airline, our bags didn't--because--you know--United. Unresponsive. We did, in spite of that, manage to work with a gate agent, but that gate agent told us there were no flights available until after our cruise time. We could have departed about the time the cruise boards. United does have some kind of partnership with Alaska Airlines, but they said no seats were available through that partnership. I think we could have worked directly with Alaska Airlines, spent $1500 per seat more, and walked into another already-oversold situation.

To Seattle that might have been possible, but not Anchorage. Where I was, all the hotels and rental cars were sold out. It was THAT bad. The level of badness was something I didn't think possible, short of a natural disaster. Now I can vouch for the people who put iTags on their bags, and can see exactly where their bags are, but United can't. They were literally down the stairs and 50 feet away from us, and United wouldn't let us pick them up. And now, they are in Anchorage (our bags got there on time). But even if we had made it to Anchorage on time, we very likely still would not have our bags on time for the cruise because United cannot locate them. I can see on my cell phone where they are right now. I read the stories about the cancellations before my flight, but I dismissed them as "that's life". People on the news were saying, "Don't check your bags", and I was like, "Well you HAVE to check your bags. That's how airlines work." No no, they meant it. The other airlines faced the same weather United did, and that was "life". This was on a whole level.

We just lost our cruise and have to claim travel insurance because the airlines (namely, United airlines) are cancelling flights. Of course, you should always try not to fly in the day-of, for precisely that reason. Except in our case, we even did the right thing: our scheduled flight was supposed to arrive 3 days before--and even then, United STILL could not get us to Anchorage on time. They got us to our first connecting flight, but they could not get us out. So my word of warning is: don't schedule your flight for day-of, AND don't do United right now. They are a mess. Alaskan Airlines seemed fine. And Seattle has overall more flights, so that will be a better situation than Anchorage. Also, if you're flying United, I highly suggest not checking in any baggage. I know, you can't afford to go on an Alaskan cruise without checking in bags, but right now odds are pretty good your bags won't make it there, anyway. If you must, be absolutely SURE you have as much critical stuff as you can in your carry-on. The United baggage carousels had absolutely insane amounts of unclaimed luggage. All the airlines are cancelling when there's weather, but...not like United. They don't have their stuff together right now.

AND: a reasonable person would believe that the benefit is exactly as written: EMBARKATION. The part you are conveniently refusing to see. Some people wear bifocals, and they need to lower their nose by about 6 inches in order to see them both.

I'm glad you know what the definition of embark is. An excellent attitude of Princess staff toward cruise critics. That benefit can read ANY way that Princess feels like it to mean at the moment. And all this confusion of embarkation, disembarkation, ship-to-shore, or whether it is the water shuttle or the big ship itself you are even referring to when you say "embarkation"--doesn't even matter if Elites simply got priority tendering both ways--AS ANY CUSTOMER WOULD REASONABLY BE LED TO BELIEVE FROM READING THAT. And yes, of course Elites have a sense of entitlement--because that is what Princess keeps telling them they are, after 15 cruises! But...mis-marketing? What mis-marketing?

No, it is not. I have the exact words right here: "Priority ship-to-shore water shuttle embarkation". Straight from the Captain's Circle sheet. Sorry to say, embarkation is not ship-to-shore. That is disembarkation. Embarkation is shore-to-ship. So in other words, your Elite Captain Circle benefit is pretty much whatever the Princess staffer working your particular shift feels like it to be at that moment.

Don't confuse people with only the partial subset of facts you want them to hear, either.

My last sailing, Blues could get free laundry tokens.

That is starting to sound like when I got offered the benefit of "3 days at a world-class timeshare resort". Thing is...it is 3 days...and 0 nights. All they do is let you use their amenities during the day, for 3 days. Later you find out, "What, you think you deserve to be given a room, too? How entitled!" Priority tendering...but as it turns out it is only to get off the ship--not back on the ship 30 minutes before all-aboard time--is the same mis-marketing nonsense.

You might,.though....

To the point that I do not recommend sailing Princess at this time. From what I've seen, if you got paid an hourly salary for the amount of time it takes to resolve any money matter with the Princess phone/chat line, you would be making less than minimum wage. It's a hidden price of dealing with them. It's like they charge for 5 drinks you didn't buy, you try calling the number or wait at the ship service desk multiple times for an hour apiece to resolve it, and you spend 5 hours of your vacation time to get your $50 back.

I wasn't looking. Elite passenger went to the front of the line and showed their Elite credentials. Princess cruise staff ignored the Elite status and lumped those passengers along with everyone else. That is amiss.

Right now I'm so mad at Princess and their "platinum insurance" that I can't even see straight. I agreed to one set of charges with Princess for the cruise I just booked. They send me a billing statement--and no, that billing statement is NOT what I booked. I asked for one thing and they gave me something else. So I immediately call Princess (within the hour). I can't reach anyone on the Princess phoneline who can speak decent English, and they are simply not resolving my situation. So...I'm at the point where just don't want to do the cruise (or Princess) anymore. What do they tell me to do? To cancel the cruise, but I will have to file a claim with the Platinum insurance...who will later decide (AFTER I already said to cancel the cruise) whether or not to issue any refund at all. I'm sorry, but that is not what Platinum insurance is about. We're also not doing that.

Maybe not completely nothing. Sounds like in at least one incident, a Princess staffer didn't know what they were doing.

So in other words, is it at the end of a cruise, or the beginning?

Pro tip: if you're on a B2B, a perfect time to do self-laundry is on embarkation day. No one else is there--their vacation just got started. No waiting for a washer to become free, nothing. You can do two loads at once, while you go back to your balcony and wait.

I'm Platinum, and mixed messages like this make me wonder why we are even building up our Elite status. After Norwegian changing their itinerary last-minute for no given reason (which is worse), we decided to give Princess one more try next month. So far, not going well. Just got done waiting an hour for a callback from Princess customer service, only to get a girl who didn't really speak English and spent about another hour telling me everything about Princess except the answer to my one question I had: what about my Future Cruise Credits? I'm rapidly not seeing the point of Princess customer loyalty at all.

It's just part of the relentless assault of marketing. If you announce an end of show, you want people to rush to book their cruises earlier, to get in while the show still lasts. If you announce what's next, then you expect people to book cruises later, to catch that next show. Anyway, I forwarded that casting call on to a troop of theater students.

Notwithstanding the rain or the luggage, though, it's a nice walk.

Those problems, 10 years ago, that's what you would call Icy Strait. Even now, some would argue, but now ISP has this big gondola and zipline.