SWFLAOK

1 hour ago, Travelcat2 said:

 

It has not been my experience that booking a cruise using FCC’s happens overnight.  In our case it is taking up to 3 weeks (Regent is holding the suite).  Before a cruise can be booked using FCC’s, they need to be calculated.  As I understand it, this is not straightforward and Regent is backed up.  We also need to consider that Regent salaried employees just took a 20% pay decrease (until June) and are working a 4-day workweek.  This slows the process even more.  I would rather wait than put any more pressure on the employees at Corporate.  

 

So, (and I’m guessing here), one would assume that before a refund can be made, there are still calculations to be done.  

 

RIck, I just wanted to share our experience with booking a new cruise with “FCC’s.  I think that we all wish that things would happen quickly but, for the reasons mentioned, we need to be more patient than normal.  

That's the same as our current experience with Paul Gauguin, and we understand the problems that all cruise lines are facing at this point. Airlines for domestic flights don't want to hear from us anytime soon for rebooking, and we can only cancel flights that close enough to do so online.

3 hours ago, HotRoot said:

We cancelled a SS cruise to Japan five weeks ago.  Two weeks ago our TA inquired about our refund (14K).  They showed he had called to cancel but nobody "processed" the cancellation.  Said they would do it that day.  We still do not have a credit.  They might talk the talk but they do not walk the walk.

We cancelled a SS cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Auckland next January about a month ago. We had paid for it in full last fall to get a 10% discount (and we could still afford to do that back then). We were told that it would take 2 or 3 billing cycles to get our money back, minus the 200 administrative fee (which can be used as a future cruise credit). We haven't seen it, and recently told it would still be 1 or 2 billing cycles. Our refund is much more then 14K. And we weren't offered a refund on our April 11 Paul Gauguin cruise from Fiji to Bali, and the FCC doesn't include the pre or post hotel and transfers, or the included airfare and our business class upgrade. They can't tell us if we will get a voucher or credit on those, but if we want to book another cruise, and use the cruise only credit being offered, we need to make a decision soon to find availability before the FCC expires. Our next Regent cruise is well over a year away, and the full payment isn't anytime soon, so we are trying not to worry about it at this time. Cruising shouldn't be this stressful.

For any Regent return cruisers traveling on a cruise that you can no longer look forward to since you are pretty sure it isn't going to sail, and you can still do so without a significant penalty,  then I would just rebook for a future cruise. That will let you look forward to it in the future, and give the cruise line a better chance of surviving. If you have never cruised before at all, or not on Regent, and are still out far enough to cancel with just a minimal administrative fee, I would do that. It gives you a chance to start over at a better time, and choose a cruise line and an itinerary with ports that have survived the covid-19 cruise vacation apocalypse.

4 hours ago, Wendy The Wanderer said:

But surely if your imminent cruise is cancelled, you could choose a full refund, right?

No, we cannot. And we don't really know what our future cruise credit is for our cancelled cruise which makes booking a future cruise harder. PG cruises has not been able to determine what the hotels and airlines are going to do for the reservations they booked along with our cruise. Is this all PG cruises fault? No, it's not. If they fail financially and can't provide a future cruise, then that's much worse than not being able to get a cash refund. Is it possible to speak to an airline or hotel chain at this point? We've tried for our other travel plans, and no, we can't do that either. We're just trying to stay calm and hope for the best. We had travel plans for all of April, and most of May, with 2 cruises part of that. All of that has fallen through. We suspect our more local plans in June will all fall through as well. We're hoping 2021 is a much better year than 2020.

9 minutes ago, azdrydock said:

The cancellation or change of ports in most cases is not initiated by the cruise line. It is weather, docking conditions logistics or other technical reasons.  I don't know PG's policy but on other lines when there is a port change after embarkation there is a small OBC or the port taxes is refunded,

Normal times I would expect a cash refund for a cancelled cruises but Ponat or PG simply does not have the cash on hand for refunds. Borrowing cash is possible ,but I imagine with no income and the merger debt FCC's is there only choice.

I'm sorry azdrydock, but this cancellation was required to keep the passengers safe since there are covid-19 cases in Papeete and Fakarava, and not any of the reasons you've listed. They finally realized that we had no chance of getting from Figi to Bali, and getting home on any airline, without being quarantined in Australia for 2 weeks, and possibly another 2 weeks in the US on return. Is that something you would like to experience? Do you think a cruise line should force us to take this cruise? If so, it's time for everyone to rethink taking any cruise.

We're hoping that Ponant had the funds to continue since we have been offered no other choice, and if they don't have cash on hand to continue, then that will really stop us from ever booking a cruise again. While others thought Ponant was a good thing for Paul Gaugin, we never did. After meeting the Ponant rep who came onboard at Aitutaki in September, we were not confident about the future of the Paul Gauguin, and should have cancelled our April booking after that.  There were many people onboard our last PG cruise who were interested in Ponant's other cruises, but PG cruisers aren't allowed to use our cruise credit on Ponant, so they seem to be trying to stay separate. We would  have felt much more confident if IHG still owned the PG.

1 hour ago, CAL7 said:

I'm likewise confused. If a cruise company changes the itinerary (e.g. cancels ports of call), then that is not unusual and I believe we passengers are without recourse.  However, canceling the entire cruise, for whatever reason, should entitle us to a 100% cash refund.

 

Can anyone explain if that is wrong? And why? 

We can't. It seems very wrong to us, but we are willing to use the future cruise credit. But we don't want it exclude the airfare to Fiji from LAX, or the pre and post hotels that they booked at exorbitant rates. They booked it, and they should be responsible for it, and add that to the future cruise credit for our rebooking.

5 hours ago, Wendy The Wanderer said:

Wait, I'm confused.  Was your cruise cancelled by PG?  In that case don't you get a 100% refund?

Yes, our April 11th cruise was cancelled. And we were not offered any refund unless we rebooked on a cruise with less value in the next 18 months. We were also warned that they cannot tell us if we will get any credit for airfare, or our pre and post hotels, which supposedly is out of their control.

Here's the excerpt from the e-mail:

"Fully aware of the complexity of the situation, the Company offers you a Future Cruise Credit* in the amount of your cruise fare paid, valid on a cruise departure in the next 18 months from the departure date of your cancelled cruise. You will be receiving your Future Cruise Credit in the mail in the next few weeks.

*If the amount of the future cruise is lower than that of the original cruise, the difference will be refunded, or carried over to another booking. For any services booked by Paul Gauguin Cruises (i.e. flights and hotel programs), cancellation fees will be applied at the cost that travel partners will charge."

Our cruise TA, that we always book through did not receive any notice of the cancellation.

I was referred to Crew-center.com for info on Ponant cancellations, and tonight we received a cancellation notice for our April 11th Paul Gauguin cruise. While we would have loved our original Fiji to Bali itinerary, at this point we were only looking to rebook  another PG cruise (or a Ponant cruise)  without suffering a severe penalty. Hopefully those on Ponant hear the same news.

I think that they could have anticipated that a cruise heading to Fiji, and then to Bali no longer had any other ports that they could expect to stop at. All of the small islands did not want to take a chance of having any cruise ship stop at their ports, bringing them something that they had no ability to handle.

And as I was typing this, we were notified of the cancellation of our April 11th cruise. It's a future cruise credit, but we were only looking to rebook in the future without a penalty. Maybe I'll be able to sleep tonight.

Thanks for the head's up Emdee. You've got a good source at that website.

8 minutes ago, Emdee said:

Crew-center.com

Thanks so much for that. I see it and am going to read it now.

2 minutes ago, Emdee said:

I heard that they were aborting the current and cancelling the next two.

So not sure if yours is the one being cancelled or not.

 

Suggest you call PG and ask directly...they are the nicest people and will help you any way you can. 
 

 

I'll ask again, where did you hear this?

At this point, the people who answer the phones at PG are not at all nice. I can attest to that based on my own experience this past week. They were quite clear that they will not be cancelling the next 2 cruises. When confronted with these cruises being repositioning cruises that they won't cancel because even a few  passengers are better than no passengers, we were told that this was not a repositioning cruise. A person I will not name online told us very rudely that we were wrong, and that there were other cruises between our arrival in Bali, and the ship sailing to Singapore for drydock. We told here she was wrong. She told us that there was a charter from Bali to Fiji, and we said "Yes, we're aware of that charter,  but it's after drydock in Singapore.  It doesn't sail from Bali until May 20th, and our cruise ends on April 27th".  After that, she no longer said anything rational, and we were tired of her attitude.

1 hour ago, Emdee said:

Ponant is stopping all cruise operations and has promised to support disembarked crew financially. 
Kudos to them.

 

May our PG family be safe and well during this troubled time.

Where did you see this? I couldn't find it on Ponant's website, and the only cancellation that I could find searching the internet was the cruise to New Zealand, which obviously can't proceed at this point.

Given there are three cases in FP now with one on Fakarava, one has to wonder if it made it aboard the PG while they were there. Asking for a friend.

1 hour ago, Friscorays said:

 

Sort of like the politicians here in the United States are strictly doing?

Not sure what you're referring to in the US, but I think this is a political comment that doesn't belong on cruise critic.

We had been planning to take a chance and go, but then we received a dire sounding e-mail from PG cruises on March 11th, that mentioned more lenient cancellation fees, and on the PG website we found this:

March 12, 2020, Update

We were informed overnight that the French State and French Polynesian authorities have decided to suspend all cruise calls in French Polynesia until April 11, 2020. We will be communicating throughout the day with our travel advisors and guests booked on affected sailings and will be sending out notices and updating our travel advisory as our plans are introduced.

At 6 AM Pacific time on March 12 we were able to speak to a PG rep. She was not pleasant to deal with. Maybe she's not a morning person, but she told us we would get a future cruise credit for 90% of the cruise only fare, and it needed to be used by the end of 2021. She said the airfare and pre and post hotels were out of their hands, and there was no cruise credit for them.

Our TA spoke to them today, and we offered to rebook for 2021 rather than cancel, but they're sticking to the no credit for airfare or hotels. We can't negotiate with the airline or hotels on our own since PG cruises booked them. They were booked at a much higher price than we could have booked them on our own. But we mistakenly thought that they would be handled as one package if we booked them through the cruiseline.

In that March 12 update, there is this statement:  "We will be communicating throughout the day with our travel advisors and guests booked on affected sailings and will be sending out notices and updating our travel advisory as our plans are introduced."

Since neither we, nor our travel advisor has heard anything, we can only assume that only cruises prior to April 11th are affected,  which would only be the current cruise, a cruise that I assume is a charter between the current cruise and the March

28th to Fiji, and the March 28th cruise itself that brings the ship to Fiji. If the March 28th cruise is affected, will it still end up in Fiji on March 28th?

A total refund and 125% FCC for 2 year?. I' am totally appalled by that. We can't even rebook our April Fiji to Bali cruise for another cruise in 2021 without losing all of the money paid to PG for airfare and the pre and post hotels.  Not that they gave us any bargain on either of those items as we could have booked them for much less than we were charged, and would have a chance to get some of our money back ourselves (or a future credit) by being able to deal with the airlines and hotels ourselves.

If we cancelled instead or rebooking, we would lose another 10% off that, and still only receive a FCC that's only good through 2021, and not 2 years.

Something is very wrong with this picture when we compare our offer to those currently onboard. We dont' even know how or if the ship will get to Fiji, and it's unlikely to stop at any port on it's 16 days to Bali. Bali has already had a tourist death, and the hotels have had tourists staying there who have had close contact with corona positive travelers (the family of the tourist who died, as well as travelers who flew to Bali sitting next to people who continued on to Australia and New Zealand and tested positive there). We will be boarding a similar flight from Bali through Australia back to the US, where we have a chance of being exposed. Our airline already has a list of flights on their website identifying flights with coronavirus positive passengers, and the row they sat in, and it's quite long. The PG passengers currently onboard are being well compensated, and the only risk of coronavirus they will have from the French Polynesia PM in Papeete, and at the airports they return home to (and they knew that risk when they left).

Hopefully no one currently on board the PG picks up coronavirus while in Papeete. The French Polynesia MP picked it up in Paris from another MP, and brought it home to Papeete. I doubt she went there alone, or flew back on a private charter, so plenty of other people were exposed. It's ironic that they were so worried about the tourists, and that's not where it came from.

2 hours ago, Friscorays said:

Imagine the reason for that is that the May 20 trip is a chartered cruise so the organization that chartered the ship would be the folks who determine that trips cancellation policy.

We're booked on the cruise before dry dock, Fiji to Bali on April 11th. When we called yesterday morning, they offered us a future cruise credit minus 10% for late cancellation. We're also on the hook for our flight home since they refused to reroute us through Australia rather than Hong Kong on our way home.

Hopefully the company who set up the charter will be able to get something out of them, or has some type of insurance coverage.

BTW this little interesting tidbit popped up within the travel warning....

"For Fiji to Bali and Bali to Fiji sailings:

Click here for information from the U.S. Embassy in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu."

I take this to mean we will have to apply for visas instead of being processed on arrival. Not good.

Here is the relevant part of the email we received precisely after the 31 day deadline.

"We plan to operate the Fiji to Bali itinerary as close as possible to the original itinerary. It is a dynamic situation, and the Captain will make changes as necessary as we are notified of any updates from the ports.

With all of this in mind, we have decided to adjust our payment and cancellation policies to offer guests more flexibility and greater assurance. If you prefer to cancel your booking completely, we will issue a Future Cruise Credit for the amount of the cancel fee, less any fees imposed by the airline/hotels. The Future Cruise Credit will be valid for cruises through 2021 aboard the m/s Paul Gauguin. Cancel fees amended to 10% (cruise only fare) for cancellations received 31 days prior to sailing.

We will continue to update our Travel Advisory at this link: pgcruises.com/travel-advisory. Please monitor it for the latest updates.

Thank you for sailing with us and we look forward to making your voyage with us most memorable for you.

Sincerely,"

Our next Regent cruise is not until fall of next year. But if we had one scheduled for this year, we would cancel it. We are in our 60's and we both work out regularly. We always walk the stairs rather than taking the elevator. We aren't bothered by warm temperatures, and we never find ourselves out of breath unless we're pushing ourselves to expect it. Neither of us has an underlying health issue.

Our last cruise was a back to back, Singapore to Singapore, followed by Singapore to Sydney last December and January, and

I'm sorry to say, but some of the people our age, and most of the people over 70 on those last 2 cruises were not people I would want to cruise with again. We overheard in the dining room a number of times, people complaining about how long they had to wait for kidney dialysis, which apparently has many patients in the early morning or late afternoon,  and sometimes they are late for breakfast in the morning, or for happy hour in the afternoon. One woman said that she had never had dialysis before she boarded in Singapore, but her doctor diagnose her just before her cruise, and gave her a note that allowed the ship's doctor to perform it. I can't even imagine doing this myself, or Regent allowing it. But it does tell me that anyone will be allowed onboard with a note from their doctor, which is easily obtained.

A man stopped at our table in the main dining room at lunch to ask us about our excursion. He had previously stopped at a table of 6 asking the same thing. Just as he had told the larger table, he told us that his wife had been diagnosed with viral pneumonia and didn't feel well enough to take the excursion..We extended our sympathy, and saw him walk to a table 2 away from ours where his wife was seated, and was coughing uncontrollably over the table. They appeared to be at least late 70's, and why they weren't put off the ship or quarantined, I don't know. But Regent needs to step up their game.

When we were waiting to disembark in Sydney, we had to wait in the Theater for an excessive amount of time, as we did everyday waiting for excursions. The amount of uncontrollable coughing was unbelievable, and we eventually went upstairs trying to get away from it, and still had to move twice on the balcony to avoid it. No one made any attempt to cover their mouths, or aim away from others while they coughed.

I understand why people want to go on a cruise, and why they don't want to cancel when they're old and sick. But if those who are very elderly, with underlying health problems, and take 30 minutes to walk slowly to the buses, and require strangers to help them up 3 steps to board the bus, and then cough at the front of the bus where they pass their illnesses onto the rest of us, then we'll let them support the cruise lines. We won't be OK with being onboard with people like this in the future.

On 3/9/2020 at 3:11 PM, Tahitiancruise said:

Hello Moderator.   Can I post content on this roll call list?   Marc

I'm not the Moderator, but this isn't the roll call list, it's the board, so you can post and ask what you want about corona virus.

For those of you on cruises through the end of July, there's an update on the PG website today about policy updates. As you might have noticed, no one on the current cruise had anything to say about their cruise being a French Polynesia only itinerary, or what that cruise entails. Is this a non-disclosure situation, or just people onboard who don't really care that others were asking them about it. Maybe the ship has turned off the WiFi. But, I'll keep their lack of posting in mind before participating on this board in the future.

For those of us who are unfortunate enough to be on the March 28 and June 11 sailings,  we've decided that we're going unless we want to lose a lot of money. We would get a future cruise credit (minus a 10% penalty, and an unknown loss for airlines and hotels that they booked)  that can only be used on the PG, and not other Ponant cruises.The only reason we booked this cruise was for the stops that we made between Fiji and Bali. Today's update says that the itinerary for the March 28 and April 11 sailings are unknown,  but we can trust them to do their best, but that situation is fluid.

Having kept track of the situation so far,  the March 28 sailing will not stop in the Cook Islands since they have closed their ports until the end of April. Tonga is also closed and has been for some time,  but having been there in September on PG to Fiji, it's no loss. Cruise ships should just avoid Tonga in the future. In the past few days, Fiji allowed a last minute stop by Silver Whisper on it's World Cruise, with last minute stops arranged at Suva, SavuSavu and Laveu Island before their scheduled stop in Laukota. Kudos to Silver Sea for arranging this, and for Fiji keeping their country safe enough for smallcruise ships to travel to. Silver Whisper was supposed to stop in the Cook Islands (and announced onboard that they would stop at Rarotonga instead of Atutaki, apparently not knowing that they were both part of the same country and under the same restrictions), and several very small islands in Tonga. They were not allowed to stop in these places despite having only spent port time in Papeete, Bora Bora, Moorea, and Pitcairn Island (population 50 with no airport), in the last 2 weeks.

We hope to make it from Florida to Fiji where we have 3 nights at the Pullman. From there, we would be surprised if we stop anywhere on our way to Bali,but hope to spend a few nights at the IC, including a significant Birthday celebration. If we need to be quarantined in Bali, we have credit cards for that. We had a cruise scheduled on a different cruise line later in May. They reached out to us an offered the ability to reschedule within the next 2 years. There was no penalty for the cruise, and no penalty  for airfare or the pre or post hotel.   We rescheduled at no cost to us so we have no worries about getting home.

According to today's update, the Captain is responsible for arranging alternate stops. That does not instill any confidence in me since that is not part of a Captain's job. I'm watching fo Silver Whisper stopping in an alternate port in Vanuatu. If they make it, we might. Papua New Guinea has no cases of corona virus, so they may not allow any crew shiip entry if that's still the case. Bali has had passengers with corona virus passing through their airport. So far, none of them stayed in Bali, and tourists who were on those flights have been quarantined.

PG booked us through Hong Kong on the way back from Bali, and would not change it when we expressed concern about it. We had to book our own flights back through Sydney, and get a refund from PG. If we cancel and reschedule in the future, we could lose that entire business airfare, and that's a significant amount of money.  We did purchase insurance for the trip, but it doesn't cover everything we would lose.

If we were cruising in June or July on the PG, which might be a much better situation at that point, we could cancel and get a future cruise credit valid through 2021, without a penalty, and that's what we would do.

Sorry for the long rant, but it's been very frustrating with no information from PG, or this board,  and the cruise I looked forward to a year ago now keeps be awake at night.

Not only does the Bahamas use floating dry docks, but our Navy does as well. This is a photo we took while passing through Norfolk Va. on our boat.

On 3/4/2020 at 9:01 PM, azdrydock said:

A ship is never lifted out of water. It is floated into a pen very similar to a lock on a river cruise. The water is pumped out and the ship is gently lowered onto a support structure,.

Actually, a floating drydock does lift the ship out of the water. The old style graving drydock is like a lock, with a door that opens and closes. A floating drydock floats on top of the water. Chambers are filled with water to sink it, the ship pulls in on top of it, then the water is pumped out of the chambers, raising the drydock, and lifting the ship out of the water.

They have 3 of these at the Grand Bahama Shipyard in Freeport. It's pretty spectacular to see a giant cruise ship out of the water.

1 hour ago, FlightMedic555 said:

 

Don't think that the officials in FP may not still require you to have some type of documentation.  You will be arriving in FP from another country which means the PG or you may have to provide some documentation.  I am not sure what your itinerary is but I did read that all ships stopping anywhere in FP must first stop in Papeete.  Not sure how that may alter your trip.

 

As I said, we're on the Fiji to Bali PG cruise so we fly to Fiji from LAX, and go west  from there to Bali on the ship. We fly back to LAX from Bali via Sydney.  French Polynesia is not part of this cruise.

If our Fiji to Bali cruise on April 11th isn't cancelled, we plan to be on it. But if we had to fly to Tahiti with it's new policy, rather than Fiji, I would cancel.

The last thing I want to do is go to a doctor's office right before I leave for a trip. Most people in a doctor's office are there because they're sick, and I would not want to be in a waiting room with sick people right before I board a plane for a long (and expensive) trip. If French Polynesia wants to screen people coming into the country, they should have medical personnel doing that in the airport as they board. It still won't be very accurate, but it's better than 5 days before. The verification of the history of where you've been, and who you've been in contact with that's most important since the incubation time is longer than 5 days.