Anyone thinking of cancelling their Aug. or Sept. cruise?

[Canal archive]

I’m glad we all know what’s going on someone to anyone who doesn’t this thread would be awfully strange.

[sharkster77]

I'm wondering if the "spit" drop off time is so early because they are doing rapid antigen testing, hoping to get to anyone who tests positive before the morning excursions??  Just "spitballing" here (couldn't resist, sorry!!)

[mlbcruiser]

I was thinking that was probably the reason, too, sharkster77.

[bayareagirl]

My travel companion didn't feel comfortable with the Covid-19 risks after the CDC changed France to Level 4: Do Not Travel.  So she cancelled.  Ugh, such a huge disappointment.  Enjoy France, everyone else!

[bayareagirl]

Just now, bayareagirl said:

My travel companion didn't feel comfortable with the Covid-19 risks after the CDC changed France to Level 4: Do Not Travel.  So she cancelled.  Ugh, such a huge disappointment.  Enjoy France, everyone else!

(Our France's Finest cruise was scheduled to start in Paris in just a few weeks.)

[mlbcruiser]

I understand how you feel, bayareagirl. If we had not have had to cancel, we would be on our cruise right now. Several times a day I ask myself what we would be doing at that moment if we were in France. No one really knows when things will get back to being fairly normal. So it’s a little bit difficult to choose a replacement cruise. 

[lindalouT]

someone tested positive on the Viking  Hild this week

 

[mlbcruiser]

Oh, no. Hope we hear details and how the whole situation was handled.

[lindya]

We just postponed our 10/23/21 Avalon Rhine (Amsterdam to Basel) for the second time...rescheduled to October 2022....Ugh..so tired of Covid..We may only be able to do this kind of trip once in our lifetime so we did not want to deal with restrictions during excursions, etc...We are vaccinated and all but with this new variant and both of us in the health field (observing this nightmare firsthand) it just didn't seem like the right time to proceed...maybe next year.

[ncmom1]

Lindaya  - curious had you already paid your final payment and did Avalon give you any grief in moving your cruise?  We are on the 10/2/21 Avalon Rhine (Basel to Amsterdam) cruise and trying to decide what to do.

[SCBarker]

55 minutes ago, ncmom1 said:

Lindaya  - curious had you already paid your final payment and did Avalon give you any grief in moving your cruise?  We are on the 10/2/21 Avalon Rhine (Basel to Amsterdam) cruise and trying to decide what to do.

I've moved my Avalon Rhine from May to July to October. It hasn't been a problem yet. Although each time I moved the cruise, the next one was more expensive and ate up all the cancellation credit they gave us.

[Daisi]

16 hours ago, ncmom1 said:

Lindaya  - curious had you already paid your final payment and did Avalon give you any grief in moving your cruise?  We are on the 10/2/21 Avalon Rhine (Basel to Amsterdam) cruise and trying to decide what to do.

 

I'm Canadian, so things may be different, but we just moved our 202 that was rescheduled from 2021 to 2023 now.  No problems, and easily done.  Our TA said she was so happy to deal with Avalon, as she had been on hold with another line (she didn't say which one, just another river cruise) for 3 hours trying to re-schedule.  She had ours done in about 15 minutes.  Avalon has a Peace of Mind program, the only "penalty" you will have is you may lose any "free air/discounts" that were on the initial bookings and not offered on the new ones.  They were also (in 2021) moving the final payment dates from 90 days to just over 30, so I think they are more than willing to stretch that out as well. 

 

Good luck.

Edited September 1, 2021 by Daisi

[lindya]

We have not had a problem moving our cruise, but this time we barely made it before our flights were booked by Avalon. (we have the free airfare)  My agent did tell me that had the flights been reserved it may have resulted in a penalty fee to move the trip...our original onboard cruise credit from Avalon cancelling in 2020 has carried forward each time so we still have that...the price has increased, but only by a couple hundred dollars so that isn't too bad..we never made it far enough to pay the final payment so I am not sure if that would have changed things..we also have the trip insurance but knew that if we had to quarantine due to a positive test(although we are both fully vaccinated that is still a possibility) that we would still be out of pocket a great deal of money...I remain confident we made the right decision for us as I still see restrictions mounting...prayers it will go away soon even if it means the trip in October would have been ok had we not cancelled....I'd rather lose the trip and see this mess go away!!

[mlbcruiser]

lindya, when I first posted the originsl question I was just toying with the idea since I was becoming rather stressed with rapidly changing requirements and so much uncertainty. At the time I didn’t know another issue unrelated to covid would make the decision for us just in the nick of time (to cancell). So we cancelled our mid-Aug. Viking cruise,  and, like you, I’m hoping the whole process will be smoother when we do cruise, hopefully close to mid ‘22. I do expect we will still have to jump through hoops etc. and fill out forms. I just hope that the whole process is worked out by then and much smoother. And that Covid is hopefully much more under control. If not, guess we will be pushing it later! We do our own air so won’t have issues along that line. I had frequent flyer flights booked. I rechecked for dates we might want next year right when I canceled and they were requiring more points. And more stops. Haven’t checked in a while but hope that changes as well. At least got to let go of the anxiety over the cruise we did not do. If you run into problems in 2023, I think we will all be a very depressed world even more so than now because of this terrible pandemic! Good luckyo us all! 

[Farang]

33 minutes ago, mlbcruiser said:

We do our own air so won’t have issues along that line. I had frequent flyer flights booked. I rechecked for dates we might want next year right when I canceled and they were requiring more points. And more stops. Haven’t checked in a while but hope that changes as well.

mlbcruiser,

 

We too decided to not take an AMA cruise we had planned.  We cancelled a Sept 2021 Danube cruise and rebooked in Sept. 2022.  Ironically, we just cancelled that cruise as well - but that is another story.  What I would like to comment on is your quote above.

 

I don't know what airline your frequent flyer flights were on, but we are experiencing the same situation you are citing on United Star Alliance.  For twenty-five years, I had offices in California and Thailand, splitting my time equally among the two.  Consequently, I have over 2 million miles accrued "butt in seat" on United.  Needless to say, the perks that (used) to bring me became golden handcuffs.  I have, to date always flown Star Alliance.  The flights we cancelled (as were typical) to Europe were one stop with a short connecting flight in Europe from a European Star Alliance hub to final destination country.  For the last twenty years, those flights became available 336 days out.  Now, typical route is 2 stops, the required miles are 16% more and they become available at random dates far closer to your departure date.

 

Why is this happening?  Here is my take. 1) Over the years, United has aggressively added numerous ways for people to accrue miles - primarily credit card alliances where United shares in the card issuers merchant fees. Recent reports hold that United makes over $5 billion on this segment of their business annually. 2) These unused "points" are a liability on UAL's financial statements and have been growing as people have been afraid to travel. United benefits if you use more miles to travel 3) Those that are willing to travel now are driven consumers that, if using miles is not convenient, will pay in $$ - much better for UAL on a cash-flow basis. 4) probably should be #1, United recently borrowed $5Billion against their FF Program (a program that generates that level of revenues annually), They need all of those that are 5K miles short of the inflated mileage requirements for flights to make purchases on their Mileage Plus credit cards. Thus supporting the $5Billion loan.

 

So, what I am saying is that the prospects of (at least United) FF redemption going down is iffy.  By the way, we have shifted our recurring and incidental CC charges to a card that earns miles that can be redeemed on numerous affinity programs.  This may help to alert United to the options of the consumer.

[Host Jazzbeau]

@Farang I was never a Sky Warrior like you, but I have fallen into the trap of getting credit cards with air miles sign-up bonuses and then felt chained to the rules for using those miles.  I'm currently on hold for the second time today with Delta (3 hours first time until the rep supposedly changed an award flight; then found that partner airline cancelled it; now 3 hours and counting to even get to a rep).  No more!  Now I only use cards that pay off in cash – no blackout dates, no hoops to jump through, and no devaluations after earning.  'Show me the money.'

[texasstar]

Same issue with Delta.  Last year they wanted 160,000 miles for roundtrip Business class to France.  Now if they even have any available, the want over 400,000 miles  for horrible flights.  Hopefully, they will go down in the future.

[mlbcruiser]

One of the things you have to watch for with a credit card that gives you points that are usable on any airline is when you want to book a flight and use those points, you must book it through the credit card’s agency (actually some travel agency that they work with). I learned a long time ago on a couple of occasions when I tried to use points after finding a very good price online for whatever destination and airline, I got told that they could not access the price that I saw. They were supposedly pnly bound to book flights that were coded a certain way. They could always only access something more expensive, so I had to use more points for those flights than I would have had to if they could have booked me on the deal that I saw. I also dislike the commercials that say you get twice the points for your purchases or whatever. Perhaps that credit card requires more points to book a flight (?),  so you can’t really compare if you would be better off with another card that might require fewer points to book a flight than the one offering double points!  At least it will be very difficult. If each point equals one dollar and the flights accessible to these credit card company travel agents were identical, then perhaps you could compare. Seems difficult to me though. Wouldn’t want to mess with it.