Apex due in Israel tomorrow

[lux4me]

Nice to see Celebrity doing the right thing. 

Regent has a cruise starting in Haifa, Israel this Sunday. It was then going to stay an additional 2 nights before it was going to sail to Egypt. They moved the embarkation port to Istanbul, replaced the 2 days in Israel with 2 days at sea and they are still sailing to Egypt.  

Also they are telling clients no FCC'S or refunds.

 

 

 

[vjmatty]

Good to see Celebrity offering FCCs and other options. I’m not surprised since the same thing happened last year when St. Petersburg was taken off so many itineraries and Baltic cruises were changed to Northern Europe. Must be that the people on this thread snarkily pointing to the contract like Wall St lawyers forgot all about the Russian attack on Ukraine and what the cruise lines did in the aftermath.

 

ETA: Our Egypt and Israel sailing on Infinity isn’t until February so it remains to be seen if and how it will be changed or cancelled by Celebrity.

 

 

Edited October 11, 2023 by vjmatty
ETA

[Sunnyandhappy]

11 hours ago, vjmatty said:

Good to see Celebrity offering FCCs and other options. I’m not surprised since the same thing happened last year when St. Petersburg was taken off so many itineraries and Baltic cruises were changed to Northern Europe. Must be that the people on this thread snarkily pointing to the contract like Wall St lawyers forgot all about the Russian attack on Ukraine and what the cruise lines did in the aftermath.

 

ETA: Our Egypt and Israel sailing on Infinity isn’t until February so it remains to be seen if and how it will be changed or cancelled by Celebrity.

Our sailing is in March 4.  We don't know what our approach should be, except to wait and see how things unfold.  Sadly, I don't think this problem is going to go away soon.  It is a matter of time before they change the itinerary.

11 hours ago, vjmatty said:

 

[heatherbelle]

Just to add U.K. airlines do not offer refunds on air tickets, nor do lots of others if booked in the U.K.  those living in the U are very lucky if yiu can book fully refundable air tickets.  We also cannot get any price adjustments on cruises or airfare. Unless of course we book the cruise with a US TA.

[Cruisy Guy]

As a post script to this topic, we were on this cruise and the there were several lessons learned from this tragic series of events.

 

We booked private shore excursions in Egypt and were given the run around as far as a refund when we cancelled on Oct. 10th. After weeks and weeks of being lied to, we asked our credit card company to intervene. That took months but we finally got a chargeback on our CC account. Be very careful who you deal with, even when they have a great rating on Trip Advisor.

 

Although we tried to make the best of a bad situation, Celebrity was ill equipped to manage last minute changes. We ended up first spending two days in Cyprus, which was awful because there were no shore excursions available and everything was closed on Sunday. Same with the Greek islands. Santorini, among other ports, was inundated with other ships in the same situation. We lined up for hours with thousands of other passengers from five ships just to get on the tramway up to the town.

 

Every other port was similar. If Celebrity did manage to arrange last minute shore excursions, they were limited in the amount of people they could take. Any shore excursion was sold out immediately, leaving passengers with no options.

 

The moral is, be very careful what and who you book travel with.

 

Edited June 18 by Cruisy Guy

[Lolou127]

But they got you all away from a war zone pretty quickly as I’m presuming did other cruise lines, a very difficult situation when everyone is clamouring for limited excursions at least you were safe, as has been mentioned here before I think the Middle East is unfortunately a very volatile place to attempt to visit at any time 

[chemmo]

10 hours ago, Cruisy Guy said:

As a post script to this topic, we were on this cruise and the there were several lessons learned from this tragic series of events.

 

We booked private shore excursions in Egypt and were given the run around as far as a refund when we cancelled on Oct. 10th. After weeks and weeks of being lied to, we asked our credit card company to intervene. That took months but we finally got a chargeback on our CC account. Be very careful who you deal with, even when they have a great rating on Trip Advisor.

 

Although we tried to make the best of a bad situation, Celebrity was ill equipped to manage last minute changes. We ended up first spending two days in Cyprus, which was awful because there were no shore excursions available and everything was closed on Sunday. Same with the Greek islands. Santorini, among other ports, was inundated with other ships in the same situation. We lined up for hours with thousands of other passengers from five ships just to get on the tramway up to the town.

 

Every other port was similar. If Celebrity did manage to arrange last minute shore excursions, they were limited in the amount of people they could take. Any shore excursion was sold out immediately, leaving passengers with no options.

 

The moral is, be very careful what and who you book travel with.

 

As an older traveler I can remember many holidays as well as cruises that have been cancelled or severely altered clearly compromising what we had booked.
 

Much as these changes have caused us disappointment, inconvenience and at the time upset I have always been grateful that the tour companies did the ‘right thing’ by putting our safety first. Our disappointments have included cruise cancellations, cruise itinerary significant changes AI cancellations. Causes have included war, terrorist attacks and risks and failure of AI accommodation to meet health and safety standards….

 

Our philosophy has always been that if situations change you simply need to accept that ‘stuff happens that is often beyond the control of tour companies and cruise lines’.

 

Personally, whilst I sympathise with you and hope in years to come you will enjoy the cruise you planned I can’t feel that cross with Celebrity. At the end of the day they kept you out of harms way…
 

Nice to hear your credit card company were able to get your cash back when you booked independent tours. I think one of the reasons people often choose cruise excursions is because of the fear of loosing $ if ports change as a consequence of weather etc.

 

Much as I understand you saying ‘The moral is be very careful what and who you book travel with’ I would say if you are keen to visit areas of the world that are ‘volatile’ or subject to severe weather or have other issues then you have to accept that what you initially book does have a greater degree of uncertainty.