Live from Miami and just off Zuiderdam

[dakrewser]

Keep trying dave, keep trying

No, I'm done. Life's too short.....

 

-dave

[stillfrantic]

On the insurance question, I had the opposite problem. I went to the airport(3 hours away) and then the cancellations continued. We ended up in a hotel for 2 nights. They said it should be covered as a travel delay. Our policy says that the insurance doesn't end until the end date, or the date you actually get home due to a covered travel delay. Soo, if we'd gotten there and been stuck, it would have been covered.

[kryos]

When it was a 6 day cruise they offered special rates to stay on.

- When it was a 5 day cruise they offered the same rates...(go figure)

 

I heard them talking on Monday morning in the dinning room that they could put everyone on one sitting this week. You think they would have tried harder to keep more guests on for the 5 days. They offered more to the poor people who had their holidays wrecked then they did to their captive audience.

I found that very strange as well. I did not receive a copy of the letter that went around offering people discounts to stay onboard for what would have been the 9/4 sailing. Understandable ... I was already booked for a b2b to include that sailing. But I had a friend onboard who got the letter and began thinking about staying on if for no other reason than to avoid the airline mess. But she really didn't want to pay that much additional for her and her husband. Then we found out we were staying out a day longer, and that 9/4 cruise would be cut even further ... yet no further reduction in the price.

 

I told her to go down to the desk and talk to them. Surely they would do something for her since that 9/4 cruise would probably be way underbooked.

 

What she wanted was to keep her balcony stateroom, at the discounted price, to include both her and her husband for only one charge. I honestly didn't think HAL would do that, but surely they would negotiate with her?

 

They practically laughed in her face. Then they told her she missed the deadline anyway ... it was 3:00 that afternoon and it was now after 10:00 p.m.

 

When I saw that the 9/4 (actually 9/6 sailing) only had about 650 passengers onboard, this really made no sense. Wouldn't a cruiseline rather sail with staterooms full of happy passengers spending money onboard, rather than having all these empty staterooms with no revenue being generated?

 

I think HAL needs to come up with an organized plan to handle this sort of thing in the future ... and that plan also needs to include procedures for handling passengers' communications needs with family and airlines, etc.

 

Of course, it's easy for me to talk ... I wasn't really affected by all this. I had briefed my family before I left not to be concerned about hurricanes because on a cruise ship I would be kept well away from their ill effects. I was also not affected by the telephone and internet problems because I wasn't leaving the ship until 9/11 anyway. But, I could readily see how many people suffered with anxiety wondering how the hell they were gonna get home once being kicked off the ship.

 

HAL needs a better plan for handling these problems in the future, cause surely there will be other hurricanes.

 

Blue skies ...

 

--rita