When Cruise Ships Skip Promised Ports
Olga over the eastern tip of the Dominican Republic, Dec. 11, 2007.
Photo: NOAA Caribbean
by Wendy Perrin
Two cruise news items yesterday -- Subtropical Storm Olga's effect on ships in the Caribbean and the cruise-ship collision off Uruguay--highlight one of the big advantages, and at the same time one of the big drawbacks, of vacationing at sea: Ships often change their itineraries at the last minute.
This is a good thing if it means you can easily skirt bad weather or unforeseen nasty situations in places along your itinerary. But it's a bad thing if you chose a cruise because you wanted to see specific places and then you find out midway through your trip that you won't be seeing them and you're owed nothing in the way of a refund.
Yesterday Norwegian Cruise Lines' Norwegian Dream collided with a barge in the harbor of Montevideo, Uruguay. As I read on Cruise Critic -- one of my favorite sources of cruise info -- this stranded both the Norwegian Dream and Celebrity Cruises' Infinity in Montevideo harbor, and it halted Orient Lines' Marco Polo outside the entrance to the harbor. So far, two of the three ships had to change their itinerary: The Marco Polo skipped Montevideo, heading straight to Buenos Aires, and the Norwegian Dream canceled stops at Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands and Puerto Madryn in Argentina. Norwegian Cruise Line gave its passengers a $150 shipboard credit to make up for the two missed ports. That's nice, I guess -- given that cruise lines are not obligated to compensate passengers for skipped ports -- but if I were on a cruise around Cape Horn and had to miss both the Falkland Islands and Argentine Patagonia, it would take a helluva lot more than $150 worth of shipboard margaritas to make me feel whole again.
So that's the down side of cruise-ship itinerary changes. The up side? Look at what happened when Subtropical Storm Olga hit the Dominican Republic. If you were vacationing on a cruise ship in the area, you simply sailed away from the storm. If you were vacationing on land, however, your trip got ruined. Norwegian Cruise Line skipped its La Samana stop, and Royal Caribbean skipped Labadee, its private island off Haiti. If I were on either of those ships, I'd be bummed, but a lot less bummed than if I'd paid for a week's vacation at a Dominican Republic beach resort and was there now, soggy and trapped, unable to get out or get my money back.
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My parents, sister, and my sister's partner are on the Norwegian Dream (Now the Norwegian Nightmare). It seems to me that a change of itinerary due to Act of God (etc.) vs "Strange Accident."
$150 is ridiculous.
Posted by: dmassguy | December 12, 2007 at 03:32 PM
Precisely. And it's not even $150 in cash. It's $150 IN SHIPBOARD CREDIT -- which means it can be spent only on purchases onboard; if you don't use it, you lose it.
What's your family reporting about the shipboard situation right now?
Posted by: WendyPerrin | December 12, 2007 at 06:23 PM
My parents are also on that ship. Talk about bad luck - last year they went on the same cruise and were quarantined almost the whole time due to illness. I think this trip isn't meant to be taken.
Posted by: keizerfire | December 12, 2007 at 07:36 PM
Were they quarantined because of a norovirus scare on the ship?
Posted by: WendyPerrin | December 13, 2007 at 10:12 AM
We were on the Norwegian Sun the week of November 10 and they skipped their private island that trip. The diversion to Nassau brought us alongside the Costa Fortuna, Disney Wonder and a Royal Caribbean ship. At least one of those was also weather related.
Posted by: NeilJaeh | December 13, 2007 at 12:44 PM
Good news and bad news:
First, the bad news. Three days later, the Norwegian Dream is still stuck in Montevideo's harbor, making repairs.
The good news: USA Today's The Cruise Log (http://blogs.usatoday.com/cruiselog/2007/12/norwegian-dream.html
reports that Norwegian Cruise Line has now decided to compensate passengers with a 50 percent refund of their cruise fare AND $61 per person in government taxes and fees associated with the missed ports (in addition to the $150 in shipboard credit).
The Dream is expected to set sail from Montevideo later today, although it will be skipping even more of the ports promised in the itinerary.
Posted by: WendyPerrin | December 13, 2007 at 02:49 PM