Royal Caribbean Cancels Cruise and Doesn’t Live up to Its Promises

Nothing upsets me more than travel providers changing their itineraries and leaving the passengers holding the bag. I had awful experiences with InselAir and SATA in the past, but my most recent one shocked me the most. One sort of expects inferior service with a budget airline, but with Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, I expected top notch service. In my recent experience with them, nothing could be farther from the truth. 

We have been wanting and trying to go to Cuba for some time. After the trip that we backed out of, we figured that the safest way to get there and keep our Nexus/Trusted Traveler card status was to take a cruise. We finally found a cruise that coincided with my and my son’s school vacations. 

In June, we booked a cruise to Cuba on Royal Caribbean. The cruise was set to sail February 17th and return on the 21st. I normally take a long trip in February and this year, I could have flown out on Friday the 15th and returned on Sunday the 24th, but since Cuba is a destination we’ve been trying to do for a long time, I opted for a shorter vacation. 

Throughout the summer, I was monitoring airfare to Fort Lauderdale, from where the cruise departs, and noticed a trend that fares were increasing. On August 11th, we booked our airfare. The cheapest flight I could find was to fly to Fort Lauderdale on American and fly back on Delta. These tickets cost me $552 for two passengers (my son and me). 

Twelve days later, I received an email from Royal Caribbean stating that the portion of our cruise to Cuba was cancelled and we had three choices:  sail on our original dates to the Bahamas, cancel the reservation and receive a full refund, or rebook on an alternate date. We only saw one alternative and the cruise to the Bahamas definitely wasn’t it. We rebooked our cruise for January 24. 

This didn’t thrill me too much because now I had to take three vacation days from work, my son had to miss school during exams, and I was now going to lose $478.58 in wages in side jobs. Nonetheless, I figured that at least Royal Caribbean would refund me $400 for my airfare.   

I called Royal Caribbean to inquire about the process for obtaining my refund and I was connected to Becky who, after an hour, told me to fax my documentation to her. 

I waited and never saw any credit to my credit card. So, I called again and wasted another hour on the phone to be told that I needed to cancel or rebook my original reservations. Why?? I spent more on the original booking than Royal Caribbean was going to reimburse me. 

When I called Delta, I was told that if I rebooked my ticket, I would be charged a rebook fee of $125 per ticket and $200 for the new fare if I changed my ticket to January. That one-way ticket now was going to cost me $416 each. I then contacted American Airlines where I learned that my tickets were nonrefundable so I would lose the value of the tickets ($369.6). At this point I would have been out $1,201 and still would have been in need of a one-way ticket to Florida in January. I couldn’t bear to throw more good money after bad. 

Therefore, I booked two roundtrip tickets from Detroit to Fort Lauderdale for travel in January for a total cost of 352.80. Combined I spent 904.80 on airfare expecting Royal Caribbean to honor what the rebooking letter stated and refund me $400 leaving the cost for the airfare $504. 

With the original airfare, I booked a flight to Guadeloupe out of Fort Lauderdale. I wasn’t happy about this because due to Royal Caribbean’s schedule change, I had two choices, be out more money than they were willing to give me or use the tickets I had. I ended up booking a four-day trip instead of a ten-day trip in order to not waste my money on the airfare. 

I called Royal Caribbean again to try to get my $400 refund. I was on the phone for two hours with Sara Diaz. Who did nothing buy waste my time.  She kept telling me that in order to process the $400 promised in the letter, I had to cancel my original tickets. I kept telling her that the letter never stated I had to CANCEL my original booking. All it required was proof that I purchased nonrefundable tickets which I proved in two faxes and an email to Sara Diaz. Below are the terms for the airfare refund and it states nowhere that the tickets MUST be cancelled.

After two hours, it became apparent that Sara Diaz was only interested in wasting my time. I ended the call. The next day, I attempted to pay off my cruise when I became aware that out of spite, Sara Diaz cancelled my son off the cruise. I called the cruise line and wasted another hour and 15 minutes waiting for my son to be added back to the reservation. 

As of this writing, I still haven’t been able to get Royal Caribbean to honor its end of the deal they offered. Stay tuned. I have a few more tricks up my sleeve, but I need to wait until the cruise is over.

~Bella