We leave on Sunday for our land tour of Canada and our expedition cruise to Alaska.
Friday night at 10 I listened to my voicemails and there was a message from Megs, my travel partner: “Look at your emails.”
Our Alaskan cruise has been cancelled. The ship had a problem that was discovered during a scheduled maintenance stop and the company was pulling the whole cruise.
Bloody hell. We booked the trip through Flight Centre and they don’t open on weekends. We had just one day to get this sorted.
OMG it was a THING!
I left an email for Montana, our travel agent, saying I’d be there at 9 AM. Then I spent the rest of the evening until 1 AM messaging with Scott and my Antarctica friends about possible workarounds.
At 8, I received a call from Montana asking us to come in at 12, to give her time to work through some options.
Well, we got to the travel agents at 12 and we left at 4:45.
It was a huge drama, much more than I thought it would be. We tried about 20 different alternatives, with the travel agent calling different companies to find out whether different tours and holidays would work with our dates. She started with 3 possible cruises. One was hellishly expensive and the others were only 7 days. (Our original cruise was 14 days.) One had children on board – yucky.
We started looking through brochures and exploring other options. Land tours? A combo of a short cruise and land tour? Going into the US instead?
Nothing would work. It was a nightmare.
Finally, after 2 hours, I looked at Megan and said, “I think we have to go with the expensive cruise. It’s the only thing that fits.”
She was reluctant, as she’s putting a new kitchen in as soon as we get back, but it was the only way.
It’s a 10 night cruise to Alaska. We’ve been upgraded to a balcony room WITH OUR OWN BUTLER!!!!!!
Haha! Not very frugal at all.
My Antarctica friends are now coming up with crazy requests for the butler. This could be fun…
The annoying thing is now that we’re not on an expedition ship anymore, we’ll have to dress for dinner. Apparently, “elegant casual” is the way to go. I’m going to have to bring my linen clothes – at least I’ll have a butler to iron them for me!!
A know-it-all woman I used to work with had this suggestion on FB:
“Little black dress, 3 bright scarves, 1 Isadora scarf, sparkly jewellery, a headband and a feather.”
Sure, like I have those things in my wardrobe… She said they might have ‘theme’ nights but we’ll be in the air when the company emails their ship information to us, so we’ll be missing that info. Never mind… maybe we could get the butler to help us?
“James! Find me a costume for the Bordello in Mexico night!!”
All up, after we get a full refund from the cancelled cruise, we’ll be $2,200 or so out of pocket. Our travel agent will see if our travel insurance will come to the party on any of this. Our holiday will be a few days’ shorter than originally intended, but hey – it’s better than being two WEEKS shorter, which was what it was starting to look like!
I got home utterly exhausted and was in bed at 8:20 PM.
So we leave on Sunday at 11AM, with a full itinerary, thank goodness. If anyone in Melbourne is looking for a good travel agent, Montana Edwards at Flight Centre Mordialloc is like a dog with a bone. She wasn’t stopping until our trip was sorted.
I guess I should start to pack now, hey?
Proper travel blogging will commence shortly. 🙂
Dad joke of the day:
Fingers crossed, everything else will work out as planned! Enjoy the butler experience, haha
I know. Crazy!
I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time. Can’t beat the scenery in Canada and Alaska and Canadians are much like Aussies.
Great travel agent to give that service.
That is one outstanding travel agent
Yes. I’m going to get her a bottla bubbly when we get home.