rimmit

Yes. After that I have definitely gotten many recommendations for medjet. As you read our biggest issue was the local evac companies would not take a guarantee of payment from the travel insurance companies. When we got to Johannesburg, after I made the initial 38000USD payment, the next day the travel insurance company was able to send a guarantee of payment, and I never made a single payment after that. I question if medjet would have flown her straight home though. Most likely they would have flown her to Joburg. I know Netcare Milpark was listed as a destination under medjet. I say I doubt they would have flown us home as that is at minimum a 15 hour flight back to the US in a 787/A350/777. I don’t think those medjet as have that range without multiple stops. She was in no condition to travel that far at the time and needed to get stabilized and have her wounds debrided. Had she gone straight home she would almost assuredly have lost her foot or maybe gone septic and died or a ton of other complications. We did have a jet option home, but she was stable enough that she could “tolerate” biz class after 2 weeks to just get home and then an air ambulance to get home domestically. I use the word tolerate loosely, but since I am a physician I could be her medical escort and administer any meds. TBH, at that point I preferred biz class as at least there was some comfort and service. The idea of a 20+ hour trip in a small med evac jet was not super appealing. It would have also been another couple days for them to organize the evac jet. Biz class was faster to get. We were also running out of days our insurance was to cover (7 days after the original end date of our trip) so the travel insurance company was trying to just get us home at that point before our insurance ran out. Next big trip we take we will definitely get it though. In an emergency, the last thing you need to be doing is trying to wire money because they don’t take a CC just to get evacuated, and dealing with all the payment issues we went through.

There was actually a private matter that drew us to Florida at the last second. Hence why this was a last second booking. Since we HAD to come down for something else and drive 13 hours, we decided to go ahead and do Disney for a day and board a cruise ship to try and destress from some of the other issues. It was not in our original plans for this week. We typically do not book cruises 3 days before they leave, esp when we have to drive from KY, that’s just not a reasonable thing to do from KY. I am not blaming RCI for her getting sick, and ultimately we have actually in the last several hours realized we have travel cancellation on our CC and since she’s positive RCI should give us a FCC so no ultimate harm done. If you read the thread I acknowledge my wrongness. Things just came boiling over due to many factors, part of which RCI basically frauding us multiple times in our FCC issuing and redemptions. I feel like I’m dealing with an insurance company in that the “errors” they make are conveniently always in their favor. I asked my TA if this is a chronic problem with RCI and she says they are the worst company by far with FCCs. Part of me almost wants to investigate and see if it’s a chronic enough problem to see if there is a class action brewing. It’s just hard to believe a company could so conveniently tell me my FCCs were either already used (especially when they have explicitly not allowed them to use them with the KSF offer), or had grossly incorrect amounts, and also incorrectly told me I would get an FCC for my port fees and taxes, and never give me one, wait for me to complain, then tell me I should have been issued a refund for the port fees months ago. It’s just a chronic issue with them and my TA says I’m not the only one. Me and my TA fought tooth and nail to get the FCCs applied to this sailing and finally succeeded and then we couldn’t make it. She spent no less than 6 hours dealing with RCI over the FCCs. She states FCCs from RCI severely hinder he workflow as many of her clients have issues and she can only deal with one FCC problem at a time when she calls. Again, I was wrong to vent in the policy, but there was some seriously pent up anger with RCI already brewing, and some other personal things going on.

Thanks. To say it’s been stressful is an understatement. lol. She’s spent 30+ days in the hospital, 16 of which were in zimbabwe/South Africa till we were able to get her repatriated home. She’s had 13 surgeries, over 60 days of IV abx, and done hyperbaric oxygen to help with her wounds, all while we still have a 7 and 11 year old. Thankfully the grandparents moved in for the last 3 months to assist as it would just be impossible to manage everything otherwise. All things considered she is alive and doing relatively well now. She just has to get to walking again which will be at least another 3-4 months hopefully.

I just read my terms. It actually should cover this. If for some reason RCI won’t accept the positive covid result, I’ll file with my CC. I have two claims with them currently filed in July…. So I’m not holding my breath, but they should pay. I know its a max 2k per claim from my previous claims, and thankfully that more than covers the cruise.

Long story short, I was very frustrated for a number of reasons due to a variety of frustrations over the last 3.5 months. I came on here ranting full well I would snapped back to reason, knowing how the forum would react to my rant snapping me back to reason. Luckily (or unluckily) she ended up testing positive for covid on her third try so we should get an FCC. I did buy travel insurance, but due to the closeness of the trip from when we made final payment as we booked last second, there was no trip cancellation option in the benefits. I actually do have trip cancellation via my CC though so I could file that if I get denied by RCI. I do find the paradigm shift on the forum quite interesting. During precovid during rota or flu outbreaks, there’d be a ton of people on here harping about all the people and kids sniffling and coughing at embarkation and how dare they go on the cruise with those symptoms. I remember those forum posts vividly as I was particularly sensitive to them as I have to younger kids and everyone would always pick on kids for getting on ships with colds. Post covid, everyone has now seemed to flip onto the other end of the spectrum and that it’s on the onus of the people to protect themselves from illness and it’s now perfectly ok to board the ship in whatever condition. I am perfectly fine with the new paradigm shift, just thought it was interesting what a difference a pandemic makes.

No prob. I’m sure that was way more detailed explanation than you cared to hear. My hospital has a 98 percent vax rate among physicians and advanced practitioners. Only 70 percent among all staff.

She has had 4 shots, covid once, asymptomatic on admission to hospital In Johannesburg after getting med evaced from Zimbabwe. I have had 4 shots, covid once after a Galapagos expedition in Dec. I got my flu shot already this year. My wife has not. Our area just got them in two weeks ago Main reason is she looked like flu, but flu hasn’t really hit hard yet this year, and she could be the beginning of the wave. She had a really bad headache and vomiting which had been a very common presentation for covid that I have seen lately. My son presented with Covid in sept with h/an and emesis. He has had 3 shots and covid in Dec as well. She also had muscle aches fever chills. She is on chronic abx at this point for her osteo (bone infection) so bacterial infection is super unlikely but possible. Other viruses like rhino, adeno, rsv wouldn’t be as severe typically and don’t come with vomiting typically. That sums up my thought process.

We were never gonna get off the boat. We typically don’t anyway on short cruises, and given her immobility we definitely werent going to.

Sorry for the misleading title.

At this point she is just doing PT so she can hopefully walk again and 6 months oral antibiotics for her bone infection. Plastics and ID both signed off on the vacation as at this point she’s just on autopilot just doing PT 3 X a week. If anything, they have been encouraging her to get out and be more active after 3+ months of minimal activity. The main thing is no pool, and no beach which we were fine with.

Third times a charm! Positive covid at Urgent care! Sadly the test was run after 1700 and the ship had already sailed, and per RCI policy it needs to be a positive test at the pier…. Or ten days prior to embarkation.. So we’ll see what they say…

Yes. I have an outstanding claim with them right now from when we had to cancel stuff when my wife was run over. They are painfully inefficient. I will see if it covers cruises. It covered airfare but we have none for this trip.

I agree! Maybe they will count when we left our house as the start of the trip so we got interrupted since we didn’t fly this time. I am not sure if that will count, but we did leave our house. I have 4 different travel insurance claims waiting to be reviewed right now, some for VERY large amounts.

I am so sorry for the misleading rants. I really am. Just so frustrated over the last several months. I know this complaint has no basis, I knew it when I posted it. I was just angry and frustrated and I apologize to the forum for my anger at our current plight and what has happened over the last 3.5 months. I have built up anger at travel insurance companies right now as well as I have four different claims that are outstanding for 3 months now and none have been reviewed even yet for large sums of money. I also feel RCI has tried to give me the run around with FCCs and it has been an exhausting battle to get those issues and used. again, I apologize for the rant. It has no basis, and I knew that when I posted it.

My wife while disabled at this point, is at no higher risk than standard. Her foot is well healed at this point. We used FCCs that we have fought tooth and nail to get from RCI from a cruise in July. Don’t even get me started on FCCs and RCI’s inability to issue the correct amount. Our TA has spent innumerable hours sorting out the FCC situation and fighting to get our taxes and fees back. RCI keeps stating they have been paid out, or the amount is correct or some other excuse. Our TA has almost had it with them trying to get the correct FCCs issued. Then they issue them, and they are either “used” as in there is no value or in the wrong amount. If I wasn’t on top of the FCC situation I can’t count how much money I would have lost. You absolutely have to stay on top of the FCCs, or you’re not getting your money back. In reality, at this point I’m playing almost “free” money, as I had to fight for the FCCs we used to pay for this cruise, as RCI kept telling me they didn’t exist as I used them up already, until my TA kept bugging them about it and finally got them issued.

Totally understand.

As a physician I would definitely argue against that statement. At least in regards to upper respiratory viral illnesses. There are many viruses, but to say a thousand other illnesses that present this way would be quite an exaggeration. the standard Respiratory viral panel that I order screens for Flu A and B RSV paraflu Human Metapneumo rhino adeno. During peak times Covid is definitely front runner compared to most of those.

Yes. I apologize for a potentially misleading title. What I meant is they had very nice policies beginning and mid pandemic and now those policies have reverted to the not as good policies. “Good” being a relative term. I guess reverting back to “not as friendly pre pandemic” ways would have been a better way to say that..

Common things being common, covid is more prevalent than flu right now.

We werent doing a full day as she obviously doesn’t have the endurance for that. We just did Space 220, and a couple rides. Figured the odds of her getting sick were low given she just had Covid back in June, but it has been a while and her immunity could be waning.

That is a good idea. I guess I felt it was socially not responsible to go to the port if she was sick. I am not judging anyone that does do that, just saying given the circumstances and the high probability she would turn positive soon, I felt it wasn’t a good idea. Probably shoulda done it though.

Well we are at urgent care now, just to support that claim. I have dealt with travel insurance extensively due to the our experience in Zimbabwe, which is a novel in itself in terms of what it took to get out of Zimbabwe, so I know exactly what they want to see. TBH, part of my frustration is the last 3.5 months have been an absolute nightmare. I cannot begin to explain the horror of we went through in Zimbabwe. http://thesmallworldfamily.com/2022/06/24/so-what-exactly-happened/ That link goes to a 30 minute read that describes what it took to get out of Zimbabwe to a level 1 trauma center. Unfortunately, it did not get any easier after we got out, as she almost had to have her foot amputated at one point. I agree that policies are policies, I am just frustrated at the endless bad luck we have had. Travel insurance has been a pain, as I have a claim for 60k that I submitted beginning of July that hasn’t even been reviewed yet. I have 3 other outstanding claims that also have yet to be reviewed. On top of that, since we were in Zimbabwe, there is minimal insurance on the person that ran her over. So she now has a lifelong disability because someone was careless, and we get to pay for it for eternity in medical bills. While travel insurance covered us from Zimbabwe to the hospital she got transferred to in the US it stops there and now we are paying the bills. While we hit our maximum out of pocket for the year, this is going to be a permanent damage from this event and permanent disability. This cruise was a much needed break that we couldn’t get off the ground. I realize no one here cares. Just needed to vent. Long story short. The policy is what it is. Oh well.

I agree. It is a slippery slope. I guess the question I really have is why do they bother with a health questionnaire when all they care about is the covid test? Whats the point in the health questionnaire?

They were very flexible during covid. Thats for sure. I will try and file the claim, but I can Al but guarantee this will be denied. I have spent innumerable hours dealing with travel insurance companies lately…. And since we never started the cruise they will likely consider this a trip cancellation and not interruption.

I have dealt a lot with travel insurance lately due to the accident in zimbabwe filing claims with them. They will consider this a cancellation and not interruption as we never started the trip. Trip cancellation was not an offered option for some reason, likely because we booked so close to the actual sailing date that they did not think cancellation was a realistic benefit.