DownByTheSea

We were not looking at Greek isles itineraries, no: We chose this one because it was marked down and was so extraordinarily inexpensive—precisely because it used to be a holy lands itinerary that X turned into a Greek isles itinerary and X had to drastically lower the price as a result. We had no prior interest in a Greek isles sailing, but this popped onto our radar because it was a cheapy and sounded fun for the super low price. My point being that Greek isles itineraries are much less costly than holy lands itineraries. At last, at the times of year in question. Thus, if I had one of the latter converted to the former while I was on board, I too would feel it equitable to receive a price adjustment, as the OP talked about. Indeed, we DO have a 26 day b2b Middle East itinerary booked for next October, on Azamara, and we’re in a quandary whether it will see this same fate. We have no interest if it’s not substantially the itinerary we booked. That’s why we booked it.—Which gets back to the OP’s point, that itineraries are not all equal so the cruise line should share the pain with pax when events like this happen, not keep the money and put the full burden on the pax just because the have a legal weasel clause that lets them. (And before you ask what we plan to do about the Mideast sailing, if by final payment it looks questionable that it won’t do the Mideast itinerary, we’ll likely cancel.) All itineraries are not equal. Cruise lines should refund at least the difference when they drastically change itineraries for people who’ve paid. It’s only fair.

I wasn't on this cruise and have no dog in this fight, but I agree completely that if you sign up for an itinerary that was more expensive, and they switch out to a much cheaper itinerary -- that you didn't want to do anyway -- they should compensate you, at LEAST for the difference in fare. I don't know what the pricing was before/after, but those itineraries are not comparably priced at all. This I know because we were alerted that a Celebrity "replacement" Greek Isles itinerary was sooooooo inexpensive we just added one of those in March. The web site for the 11 night Mar 25, 2024 Infinity sailing says "from $586pp" and "Was $2078." That gives you a sense of the difference. Also: We also have a sailing booked for the middle east in November on Azamara (fingers crossed it will go to most of the ports, just minus the one stop in Israel that I anticipate might be cancelled) -- which was in line with that $2000pp price when we booked, though after we booked it's gone up to insane levels like $7300pp for an INSIDE and almost $10,000pp for the least expensive balcony! Whoa!! We had wanted to maybe upgrade, but, hoooo boy, no way now. So, yeah, Greece in October is like 75%+ less than the holy lands itinerary it replaced. I would definitely expect Celebrity to offer some serious compensation if I were the OP. It's only fair. They're earning high dollar itinerary rates and offering a low dollar replacement. Not fair at all to keep the money and run. War is horrible, but both the OP and Celebrity are impacted, so they should share the pain, not dump all the downside on the OP. Just because a cruise contract we have no ability to negotiate says "we'll put you on a ship for N days, nothing more" -- unless it's a booze crooze we all know we're not really buying N days on some ship any random place in the world when we book a cruise. We are definitely booking for seeing specific ports, maybe missing a small percent of them -- but a sudden, completely different, much cheaper, itinerary? With no option even to cancel because you're already on board? Not fair at all, no matter what the forced legalese says. That just generates huge bad will. Silversea did this to us 10 years ago, epically bad cruise, worst cruise of the 45 cruises we've done, all things under their control they failed at, and they refused to do anything despite a revolt of most of the pax. Unknown to use beforehand, the problems had gotten so bad their CMO was (secretly-but-discovered) on board to troubleshoot. Exec. office thumbed their nose at us. We haven't sailed with them since. I'm sure it's cost them many times what it would have to make it right, but that was their call. I hope Celebrity comes to realize treating pax badly costs them more in the end. We've got two Celebrity cruises booked, so I sure hope we don't run into the same bad treatment! OP -- you have my sympathies.

Yeah. Similar story. Has anyone found some other contact within Oceania who can actually fix pre-paid excursion problems? We have two problems for a sailing in August (one tour silently got charged at a higher price than the "shopping" list of tours says it costs, and in trying to fix that they messed up a different tour, so my wife got switched to a different tour than I'm on, and the tour is now closed). Between calls, voicemails, and emails, I've contact O over a dozen times over the course of the last six weeks. Each rep I speak with voice (five of those so far) says they'll contact the shore excursions team to fix the problems, and promises they'll personally get back to me in a day or two. They never get back to me, of course, and the problems are never fixed. I've tried multiple times asking for a supervisor, and they refuse. They don't reply to emails or voicemails. (Two of them gave me their email address so I could email them a screenshot showing the price on the page that lists the tours while we were on the phone. [The shopping screen says the tour is $219pp regular price, $164.25pp Your World pricing. Even today that's the price it shows. It charged as $359pp according to the View Purchases screen. Seems pretty cut & dried to fix!] They said they received my emails while on the phone so I know they're the right email addresses; and other reps told me to email them and again gave me their same emails... but they never reply. Not in spam folder, no. No reply to voicemails from the three reps who gave me their extension.) In the course of their fiddling to try to fix the pricing issue, they messed up a different port and got my wife put on a totally different tour than I'm (still) on, and now all the tours for the date are closed. The reps can't fix that either. All they ever say is they'll send an "urgent" email ticket to the shore.ex. team. Some reps claim they've tried to call shore.ex. while I'm on hold, but report that nobody answers. They have no explanation for why the problems aren't getting fixed. They say it'll take a couple days, but I point out it's been six weeks now, of repeated requests... They just promise they are the ones who will get it fixed. Not. At this point I don't believe anything they say. They're simply lying. And the on-hold wait times are so long, this is wasting hours and hours of my time. So -- has anyone had success getting problems resolved by some means within O other than the front-line customer service reps? Has anyone found a direct number to the shore.ex. dept., or someone in corporate who they've had help from?