sayanne

FWIW on refunds - I got in just under the wire on qualifying for a refund on an April cruise. It happened to be a river cruise but my TA tells me all of them are working agonizingly slowly.

I got a piece of paper from the company saying I would get a refund and giving amounts inside of a few days.

But the actual refunds have been tortuous. Over a month to get mail from the credit card company that something was coming back. 10 business days after that before it actually made it back into the cc account. Just saw them (two involved) in the two thru in the last five days.

Another smaller amount that cannot be refunded to the cc because of how early I made those deposits - I don't get it but the bottom line is they have to send me a check. I have not gotten it yet and figure I will be calling for another few weeks on that.

4 hours ago, mrsgoggins said:

You think?  I’m not too sure.  In my own case we have only been cruising for 6 years but have ‘packed them in’ during that time, and now I’m viewing it differently and thinking ‘Scotland looks good’ and ‘I love the Cotswolds’ (out of season 😉). Maybe it’s an age thing too though, and won’t it be good just to have choices again?

 There is another quote above that alludes to such a similar issue, age related, that longer term the prospect for insuring travelers over 70 may change. If there is one thing this pandemic has taught us, it is the speed at which a situation can go from  risky to truly life threatening when people are away from their home resources. I ran the posts in this thread from three weeks ago to today and it could easily not be the same thread.

There are personal considerations due to age/physical well-being that may play out. I asked for a refund rather than an FCC for my April trip entirely due to issues of aging. I have two years left to do a couple of trips which require more physicality.  Unfortunately that is also the rebooking window for the river cruise deal if I had taken the FCC. The next river cruise has to wait. 

There are serious health considerations for cruising as well. Some more elderly passengers, like those on Holland America's Amsterdam, were cruising because their health precluded flying. I am failing to understand all of it - one report says it is going on to the states with a full crew and the passengers' luggage. Regardless, they are not carrying the people so those folks have to fly home in the face of risks. And there are all kinds of places that people have gotten stuck which are far worse than Australia, with zero flights still running even if someone can take a difficult flight.

None of these considerations apply for younger people, they have lots of time for things to recover and frankly take bigger risks. But for the older portion of travelers, even those like me still a bit under 70, this thing has been a real wake up call for what level of risks are tolerable. I expect going forward cruise lines will have to enunciate a lot more about what they will do if things go bad. And that costs money, for the cruise lines as well as trip insurers for extraction.

15 minutes ago, tallnthensome said:

You’re overly optimistic...... Nothing will be sailing in April or May. Carnival simply wants people to put cash deposits or full payments into their company. They will hold this cash to stay afloat and out of bankruptcy then offer no money back when they cancel, just offering a future cruise credit. This FCC promise isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Anyone putting cash into Carnival right now for cruises I’m the next three months is simply foolish. They should realize they are being taken. 

Totally agree with tallnthensome. 

I just got a river cruise vendor to honor their reimbursement offer (at least they seem to be) by the skin of my teeth. They had a reimburse option, but withdrew that and reclassified the cruise the evening after I called them directly to ask for reimbursement. I had what they apparently recorded as a memorable discussion about having to go thru my TA when all of the agency's travel staff got sent home and are on a very skinny rotation due to the virus. And a reminder of whose money it was.

Even if I could use the FCC in the window they gave - 2 years is too tight with the rest of my wish list - I was seriously concerned that this company could not survive the virus shutdowns and any return of an FCC would be cents on the dollar.

This is a caution to people in the midst of making decisions about upcoming cruises where the vendor has offered a choice including full reimbursement. And you are carrying the usual "for cause" travel insurance.

I just was able to act on a reimburse option for a trip solely because I happened to have called the vendor 8 hours before they removed that option and changed the status of cruises so they were FCC only. And have very good travel agent. Whatever policy you see on a Wednesday may not be the same the next morning.

16 hours ago, navybankerteacher said:

Perhaps because mediocre food and service plus rock climbing walls and thousands of fellow bargain-seeking passengers going to over-crowded ports are preferable to superior service, gourmet food, and discerning passengers enjoying overnights in smaller ports.  

Not sure who is talking to who here, but Silverseas has a range in their ship size. Obviously the smaller ones do not have spare space for rock climbing walls. From their web site, and I know people who have been on their smaller ones and reported excellent food. I have not tried one of these yet myself but my friends have done a ton of cruising and are reliable.

"Our ships range in size from 50 to 304 suites to ensure each of our guests finds the perfect balance between choice and intimacy."

1 hour ago, cruisemom42 said:

 

I agree with your focus but there are some small, specialty cruise lines that also have a focus on itinerary, enrichment (onboard lecturers), and personalized service.  Not all of us sail on the big party ships just because we're upon the ocean.

I am aware of those smaller ships geared for bigger water. Road Scholar built and launched their own coastal explorer not so long ago. I think Viking has sub-500 passenger ships for coastal trips. Silver Seas has a couple, in fact I believe it is one of theirs that my friends are on right now. They just scored a dock away from a big ship that was turned away due to contamination risk. They are small enough to have stayed clean. But even that trip cancelled an extension due to all the concerns. I was just out trying to buy stuff for my friends for when I pick them up at the airport.

Those ships absolutely intrigue me. To me they have many of the advantages of the river cruisers including tighter focus, educational tilt and personalized service. And fantastic food - that is by itself a standout aspect of the river cruises. Sigh - I was looking forward to doing this trip with 3 nights in Barcelona then spend a week going up the Rhone as my last straight river cruise before going to other types of trips. But oh well.

Just now, drsel said:

River cruises are much more expensive than Ocean cruises.

why do people prefer them at a much higher cost

I intensely dislike crowd scenes, would rather spend the majority of my time on land learning about an area than in diversions on the ship and have zero interest in many of the amenities of a big ship like huge parties and unlimited drinks. Much prefer a quiet time sipping good wine or beer (unlimited wine and beer with meals, so plenty of opportunity to get drunk if that is the goal) and talking about the neat little places we visited during the day where we had a small group and got to learn a lot about a particular UNESCO sites, historic cathedral, local shopping district or sites of historic importance like Nuremberg.

Plus you have to look twice at the costs to get it right. On the river trips, all excursions are included as a matter of course, as I said beer and wine at meals and at receptions and a bunch of smaller things that I could find if I looked at them head to head. For what you actually get, some of the diff is simply that they are included in the river cruise and you have to pay extra for them on the big ship.

Basically, on the river trips you are choosing some amount of education over a focus on partying. 

Update re little boats - as of this morning AMA Waterways finally joined their kin in the business. All European river cruises cancelled until Apr 20, possible updates further on. Some weirdness in the terms I am reading for the last week before but it might just be a lack of coffee to understand. Thru 7 days before the trip it looks similar to Viking has done. Link here if interested - https://www.amawaterways.com/travel-updates

8 hours ago, Jchivers said:

Viking just cancelled all cruises until April 30. 

Have to give Viking a lot of credit for being proactive. If any of the river cruise companies can survive this, it'll be them.

Annnd more check-your-arrangements stuff. People often take a shuttle from the nearest airport to get to JFK, La Guardia or Newark. The shuttle service that my TA has used for years, and I have taken, this morning instituted a no refund policy. For years now they have refunded on 72 hours notice.

My TA called this service today to ask what conditions might cause their drivers to not pick up from international terminals at JFK. (And leave me stranded down there upon return.) The answer was a government order, details of what that meant terribly lacking. But it is unnerving since we already have a statewide state of emergency declared, a containment zone downstate being managed by the National Guard, and every indication that more of this will be happening before it is all over. I am going to book a second way of coming north and cross my fingers I can pull it off.

BTW, I picked up my packet today. My travel agent was handling one of a two week long stream of incoming phone calls from someone wanting to cancel in a roughly SOL situation between for cause insurance and late cancellation penalties. Some of these folks are losing the money. She has not booked a new trip in nearly a month. Have to agree that much of the economic damage is already here.

1 hour ago, chipmaster said:

 

You can't really conclude you don't get it because of the flu vaccine or that you have a robust immune system.  I suggest you try the next few years w/o the vaccine and report back.

 

I agree vaccine is guess work, but then again they can mass produce for all strains, but why not?  The only saving grace for some virus is that they don't mutate, the flu does and hard to predict which one flares up each year. 

 

 I can conclude that. I was skipping years for a long while and got the flu every other year. Got the shot every year and had it once in 7 years. 

As to mass producing a serum to cover all strains, they can't. There are were four strains covered in the 2019 shot, H1N1, H3N2, Influenza A, and Influenza B. A as the one that comes back each season and has 16 subtypes. The subtypes are classified by the number of certain proteins that are attached to them: H, for hemagglutinin protein and N, for neuraminidase protein

20 minutes ago, chipmaster said:

 

Tell me how effective to flu vaccine is or one for the common flu, I'd not plan a vaccine for a few years of any confidence.

The vaccine for common/seasonal flu has a built-in weakness, that the decision on what strains to protect against has to be made long enough ahead of time that a given year's mutations can turn well sideways from what the vaccine was intended to handle. COVID-19 is also a virus with proof already that it mutates, so the same vulnerability is built in.

That said, I have regularly gotten flu shots for several years now and am in constant contact with crowds because I play or sing in four different community orchestras or choruses. Where people who had been sitting next to me got knocked down by the flu. I haven't had but one bout that was actually flu in 7 years. And I am in my later 60's, so officially more vulnerable.

If one actual experience matters, the flu vaccine has been very effective.

That said, I am not interested in being an early tester for any vaccine they develop for coronavirus. Perfectly happy to let a few others try it first.

20 hours ago, luckyinpa said:

i havent read this thread but i dont wanna start another. 

 

is there a bonus or prize or money or gold bars or something if we use the word pandemic. i do not watch the news etc, just what i see on this forum or FB or a few minutes on the radio but people seem REALLY hung up on getting to use that word

 

so me, as an uninformed citizen, has determined that there has to be some kind of 'something' that is gonna happen when we reach this point. so what is it. does the world close down? do we all get meals delivered to our homes. what is it that makes this word something that so many are trying so hard to want to use? ive heard little tit for tats about arguing with the terms as well so it has to be SUPER critical

 

i await enlightenment. 

Your post is a bit flippant so I m not sure how serious. But we do have examples of what happens when something is acted on like a pandemic even if WHO doesn't want to use the word. Italy has reduced travel and all activities to nil and is in the process of figuring out how to get food etc to people. Gov Cuomo in NY has set up a one mile containment zone around New Rochelle, a clear hot spot. The National Guard is being deployed to bring in food etc as needed to households and all activities have been shut down. You may as well call it martial law. Locally we are not that extreme, but pretty much all the colleges have shut down in person classes for a month and along with prep schools have cancelled activities that involve a number of community members coming in. That has shut down one concert series and a town/gown orchestra in am involved in. I fully expect my other two such engagements to go away in the next couple of weeks. My stepmother's nursing home is on restricted access and I think just one more local case away from barring all visitors.

If it'll reduce the spread, I am fine with all of these measures.

38 minutes ago, Charles4515 said:

They might not be employees. Contracted headliners. They often get off ships at one port and hop on another ship. 

It is still not a great idea right now.

People are breaking quarantine without realizing it because testing in the US is lagging so badly, and it is transmissable w/o any symptoms. Completely opposite situation in S Korea where they just did massive testing.

Yes some people are being irresponsible, but no one can be blamed for being a spreader if they have no symptoms and no test results showing they do.

Also, a third Princess ship is being held on a trip thru the Panama Canal. Because two crew were transferred to that one from the other affected Princess ship. Moving crew around from an affected ship to another is an oblivious move on the part of the cruise line. https://www.aol.com/article/news/2020/03/09/a-third-princess-cruise-ship-kept-at-sea-pending-virus-tests/23944990/

I assume many people have to fly to get to where the cruise starts from.  This worth keeping an eye on, if the argument between the airlines and the feds result in cancellation on routes near a coronavirus outbreak. Any time before this such a drastic result would have been unthinkable. It isn't now.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/09/politics/coronavirus-airlines-white-house-tensions/index.html

12 hours ago, Toofarfromthesea said:

 

This is every bit as obnoxious as the people who insist on talking about politics in the MDR.

 I hesitated to respond on that one, but also feel it is important when someone may be trying to move forward in this situation with unrealistically rosy assumptions. 

That covered, in fact what I suggested about other countries blocking US citizens is already on the burner. By another 24 hours from now Israel will probably initiate a mandatory 14 day quarantine for US citizens arriving from certain locations. It would be over Netanyahu's objections, but I would expect the Health Ministry to win the day on this one. Even if they look at it state by state as indicated, with the spread that is happening here it will eventually probably include most travelers from the US. One link here, there are others. https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Israel-considers-placing-Americans-under-coronavirus-quarantine-620058

We in the US are not being realistic. Other countries looking at our management of coronavirus could easily decide that our citizens are as much of a risk as those from other countries. The virus spread is running ahead of efforts to contain it here as elsewhere. There is no reason for anyone looking at the US right now to assume that our citizens aren't as easily carriers as those from other hot spots around the world.

You can argue ad nauseum about why this is the case. But it is.

25 minutes ago, Aplmac said:

The horrible truth is

that ALL Travel is going to be severely impacted

be it Cruise Travel, Air Travel -or any and all forms of Land Travel.

 

It's going to get ever more difficult

as this progresses for the next month or three.

 

Those who have nothing booked right now remain stress-free.

So sorry for those of you

who do have holidays and cruises booked and paid for.

 

It must be a very difficult time: hard to know what to do!
Wait for the  lines to cancel? -with a full refund? -or what??

 

DO NOT book anything further! Not until this starts to abate!

I am subscribed to Cruise Critic's email thingy.

I routinely get regular emails offering great cruise deals.

In the last few days,

those emails and their fabulous offers have doubled, if not more.

Draw your own conclusions, people.

 

I suspect most here are able to manage their decisions... 

8 minutes ago, Cicada1 said:

Again wow. Our first riverboat cruise and we are going on Scenic. We are flying to Paris. No worries getting to Paris, just concerned about getting to Lyon via the TGV. 

 

JUST read an article that France looking to go to Level three restrictions on travel, in the next few days or week. That will def put a diff slant on the trip. Oh and we are ‘old’ too. Retired, but active. 

I am seeing the same thing. I fully expect France to be on level 3 in at least some parts of the country, north more so right now, before the end of March.  Travel restrictions are a part of that, though looking at how they have managed level 2 it appears they tend to be very selective about how they are enforced even at 3. If you look at how they managed their measles outbreak, the restrictions were remarkably well targeted.

If you have not been on a riverboat cruise before you may not realize how flexibly these providers can manage things. The passenger count is small to start, with Scenic being lower than Viking by about 30 if you are talking about one of the space ships, and each excursion is just a subset of that. They don't tend to push concerns about large crowds unless multiple fully loaded ships worth of tours arrive at one time to a location. I suspect that is not going to be an issue for a few months.

The train is a hugely vital asset. And unlike buses the drivers can be shielded from the passengers. Though today may not be the best day to check out how the high speed train is doing.  🙂

31 minutes ago, sanger727 said:

 

I suspect that the answer to this will be so policy specific that someone else's experience wouldn't be much help. I've heard that many policies have hidden in the fine print that any pandemic related cancellation would not be covered. 

Thanks, I will look at the small stuff. Like above, I still would like to make this work. But in case...

1 hour ago, Cicada1 said:

wow you are seriously thinking of going?  My concern is the unreliable transportation given recent info about bus drivers not working.  We are also on a south france cruise, departing April 13 with no CFar also. 

My TA is telling me that March dates are a mess with stressed out passengers and overwhelmed travel companies. But that so far April dates are doing better.

The bus drivers impacted are the ones on public transport, in fact I posted that. Not saying that that it can't impact, but it is not as certain for the river cruises because they use  private liveries. My package arrived yesterday at my TA's office and all the excursions are still on and contracted for.  The train in Tournon is still running as of yesterday. It is an imperfect gauge but of a sorts nonetheless.

Given how well the various countries are managing this thing, right now my biggest risk is probably getting thru JFK. And you have to remember that these river boats just came out of winter storage, they have not been wandering around the world like the big ships, and the crews are just arriving now from home, not from another cruise ship. 

As far as risk management, so far I have dumped my plans to get to JFK via trains and subways and am ready to pay the cost of leaving my car at the local airport so I don't have to worry about ride share drivers refusing to pick up from the shuttle stop. 

If this trip can dodge the worst of things it could be a pretty luxurious time. Fewer crowds on and off the ship, great service and just easy to relax. Not dissimilar to my first Christmas Markets river cruise, except it'll be warm so I can hang out with the  French veranda windows open. 

What line are you on? Can't find that start date for Viking, AMA Waterways or Uniworld on the Rhone. BTW Viking has really stepped up with their cancellation policy, kudos to them. It appears that Avalon has either cancelled or is not booking any rooms on cruises in that region until May.

Question re travel insurance, if anyone has pulled this trigger. My trip is in April in southern France so the level of impact of the coronavirus at that time is still unknown.

I have the usual not-CFAR insurance, I got it in December of 2018 from a good provider. Clearly ahead of this virus being known. I also have a pre-existing condition which tends to be a asymptomatic but could turn if I had a major hit to my immune system. And I am older.

I looked over my insurance and it has the usual causes, as written I have to actually be sick which is a reach given my largely asymptomatic behavior. But I am reading in some places that a letter from my doctor verifying my pre-existing condition combined with the risk from virus which was unknown when I got the policy can trigger the insurance. I have time to call them and likely will, but I wonder if anyone on this board has any experience with this situation. 

Thanks for any advice!  Though I would love to make this trip work. Could be a marvelously uncrowded situation on the ship as well as on land after hearing about the cancellations flooding into my TA's office.

For river cruisers in Europe, I have been following the situation in France due to it being an area of increase and having a trip there in April. As far as I can tell there are no river cruises starting in France for another 10 days, on any of the lines, so no way to see actual impact yet.

But I found this today. Note that on these river cruises, they tend to be heavily dependent on local drivers and guides for the excursions. While many excursions can be walked to from the boat, there are usually one or two a day where a bus is required for transport to and from that location. Per this article, bus drivers are among those able to make a decision to stay home w/o penalty. Granted that this article is talking about drivers on public transit and I am talking about hired livery. But a similar sentiment could show up. https://nationalpost.com/news/world/people-in-france-are-walking-off-the-job-to-protect-themselves-from-coronavirus

For anyone who was contemplating the steam train out of Tournon, as of today there have been no alterations in their schedules. I consider that excellent news.

20 hours ago, Cee_Jay said:

 

"Frankly I would be OK with it exploding in the next couple of weeks in hopes the curve would start moving down again."  

U.K. health minister reckons it will peak May/June and take a further three months tailin off. Certainly cannot see it reversing in weeks......

 

I am being a bit facetious. And not going to the UK so not tracking there at all. France is running ahead of them.