Globalfish

Thank you. I think they all do this to some extent. The itinerary for ACL’s Alaskan Explorer cruise that I am taking this July is no longer the same that it was when I booked it in Sept. 2021 and had I known they were going to change it (several times no less) I would have never booked it. And ACL never notified me. Like your Chicago-Toronto itinerary with AQV, I found out by accident. Yes, I just checked and see that my cancelled Aug 2024 departure on the Voyager is still listed, as well as a Navigator departure that leaves a few days later. They need to change these quickly before anyone else puts down a deposit on them.

To Bob Brown and anyone else who has a Great Lakes cruise scheduled with AQV in 2024 (NOT 2023): In Aug 2022 I put down a deposit on a 14-night Great Lakes cruise on the Ocean Voyager starting Aug 10, 2024 beginning and ending in Chicago. Last week I was informed by AQV that my cruise has been cancelled because they are temporarily taking the Ocean Voyager and Ocean Navigator out of service next year because they are revamping their Great Lakes itineraries (what I don’t know is whether they are also refurbishing the cruise vessels). I requested a refund of the deposit because there is no alternative AQV voyage that I’d like to take at this time. AQV told me that because I made my deposit by AMEX, it might take up to 60 days to be refunded. I can live with that, but the posts in this forum about people waiting 4-1/2 months for a refund from AQV are scaring me. For now I am taking AQV at their word and have not asked my credit card company to take any action, but will keep an eye on it. Anything after 60 days is beyond the realm of reasonability. But the main purpose of this message is that if you have an AQV Great Lakes cruise scheduled for 2024 on the Ocean Voyager or Ocean Navigator and have not yet heard from them, you need to get in touch with them.

I think the lesson here to others is to take a Lower Mississippi River cruise in the spring when the water level is most likely to be higher and the cruise company is less likely to pull a “bait and switch” with the itinerary. On the other hand, high water levels caused by heavy rains or melting spring snow have the potential to cause itinerary-busting alterations as well, albeit not as drastic. And they all pull a “bait and switch” to some degree or another. The American Cruise lines Alaskan Explorer cruise that I booked for July 2023 is no longer the same itinerary that I bought into over a year ago and has subsequently been modified twice with ports eliminated (Skagway and Ketchikan), others substituted (Sitka), and more days at sea than originally planned (i.e. one day in Glacier Bay Nat’l Park instead of the original two). So any riverboat cruise itinerary can be a crap shoot, but sorry that yours was so extreme.

The Hornblower Group, eh? That’s what we’d call “Tooting their own Horn.”

I’m taking ACL’s Alaskan Explorer Cruise on the Constellation in July 2023. Sure hope my experience will be more like yours as opposed to that experienced by pilot702 in July 2022.