Princess and chartered cruises

I'm just curious due to a current situation I'm dealing with in regards to my HAL cruise booked for next summer to Alaska, has anyone here ever had a Princess cruise they had reserved cancelled due to the ship being chartered?

The reason I ask is that yesterday, quite by accident when my sister was trying to book the same cruise, I discovered our HAL Alaska cruise scheduled for next summer has been chartered and we are going to lose our reservation. There is already a website up for the Charter group that some industrious person over at the HAL boards found. This tells me that this has been in the works for some time, yet HAL has done nothing to let our TAs or booked customers know that they will have to make other plans. Some people on our roll call have already booked airfare. Yet even though it is already being advertised as a charter, those of us who have a current booking are in limbo until HAL decides to communicate with us. I think it is awful customer service!

So, since I'm normally a Princess cruiser I was wondering if this has ever happened with a Princess cruise and if so, how did Princess handle notifying people and assisting them with options?

never known princees to charter a complete ship to one group and hope it stays that way

It's very unusual for Princess to charter the entire ship to a group. I don't remember ever hearing about one. They do "charter" to large affinity groups but I'm not sure about the entire ship.

The only comparison I can think of is when the ship has been repositioned after many cabins were sold or as happened to me, when we were booked on the first sailing of the Coral Princess and found out just over three weeks before sailing that she wouldn't be completed on time. In the case of repositioning, Princess was slow to notify us and we found out about it on the boards. Same for when we suddenly discovered that our Coral cruise wasn't going to happen. We found out about it here on the boards and didn't get a notice from Princess until a week later. In both cases, once we were notified, our deposit/final payment was refunded within a couple of days. I was able to cancel our flights and rebook them for another cruise (at a HUGE cost since it was a Christmas cruise and the only seats left from Boston to FLL at the last minute were almost $1k each) I was able to find at the last minute on RCL. This was years ago and I didn't get any reimbursement for flight changes.

The CB was chartered for President Obama and some state officials back in 2009. Here is a link to the article -

http://www.caribbeanpressreleases.com/articles/4933/1/Cruise-Ship-Charters-Provide-Supplemental-Housing-for-Summit-of-the-Americas-in-Trinidad/Page1.html

The CB was chartered for President Obama and some state officials back in 2009. Here is a link to the article -

http://www.caribbeanpressreleases.com/articles/4933/1/Cruise-Ship-Charters-Provide-Supplemental-Housing-for-Summit-of-the-Americas-in-Trinidad/Page1.html

Just a clarification - as noted in the article - the ship was chartered by the Organization of American States (that would be Western hemisphere countries) for their summit that President Obama and other Western hemisphere country leaders attended. Given presidential security requirements, I doubt if the President (or the presidents of any of the other countries) stayed on a cruise ship.

I have heard of Princess chartering an entire ship to a single group such as RSVP or Atlantis. Usually this is arranged years in advance and that sailing will not be available for purchase by the general public. That being said, I do know that if the price is right, Princess will accept a charter and notify the booked passengers. Any offers of compensation would depend entirely on how much notice is given to the passengers...

and btw, charters are good business for the line. The group that charters the ship guarantees that all berths will be filled or they will be fined for each unsold berth (equal to the loss of fare and projected on-board spending).

Hi There

Have cruised with some very large groups on Princess ships into many hundreds, ship did have a different feel to it, while cruise was not really affected would prefer not to have such large groups.

yours Shogun

Happened to us a couple years ago. We were booked on the CB and the cruise was chartered (cancelled for us). Princess gave us a refund and $250 towards another cruise per person if we booked and sailed within a year of another cruise.

We were on the cruise just after that charted cruise on the CB. While it didn't affect us directly it did affect several people who ended up in our Roll Call. It was to our benefit actually since they were lovely people and we would not have met them otherwise.:cool: They cancelled that cruise about 6 months out if I recall correctly. Fortunately, no one in our group had booked their air yet and they got a nice compensation package for the inconvenience.

Princess cancelled our Southern Caribbean cruise scheduled at the end of April 2012 to move the ship early to Europe. Others in our Roll Call rebooked an earlier cruise, but we could not due to my work restrictions. The last week of April is the earliest I can cruise according to our current work rules. So I have recently booked the same cruise for the same week in 2013 and I am crossing my fingers and toes that they will not do a repeat. Otherwise I will be looking at another cruise line that will go to the ports I want to visit at a time when I can cruise.:(

Yes they do. Most cruise lines do this.

If you think about it - if one company is willing to book the entire ship, most companies are going to take advantage of the offer.

Never happened with this cruise line but has occured twice on RCL. We got a nice OBC for the inconveniece.