Cruise Cancelled again by Royal Caribbean

[butweam]

I just can't believe it. We booked a cruise flying to Asia and picking up the legend of the sea cruise from Tokyo, as my mum in law who is 76 wanted to go to Japan. Her husband had been in the British navy and visited Japan in the 50s and said how beautiful it was. Anyway after the earthquake we knew they would need to cancel the cruise. We booked one of their rescheduled cruises, before we had our refund as we they told us refund would follow. We had to go in July instead of May as originally planned, and the cruise was 7 days starting at Hong Kong and ending Beijing (short stop in southern most tip of Japan as well as Korea). We booked flights getting to Hong Kong a couple of days earlier to have a look around, as this was a shorter cruise, and it seemed a long way to go for just seven days. We have now been told that Royal Caribbean have cancelled cruise :confused: and changed it to a 5 day cruise starting in Hong Kong, going to Vietnam and finishing in Hong kong. They have given us options such as changing to this new cruise, or others on different dates, and we can have $400 on board spend, plus £120 towards cost of changing flights. However we cannot change our return flight from Beijing, and the cost of extra flights to Beijing is much more than £120 each, pus extra hotel and food costs, plus all that extra travelling for my elderly mother in law is not ideal. We booked through online travel agents (who don't seem to start woek until noon each day) so RCI can't talk to us directly, so everything takes so long. We got their letter online on Friday and have to tell them want we want to do by next friday latest. No reason why they cancelled cruise is given. We can have a refund of the cruise as another option, but still would loose airfares. Any suggestions what we can do? Thanks in advance.

[CruisinGerman]

Dear friends:

 

Did you book your trip from a British or EU travel agency?

 

Before all of the answers from the Americans start pouring in basically telling you that RCCL has the right to cancel the cruise and what they are offering you is more than generous, etc. (this is a natural answer from the majority of Cruise Critic members because their travel laws and practices are different from ours), please remember that the laws are very different here in the EU. Please consult with an association or organization in Britain that advocates consumer travel rights, because I have a hunch (since I live in Spain and the laws are similar across the EU) you might be entitled to compensation for the extra flight costs (or refund of the flight), plus cash compensation and not just an onboard credit (unless you accept the onboard credit because it is a better offer), etc. Please inform yourself properly of the laws before you merely accept something RCCL is offering you.

 

Kind regards,

 

Gunther and Uta