22nd August Coral Princess Conflict Islands Cancelled

[MicCanberra]

Perhaps any vulnerable people should be locked down for their own good.

 

Of course I am only joking.

[arxcards]

1 hour ago, Tikibird said:

Is the gov't forcing longer cruises to cancel or be broken up?  Or are the cruise lines doing it on their own?
 

People understand the risks of taking a cruise.  Many are choosing not to take the risk and are not cruising.  Their choice.  I understand the risks and am willing to accept it as part of living and enjoying life.  I like exotic cruises, would be bored stiff on a 7 day domestic cruise. 

Both, sort of.

Governments of the east coast have set a cap of what they consider to be an acceptable number of positive tests during a cruise - max 3% of passengers/crew. Before considering this as outrageous overreach, this is modelled on other markets around the world. Similar protocols have been in place in the "land of the free" for around a year, with no immediate sign of change.

 

The cruise lines have realised that the 3% cap can be challenged on longer cruises, so make "operational decisions" to reduce the odds of that happening. The easiest way is to keep the cruises short.

 

As with post #142, there are several passengers that have tested positive since arriving home. That doesn't count on the cruise numbers, but had the cruise been a few days longer they would have been testing positive on the ship and the numbers would have counted. The cruise lines had generally managed their numbers in the US, then of all ships, Ruby Princess does a 2 week cruise through the Panama Canal - big numbers upon arrival at San Francisco. Then they send Ruby Princess out on another 2 week cruise to Hawaii, and it returns with 140+ infections. Only one person hospitalised, but uncontrolled spread all the same.

 

It matters little what you or I think about our own personal risk, that is just what is in play for now. You can count the seeds in an apple, but not the apples in a seed - that is the mentality of health department statisticians.

 

I can't wait till October with ships full of passengers arriving after 3 week Pacific crossings. Cruise line, government and media response will be interesting.

[resordanis]

2 hours ago, arxcards said:

Sadly, their minds will be made up month by month. I am facing the same concerns for an 11 night domestic cruise in late October. Final payment is next week. It is not about PNG, even that that was part of the reason given, but about the length of the cruise. I will cross the bridge when it comes, but either way, I doubt a decision will be made before final payment. 

 

A key cruise is a 12 night P&O Fiji cruise that leaves in a month or so. If that remains in place as is and they don't have scary infection rates, we might both be lucky to get the cruises we have been waiting for.

Ip

I think I am on the same cruise and my final payment is early August, are you able to ask for an extension? BTW I don’t think we will have an answer from Princess before my payment date either!

Edited July 7, 2022 by resordanis
Spelling

[arxcards]

They allowed for late final payments during the ban, but I haven't heard of them offering that since the ban was lifted.

[resordanis]

1 minute ago, arxcards said:

They allowed for late final payments during the ban, but I haven't heard of them offering that since the ban was lifted.

I booked with Princess for 20/10 sailing and final payment is 6/8!

[NSWP]

29 minutes ago, resordanis said:

I booked with Princess for 20/10 sailing and final payment is 6/8!

Holland America is even worse, my cruise on Westerdam 23 November, final payment is 25 August that is 3 months prior. Booked direct with cruise line. I am sure Carnival Corporation wants the money to roll in quickly to pay their bills and bank loans which must be in the millions by now.

[MicCanberra]

Some TAs want payment 6 months out but they usually  have the really low deposits. Beware

[MMDown Under]

1 hour ago, NSWP said:

Holland America is even worse, my cruise on Westerdam 23 November, final payment is 25 August that is 3 months prior. Booked direct with cruise line. I am sure Carnival Corporation wants the money to roll in quickly to pay their bills and bank loans which must be in the millions by now.

Good deals used to be after final payment.  I've never booked early.

[OzKiwiJJ]

2 hours ago, NSWP said:

Holland America is even worse, my cruise on Westerdam 23 November, final payment is 25 August that is 3 months prior. Booked direct with cruise line. I am sure Carnival Corporation wants the money to roll in quickly to pay their bills and bank loans which must be in the millions by now.

Final payment was three months prior for most cruises before the pandemic. 

[Mikamarii]

6 hours ago, arxcards said:

I can't wait till October with ships full of passengers arriving after 3 week Pacific crossings. Cruise line, government and media response will be interesting.

We will be on one of those ships! I am far more worried about the response to cases than the actual disease.

 

Watching what is happening in our country I'd like to think that any type of lockdowns or severe restrictions will never happen again. The public response has shown that people don't want it. At least in our small little corner of the world it really looks and feels like life is back to normal and not once was our healthcare system ever overwhelmed despite the constant doom and gloom reports. Toronto Pearson airport was recently rated the worst airport in the world for delays/cancellations which is absurd for a highly developed 1st world country. While there are several factors that come in to play, a major contributor is a lack of staff. When airports were shut down for 2-3 years those workers had to get different jobs. It is not like they were just waiting around for their job to come back. Now, not only does the mass amount of staff required not exist in a short period of time; they also need to train them which takes time. At least here, we are feeling the after affects of all those decisions that were made and the immediate demand for travel was instant that apparently our government 'didn't anticipate'.

 

Thankfully we are on the west coast and don't go through Toronto on our way to your neck of the woods so all those airport issues shouldn't affect us and the only tests we need to take are before our transpacific and domestic Queensland cruise. I did read that NCL dropped their testing requirement and will only require it in Countries where the Government has mandated it. So it appears no more pre-covid testing in Europe for NCL. I imagine other lines will follow suit.

[arxcards]

7 hours ago, resordanis said:

I booked with Princess for 20/10 sailing and final payment is 6/8!

It was 90 days at the time I booked, but they may have shifted to 75 days since. We have had the booking in place for years, and it has been cancel/switched twice. I will follow-up, but don't expect to know whether the cruise will go to schedule till well after then anyway.

[Tikibird]

My final payment is due 3 Sept but I will be possibly off the grid in remote Indonesia at that time so I have to pay about a week beforehand.  I really want to do this cruise as advertised to remote islands of PNG.  I would accept other Pacific Islands like Vanuatu, New Caledonia or similar.  But I am not forking out over $3000 to see standard QLD tourist spots I could drive to in a week's road trip if I wanted to.  I am not into being on a ship for the sake of being on a ship.  But I want to see remote, unusual places and this cruise is a cost effective way to see some remote PNG islands and hopefully some interesting birdlife for me. 

 

[MMDown Under]

57 minutes ago, Tikibird said:

My final payment is due 3 Sept but I will be possibly off the grid in remote Indonesia at that time so I have to pay about a week beforehand.  I really want to do this cruise as advertised to remote islands of PNG.  I would accept other Pacific Islands like Vanuatu, New Caledonia or similar.  But I am not forking out over $3000 to see standard QLD tourist spots I could drive to in a week's road trip if I wanted to.  I am not into being on a ship for the sake of being on a ship.  But I want to see remote, unusual places and this cruise is a cost effective way to see some remote PNG islands and hopefully some interesting birdlife for me. 

 

Like you, I'm destination driven.  Cruising is the best way, and often the only way, to visit remote exotic islands.  Good Luck with your PNG islands cruise. 

[Tikibird]

I peeked at the role call for this 22 Aug cruise.  Most people were furious at being swapped from a warm weather north QLD cruise with a stop in PNG to the 3 NSW cruises.  Hopefully the backlash will deter Princess from messing with the full PNG itineraries.  I think the majority of these pax will be very destination driven types. 

[Auscruisefam]

For those booked on the 22nd August cruise is it still showing online for you? I am really confused as to what is happening with our cruise. We decided to change to the 3rd of Sep QLD cruise. I was told that I could do that by Princess and the difference would be issued in FCC. But now my QLD cruise is showing as not paid online with deposit being due today? The conflict island cruise is still showing as well. It says if I don’t pay today it will be cancelled? I paid the conflict island cruise in full and assumed the funds would just be transferred over to the new cruise? Any ideas?

[orphaned]

2 minutes ago, Auscruisefam said:

For those booked on the 22nd August cruise is it still showing online for you? I am really confused as to what is happening with our cruise. We decided to change to the 3rd of Sep QLD cruise. I was told that I could do that by Princess and the difference would be issued in FCC. But now my QLD cruise is showing as not paid online with deposit being due today? The conflict island cruise is still showing as well. It says if I don’t pay today it will be cancelled? I paid the conflict island cruise in full and assumed the funds would just be transferred over to the new cruise? Any ideas?

We cancelled the 22 August sailing but the 3 replacements are showing online as well as the 3 Sept one.  The lady at Princess said this was a glitch.  I understand we can't complete the medallion process until final payment is made and everything is confirmed (a bit annoying and time-wasting, having completes this for the earlier cancelled sailing)

 

The 3 Sept cruise is less expensive than the cancelled one (for us at least).   As we understand it, final payment will be taken out of the funds already paid and the balance refunded to our credit card which may take 10-14 days.

 

What really annoys me is that the 22 Aug sailing was cancelled within 24 hours of us making final payment for that trip.  We are from NZ and are looking forward to some warm weather.  Bouncing in and out of Sydney on the 3 smaller sailings with 3 days docked in Sydney is not our idea of a tropical cruise.  As much as we like Sydney, we did not need to "sail in and out" 8 times (we were also on the earlier relocation sailing from Brisbane down to Sydney).  Just hope they don't cancel this one too!

[Auscruisefam]

@orphanedif you look at the invoice for the 3rd of Sep one does it say it’s paid or final payment paid? 

[stki]

59 minutes ago, orphaned said:

We cancelled the 22 August sailing but the 3 replacements are showing online as well as the 3 Sept one.  The lady at Princess said this was a glitch.  I understand we can't complete the medallion process until final payment is made and everything is confirmed (a bit annoying and time-wasting, having completes this for the earlier cancelled sailing)

 

The 3 Sept cruise is less expensive than the cancelled one (for us at least).   As we understand it, final payment will be taken out of the funds already paid and the balance refunded to our credit card which may take 10-14 days.

 

What really annoys me is that the 22 Aug sailing was cancelled within 24 hours of us making final payment for that trip.  We are from NZ and are looking forward to some warm weather.  Bouncing in and out of Sydney on the 3 smaller sailings with 3 days docked in Sydney is not our idea of a tropical cruise.  As much as we like Sydney, we did not need to "sail in and out" 8 times (we were also on the earlier relocation sailing from Brisbane down to Sydney).  Just hope they don't cancel this one too!

We did the same thing. Moved the 22/8 sailing to the 3/9.

 

I have 4 bookings in the personaliser. The 3 replacement cruises and the 3/9 one. This one showed payment to me made by 9/7. I spent hours on the phone yesterday and payment date is now 18/7 .

 

The say that there is a delay transferring the funds across. I would be contacting Princess to get the payment date changed. I use a PVP and she organised that for us

 

Also none of the 4 cruises appear in the App.I guess we will just have to wait 

[orphaned]

22 minutes ago, Auscruisefam said:

@orphanedif you look at the invoice for the 3rd of Sep one does it say it’s paid or final payment paid? 

The Deposit Confirmation states final payment of 9 July (done on 27 June).  We received a Booking Confirmation on 6 July.  Looks like they have deducted the balance of the 3 Sept fare from the amount paid for the 22 August cancelled sailing.  There is a "net due", which is the credit OWED TO US so I will be chasing that up on Monday.

 

We are using a Princess PVP (based in Sydney) and she has been excellent, knows what she is doing, and amazing communication.  (We initially booked over the phone and struck a grossly inexperienced person who barely spoke English had to get advice every time I had a query - really hopeless, I guess it must be an awful struggle for them and the other cruise companies at the moment so I try to be patient)

 

Best of luck, I am sure it will all work out just fine, it's hard "waiting", I know.

[arxcards]

18 minutes ago, stki said:

We did the same thing. Moved the 22/8 sailing to the 3/9.

 

I have 4 bookings in the personaliser. The 3 replacement cruises and the 3/9 one. This one showed payment to me made by 9/7. I spent hours on the phone yesterday and payment date is now 18/7 .

 

The say that there is a delay transferring the funds across. I would be contacting Princess to get the payment date changed. I use a PVP and she organised that for us

 

Also none of the 4 cruises appear in the App.I guess we will just have to wait 

The cruises will show on the app once payment has been transferred. We encountered that delay on our switchover cruise from Royal to Majestic.

 

It makes a lot of sense to have that date deferred. Similar with the first P&O cruise, we were advised not to transfer over the deposits from our cancellations, as they couldn't be transferred until after final payment date.

[Auscruisefam]

Ok thanks. We are using a Princess planner person and I have just emailed her. Might also give her a call first thing Monday. 
 

[arxcards]

On 7/7/2022 at 3:53 PM, resordanis said:

I booked with Princess for 20/10 sailing and final payment is 6/8!

Not sure of the arrangement at the time of booking which could have varied on the promo of the day.

 

I have asked about ours, and final payment date through the travel agent is 18th July. Princess final payment date for this cruise currently shows as 22nd July.

 

Looks like I need to bite the bullet this week and put faith in the cruise fairies that it will all go to plan. It is a lot of money to have to kick onto another cruise later, but worth hanging onto, as the booking would be $2200 dearer if booked today and there is $400 of OBC as well.

Edited July 10, 2022 by arxcards

[Porky55]

50 minutes ago, arxcards said:

I have asked about ours, and final payment date through the travel agent is 18th July. Princess final payment date for this cruise currently shows as 22nd July

Our final payment for this cruise is the 6th August too.

 

We booked direct with Princess, where I see you used a TA? Perhaps that is the difference 🤔

[arxcards]

27 minutes ago, Porky55 said:

Our final payment for this cruise is the 6th August too.

 

We booked direct with Princess, where I see you used a TA? Perhaps that is the difference 🤔

No, if I wanted to book this cruise direct with Princess today, final payment is 22nd July. It was dependent on the time of booking/promo on whether it was 90 days or 75 days out for final payment.

 

All of the conditions for our booking carried over from Royal Princess Oct 2021 to Royal Princess Nov 2022 to Majestic Oct 2022 - price, packages, OBC's and final payment period.