My nightmare with Disney cruiseline and irma

[mcd2745]

Which is why DCL probably could/should have "relaxed" their cancellation policies for people sailing on those upcoming cruises and allowed to them to cancel with a 100% credit.

And then what? Funky weather in Vancouver so the Alaska cruises relax their cancellation policy? Winter weather causing December cruises to have relaxed policies? Why have cancellation policies at all?

It's an impossible standard. I'm not being a Disney apologist or even a cruiseline apologist, but I recognize that businesses have to make decisions. Sometimes they are wrong in retrospect and sometimes they are right.

If Irma had pulled a Matthew and went out with a whimper half a day (or however long) after they cancelled the cruise, they would have looked idiotic for that decision, and we would be talking about "why did they make the decision so early???"

Even if Irma "pulled a Matthew" and remained just off the coast, cancelling that sailing would still have been the prudent thing to do. It's not WDW, who ended up with egg on their face, after closing for Matthew. You still shouldn't be sailing out of PC with a ship full of guests & crew with a major hurricane "pulling a Matthew" moving up (just off) the coast.

What funky weather in Vancouver, or winter weather in Florida (where usually all 4 ships will be in winter) could possibly rival the dangers of a cat 5 hurricane? That's a stretch of major proportions.

They didn't need to cancel the sailing entirely that early. However, if some guests were looking to reschedule based on the indisputable information that a powerful hurricane was extremely likely to directly impact the area (PC, Bahamas, and whatever path a ship would have to take)...they could have been more accommodating and allow guests, not to get a full refund necessarily, but to at least move the cruise date(s).

 

[mevelandry]

As did everyone else, so there would have been a scramble for available rooms.

FYI, I wasn't implying that the rest of the world didn't.

 

[Dug720]

FYI, I wasn't implying that the rest of the world didn't.

No, but waiting until that point to book a contingency plan means that you are competing with everyone else. Plenty of non-WDW hotels have a mere 24-hour cancellation policy and some even by 6pm arrival day.

 

[darnheather]

So glad you, family, and neighbors are OK. Thank you for opening your heart to those around you. I grew up in Florida and my entire family is still there. I believe that's why this post struck such a strong cord with me. My 97 year old grandmother couldn't evacuate and certainly wasn't relying on Disney Magic.

Op I'm sorry that you went through the disappointment you did with the inability to know in advance before you left home if your cruise would be canceled. Also, the additional stress you endured when the cruise was eventually canceled. I understand the frustration you must have been feeling being stuck in Florida with difficulty finding hotel rooms with a hurricane approaching. I hope you learned a valuable lesson and always have emergency funds available to you when you travel. (A tip for the future have cash because in hurricanes credit cards machines & ATM's don't work without power.) I understand why it would be frustrating that Disney Cruise Line had not officially canceled the cruise before you left home. Yet, since you made the decision to proceed to Florida knowing there was a possibility that a hurricane was headed here and hence the very big chance that your scheduled cruise would be canceled I would suggest that in the future you make hotel reservations that an be canceled without penalty before you arrive to a possible hurricane zone. If you don't have the funds to do so then I would suggest cutting your losses before you leave home and not proceeding to Florida with an impending hurricane in the forecast.

Weather is one of those uncontrollable factors in life. I have been trapped in many a snow storm when traveling for work where airlines cancel flights. I have had to pay for many unexpected nights in hotel rooms and meals. We own our business so all added expenses are mine and my husbands. It's expensive and stinks but life is at times unpredictable.

I am a Florida resident and with all due respect I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for your situation right now. After enduring several days of boarding up ours and several of our elderly neighbors homes and spending an unplanned fortune on hurricane supplies for us and our neighbors. We watched on Friday afternoon as the hurricane path took a turn and we were projected to take a direct hit. Due to the possibility of storm surge we had no choice but to evacuate our family. Within a matter of less then an hour at around 1am on Saturday my husband and I grabbed our 3 children, dog, cat, insurance papers, vital records and about four changes of clothes each and piled in our truck. Our college age son was behind us in his car loaded with 4 of our elderly neighbors & their vital belongings. We had no time to plan before we were forced to leave. Other then heading north and praying we would be able to get out in time. It took 23 hours of straight driving to get from Sarasota, FL to Pigeon Forge Tennessee which was the first place we were able to book last minute that would accept pets. We stopped only for gas and bathroom breaks. It was an exhausting trip which no one had budgeted for. I'm dreading seeing what my credit card statement will be this month. Yet, we were safely out of harms way and felt blessed to be so. Then we had to wait to see IF we would have homes to return to. Thankfully we did.
After another 24 hours of driving in bumper to bumper traffic we returned home this morning. We were very lucky and only suffered minor roof damage, lost a fence, some trees, and our screen room is gone. None of this matters. It's all repairable and given a little time life will go back to normal.

I tell you all of this not to gain your sympathy. We are very happy and counting our blessings as many have lost so much more. Yet, please keep in mind that those DCL cast members you spoke with were trying to do their job while probably trying to figure out their own messy hurricane situation. Honestly, a canceled cruise, why expensive and disappointing is nothing compared to what those cast members on the phone were probably facing. I'm sorry you had to figure out last minute lodging and how to get food with limited funds available to you. I'm happy for you that the Port Orleans manager stepped in to help you out. I would bet my bottom dollar that that same manager was more then likely worried about how they would feed their family without electricity for days, a possible storm damaged home, if he or she has children who will keep them for the next several days as our schools are all closed, and where they would have the funds to come up with to pay for all the added expenses placed on a family in a hurricane. Yet, the well trained Disney cast member kept a smile on their face and did all they could to help you out because that is how Disney treats their guest. True you didn't receive the same Disney treatment from DCL as you have come to expect. Yet, when DCL realized in an emergency situation that they could not provide guest with a safe situation on board they canceled and will be returning you your cruise fare. It's disappointing I know but trust me you had it pretty darn good compared to what most of Florida just endured this week. So please understand in my world at the moment your complaint is ridiculous given the situation in Florida. You had a beautiful resort to stay in, someone cooking your meals, and maid service why you suffered the loss of a cruise. Not a bad life considering you knew a hurricane was headed here a elected to come anyway. I hope you make it home safely and the cruise fare refund takes care of your addition days at Disney World.

 

[mathgeek]

Bavaria's years-old post about traveling during weather seasons (it's specifically for winter plane travel) from the Transportation forum should be required reading for everyone. We are in charge of our destiny. We should not rely on any other agency.

Thanks for the tip. That was a good read!

 

[we"reofftoneverland]

Let me start with I have been going to Disney for 20 years and been on 3 Disney cruises and would have never expected the awful way the cruise line treated us. I was schedulled to go on the Disney dream on sept 8th thru the 11th with a previous resort stay at por 4th thru the 8th. Before we left for Florida the cruise line told me if I cancelled before they made the decision I would only get a 75 percent refund so I decided to wit and see and went to Florida . I called the cruise line repeatery asking for info what was going to happen to the passengers if they chose to cancel and was repeatedly old not to worry Disney will make sure it's guests will be taken care of and safe in that event well that was a fat lie...when they finally decided to cancel I asked them were they going to put us up at another hotel or make some other arrangements since we now we're stranded fir those 3 days with no place to stay for the hurricane the answer was sorry not our problem see what the resort will do for you and no refunds for 7 to 10 business days..so needless to say I was beside myself I did not have enough funds with me for an extende c stay at the resort I planned on being housed and fed on the cruise with just a little spending money. I asked the cruise if thy could give me less of a refund nd pay for the hotel was told nope won't do that. So I spoke to the wonderful hotel manager at por who agreed with me how the cruise handled this was awful and made arrangements for me go stay here and charge my food to the room till my refund comes in whenever that will be he is sending me a bill to my home. He checkedid in with us everyday to make sure we were OK and didn't need anything he was what I have always thought of Disney as to be a great caring company not the money grubbing uncaring company the cruise line side of Disney is. So I will never give Disney Cruise line another dime of my money and will stay loyal as always to Walt disneyworld. Thanks to all that had to suffer my rant lol

It has been our experience that the customer service at wdw is absolutely wonderful and the customer service with DCL is cold, arrogant, and calculating. I have been there. And there are a lot of people who frequent the DCL disboards thread who seem to enjoy piling on others' misery. Know that we have also experienced DCL's dark side and that it is not in your head!

 

[nikkyluvsmickey]

It has been our experience that the customer service at wdw is absolutely wonderful and the customer service with DCL is cold, arrogant, and calculating. I have been there. And there are a lot of people who frequent the DCL disboards thread who seem to enjoy piling on others' misery. Know that we have also experienced DCL's dark side and that it is not in your head!

Thank you

 

[Racer X]

It has been our experience that the customer service at wdw is absolutely wonderful and the customer service with DCL is cold, arrogant, and calculating. I have been there. And there are a lot of people who frequent the DCL disboards thread who seem to enjoy piling on others' misery. Know that we have also experienced DCL's dark side and that it is not in your head!

WHAT??! Are you delirious?? There is no piling on going on. Just good ol American discourse to a situation that the OP conciously put herself in and then complained when DCL couldnt or wouldnt bail her out. Not sure what DCL arrogance has to do with it. I am not a DCL or corporate fan boy for anybody. But the situation is plain and simple.

 

[cruiser21]

So you would travel, potentially out of the country, with no access to money? Not even a credit card if something went wrong? I'm a single woman. I'm certainly not even approaching wealthy. But if I had to travel with no access to more funds whatsoever, I wouldn't be traveling. It's irresponsible and frankly could be dangerous.

I'm not talking about this situation specifically, now we've gotten into more general territory.

Hmm did I say I'd travel out of the country? Did Op travel out of the country? I thought she went to Florida???? Your're making quite a leap there, I think you should try stay on topic, Personel attacks are SUPPOSEDLY not allowed on this board, but people have really piled on the OP. I feel bad for her.

 

[ashley0139]

Hmm did I say I'd travel out of the country? Did Op travel out of the country? I thought she went to Florida???? Your're making quite a leap there, I think you should try stay on topic, Personel attacks are SUPPOSEDLY not allowed on this board, but people have really piled on the OP. I feel bad for her.

Ummm...a cruise goes out of the country...

 

[we"reofftoneverland]

I gu

WHAT??! Are you delirious?? There is no piling on going on. Just good ol American discourse to a situation that the OP conciously put herself in and then complained when DCL couldnt or wouldnt bail her out. Not sure what DCL arrogance has to do with it. I am not a DCL or corporate fan boy for anybody. But the situation is plain and simple.

I agree to disagree on this one. But, I can clear up one question you had, although in context I suspect it was rhetorical: no, I am not delirious.

 

[ILoveMyKellen]

Hmm did I say I'd travel out of the country? Did Op travel out of the country? I thought she went to Florida???? Your're making quite a leap there, I think you should try stay on topic, Personel attacks are SUPPOSEDLY not allowed on this board, but people have really piled on the OP. I feel bad for her.

If I’m not mistaken the Dream and the Fantasy sail to the Bahamas and the Caribbean. Wouldn’t that be sailing out of the United States?

This question has been asked many times on these threads “Should I get a passport even though the law says I only need a birth certificate?” The answer is that you don’t have to get a passport but YOU assume the risk if something happenes.

Same logic applies to “Should I travel to a different state, to get on a cruise going to a different country, when a potential category 5 hurricane is coming?” The answer is that you can but YOU assume the risk.

Also, in both of these instances you would have some up front out of pocket expenses even if you had trip insurance if any type of emergency occurred.

Look, I feel for the OP, it was a bad situation to be in. But the facts are the facts and she is an adult. She assumed the risk.

 

[Allison]

If I had to wait to have a perfect amount of money for vacation, then I'd never get to have one. I budget for food and other things, and maybe enough to get a flight home... maybe. But certainly not enough to stay in a hotel for an indefinite amount of time. I wouldn't even know where to begin cost planning for such a thing, since it's not an exact amount. It may be irresponsible, but the extra money just isn't there. But I'd rather take the risk and roll the dice than to stay home. That's my own personal choice though. Some may have the means to be able to budget for emergency situations. I don't and OP didn't.

Then if you make that decision, own the possible consequences. Don't get angry and blame someone else or an entity when you are in a situation without emergency resources.

 

[wgeo]

FWIW - Irma was a cluster. Like worse to predict and much harder to figure out then other hurricanes have been recently. Are hurricanes in Florida normal? Of course, but Irma was a mess, due to changing forecasts on Monday it looked bad for me on the west coast of FL and my family talked about evacuating. And then on the Tuesday before hand (probably around when the OP was flying in and being told she could only get a 75% refund) Irma was supposed to go up the East coast and maybe even miss FL. So we decided not to evacuate but prepare, but then millions of people started evacuating from the Keys and Miami. By Thursday available flights and hotel rooms were insanely hard to find. And then on Friday Irma changed course to a direct hit on the west coast. By then we were in trouble, short of driving all the way to TN or NC and hoping we could find gas, evacuating was a hard choice at that point. To have the entire peninsula of FL on the move looking for rooms/flights and gas was downright crazy. SO - the OP would have had a hard time even if she had a large amount of $$ easily available. Does it suck that DCL couldn't do more? Well yes, but other then letting people cancel earlier it's not realistic for them to be able to do much more. People waited on hold for hours to book Disney rooms or change reservations, and it is simply impossible that DCL could have done that for every single person booked on a canceled cruise.

I was on a cruise that was canceled (although it was Magic after a refurb because they didn't get it done in time). Cruise left on Sunday and they canceled midday on Thursday. Of course we were in the air on Thursday when it was canceled. DCL was very nice on the phone with us and we did get a full refund but they did nothing to help with lodging or airfare accommodations that got messed up because they said they announced early enough. They did give us a free cruise that had to be used within 6 months or something so I felt well compensated - but in the moment they didn't do anything to help hotels etc.

 

[IrishEye]

Wow, 9 pages in under 5 days, this seems like the DIS Boards of the past.

Maybe we can get additional pages by adding that WDW Resort was not accommodating by not letting OP to delay or cancel her pre-stay which would have allowed her to wait to see which track the hurricane was actually going to take.

 

[cyclenut]

I admit up front that I have not read all 9 pages of comments on this, but I have to same I'm a bit surprised at how DCL handled this situation with the OP. While we do all understand that DCL and Disney Resorts are different companies, they do a very good job of selling you on the fact that they are part of the Disney brand. They encourage the types of vacations that the OP booked. They are not shy about trying to take all of your vacation dollar. I would expect that the Disney company would have taken steps to ensure that those whose cruise was cancelled that were already staying on Disney property were well taken care of. No, they don't have to by the contract. Yes, the OP should have had "better" contingency plans.

What's important here is that the OP put their trust in the Disney brand and that trust was violated. Perhaps the trust was misplaced. Perhaps the expectations too high. I don't think so. The OP was not asking for anything "for free". Just asking for DCL to provide some flexibility. Fortunately there was someone at WDW who understood what the Disney brand stands for and stepped up. The result is positive for Disney. They kept the vacation dollar. DCL should have done more.

 

[wgeo]

It would have been very nice in theory if DCL could have done more. But how specifically would that have been possible? DCL doesn't have access to DW reservation systems, so there was no way for them to know who was staying at a DW hotel and who wasn't. Should DCL have stepped up and found housing for people who had booked Disney hotels on their own pre cruise, how would they have known who was in FL in one of those rooms at the time? Well then what about people who were staying in hotels in the Port area? Wouldn't DCL need to do the same for them? And how exactly would DCL do the booking? Book it for the person and then hope they wanted to spend the money on that level of accomodation (ie Poly vs Pop Century)? And how would DCL have made the reservation? Should the DCL agent have sat on hold for hours waiting to get through to a DW agent to make the reservation? Should DW have taken people off the phones to help out DCL, which would have caused other people to have to wait on hold even longer? Not to mention by that point in the week I imagine DCL was pretty short staffed.

I really do think it would have been nice for DCL to offer more help. I wish they could have done more for the OP, but other than allowing people to cancel earlier, I think that it just isn't realistic that they would have been able to fill in as travel agents for that many people in that emergency level situation.

 

[undertheradar]

The OP was wanting DCL to advance the refund or direct bill charges for the stay, something that DCL was not equipped to do.

 

[Bear3412]

Let me start with I have been going to Disney for 20 years and been on 3 Disney cruises ...

and would have never expected the awful way the cruise line treated us.

I was scheduled on the Disney dream on Sept 8th thru the 11th ...

with a previous resort stay ... 4th thru the 8th.

Before we left for Florida the cruise line told me if I cancelled before ... I would only get a 75 percent refund

so I decided to see Florida .

I called the cruise line repeatedly asking for info what was going to happen to the passengers if they chose to cancel and was repeatedly told not to worry Disney will make sure it's guests will be taken care of and safe in that event ....

... well that was a fat lie...

were they going to put us up at another hotel or make some other arrangements since we now we're stranded for those 3 days with no place to stay ...

.... I did not have enough funds with me for an extended stay at the resort ...

.... I planned on being housed and fed on the cruise ....

.... So I spoke to the... hotel manager at POR who agreed with me how the cruise handled this was awful and made arrangements for me go stay here and charge my food to the room till my refund comes in whenever that will be, he is sending me a bill to my home.

He checked in ... with us everyday to make sure we were OK and didn't need anything, he was what I have always thought of Disney, as to be a great caring company .....

Let the money grubbing uncaring company the cruise line side of Disney is.
So I will never give Disney Cruise Line another dime of my money and will stay loyal as always to Walt Disneyworld. Thanks to all that had to suffer my rant lol

Click above "click to expand" for a cleaned up version of OP.

Great Rant BTW OP.

I deleted extraneous text for an easier read. Added spaces for same reason.
A few edits in red to assist. Just trying to make it .... readable.

IOW, I completely abused OP post, .. lol ; .. that is one perspective.

Another perspective is ......

BTW, I have no idea why this ended up in double quotes.

Which makes it not show in full, etc . ? ? ?

Just trying to assist.

 

[cruiser21]

Ummm...a cruise goes out of the country...

That wasn't the issue was it. It was a closed loop three day cruise btw. I basically don't agree with OP on some of her complaints, but I've been on the receiving end of the unrelenting attacks and condescending remarks by people on this board...... so I can feel for her. I'm actually surprised this thread has been allowed to go on as long as it has. How much of of a beating does a poster have to take before a thread is ended???