Warm Breezes

We are supposed to be sailing on the GEM in 2 weeks. Currently sitting in the hospital with DM who just had surgery yesterday to relieve some bleeding on her brain. If she gets well enough that we don’t have to cancel, you will not hear any complaining from my lips. I will be counting my blessings.

"Convince me to sail xxxxx"

OP this is the best advise I have seen on here. Make lemonade out of the lemons you just picked. It is all in your attitude going forward. I am positive you have learned a valuable lesson from your mistake and I highly doubt you would ever do it again. If only we could all have 20/20 hindsight. Now it is time to move forward with your new life. As this poster stated take your refunded port fees and taxes and the spending money you would have taken on your cruise and plan a romantic weekend honeymoon. You now have a story to tell your future kids and a life lesson to impart on them. Make sure that story includes how you changed a "night mare" into a "dream" honeymoon by not giving into blame, regret, and self-pity and turning it around by being positive and making the most out of what you do have. DH and I just celebrated 30 years together on our 18th cruise. We didn't have much at all when we got married (started out in a trailer park with zero savings and some debt) but we did set priorities and stuck to them. Priorities to get an MBA, paid by my employer, and a career started while waiting to have kids. Priorities to pay off all our debt with the exception of our mortgage. Priorities to save retirement funds, emergency funds, and college funds started in those first 5 years. Priorities to invest our time and monies into our kids, once we had them, into their education and their activities. They both will have graduated debt free from college once DD is done next year...they did their part in keeping costs down by living at home, getting scholarships, working, paying for books, and going to a local university. In return we paid their tuition for 4 years. Priorities to not live beyond our means (ie. keeping cars 10+ years until they died, living in the house we built in 1990 until retirement and investing in it, shopping the clearance racks for clothes and other items, and not keeping up with latest technology or fads). We never cared what the Jones did. We followed our dreams and priorities and not theirs. DD is a professional dancer and getting an education degree while DS is now an established Sports Editor and Journalist. They followed their dreams. It was not always easy. I had several health issues along the way and came close to dying twice and I lost many dear family members way to young. But we always kept a positive attitude and we always made sure to travel every year with and without kids. It was a HUGE priority for us. When times were tough we kept the travels shorter and closer to home. Any bonuses we received were designated as vacation funds along with any other amounts we could put to it over the years. We started cruising when our kids were 4 and 7. We have now been on 18 (10 with and 8 without them) with 2 more planned so don't give up hope of ever going on one. It may take you some time but with the right mindset and attitude the future is yours to create. Enjoy your marriage. I hope you will be as happy in yours as I have been in mine. Our goal is to retire in 3 years at 55 and cruising will play a big part in our retirement. Set your goals and prioritize your life to get to them and anything is possible.

I'd personally like to see some King Crab legs rather than Rib Eye or Lobster

I haven’t been on the Breakaway, but I did have an angled balcony on the Escape. My preference would be an angled balcony over an upgraded shower any day.

I can tell you from our experience that it was a relief to know when my Grandmother passed away the day before our cruise, that we could cancel that cruise to go home and grieve with our family, and use our insurance to rebook that same cruise the following year. We took the hit purchasing a cruise. We paid 5% more to insure 1) we were covered in case of a medical emergency and 2) if we did have to cancel we could still take our vacation at a later date. As you stated it was not really the loss of money, it was already gone. It was being able to take that trip that we had saved and paid for...if not at that scheduled time then at a later date. It was and still is a small price for us to pay for that peace of mind. OP is a prime example of how distressing it can be to have something happen that causes you to cancel without insurance. He is extremely upset because his funds are gone with nothing to show for it. I insured that once my funds were gone, I would have something to show for it. I went home to concentrate on grieving. He is on cruise critic blaming NCL for not giving him that peace of mind I paid for. Again I and I believe everyone on here as well as NCL, have empathy for the OP and his wife....but that doesn’t make NCL responsible for the OPs financial decisions.

I have my doubts that the other companies made exceptions for the OP. OP never answered the question of the number of days out for each of the cruises. From the information given it appears he may have been inside of NCLs final payment but outside of Royals. In that case, there was no exception made by Royal to their policy. OP also did not tell us what the cancellation policies were for the rates he paid for the airline tickets and hotel rooms. I suspect their policies were also followed based on the rates paid by OP and again no exceptions to there policy was needed. I haven’t seen anyone being brutal. We all have empathy for the OP and his wife. But we also don’t believe in holding NCL responsible for the OPs financial decisions.

I'm glad we still have the options without the hefty penalty here in the US. As I stated previously my premiums are roughly 5% of my cruise and I purchase it the same day as I book my cruise so I can get the Pre-Existing Medical Conditions. Having many serious health issues myself it is imperative for us to get. Luckily I have not had to use it for my own health issues.

Do you have any idea how many cruisers have things like serious illnesses and deaths happen to them within the final payment of their cruise? I have cruised 18 times. I didn't start purchasing insurance until my 4th cruise. 3 months after cruise #2 DH's father died. He was ill, but stable when we cruised and we were torn whether to go or not. 3 days after cruise #3 my father died. He was in the hospital when we left but was improving and would be going home in the next day or 2 so we decided to go. He got an infection while we were on our short 5 day cruise that killed him upon our return. Those experiences, along with an emergency landing on our way to cruise #2 (in June on a direct flight) and a smashed windshield on the way to cruise #3, convinced us to start getting travel insurance which we ended up using on our 7th planned cruise. My Grandmother passed away the day before we were to sail. We cancelled with our insurance and drove home to grieve. OP learned a hard lesson. One that I barely avoided twice before I caught on. But it was his lesson to learn not NCL. I've know at least 2 other people personally that have had to cancel cruises for illnesses or death. There are many, many more...this is just my experience. Are you saying the cruise lines should reimburse all of them? Who should qualify? That few grand multiplied by how many? Insurance Revenues lost because....well why should we purchase insurance if they will refund us anyway? Not following their set policies would be an extremely poor business decision on the part of NCL. There is a place for empathy and there is a place for personal responsibility. The cruise line can have empathy but responsibility lies with the buyer. ETA: We have cancelled 1 cruise out of 19 booked. Our travel insurance runs on average around 5% of our cruise. This means we need to cancel approx 1 out of 20 cruises to break even with purchasing travel insurance. Right now we are slightly ahead since we purchased insurance for 16 out of 19 cruises booked and used it to reimburse a cruise once. Due to my close calls and hits I am willing to take those odds and purchase the insurance.

So tell me...were your dealings in retail with irate customers returning some small consumer goods worth a couple hundred dollars or less where no insurance was necessary for unexpected events? Cruises are not the same type of commodity. To be quite honest, as most posts on this thread reflect, most of us frequent travelers know the risks of traveling. Some of us do not want to take the financial risk so we purchase travel insurance. Others prefer to take the risk and self insure. There are only a few like OP who feel they can take the risk and then feel entitled to have others cover there loss when things go wrong. Most of us, while having empathy for the OP, we do not feel he deserves recompense for his losses and we are not afraid to say so on social media.

So tell me how many days out for each of your cruises did you cancel? What type of ticket did you book with Delta? Refundable or Nonrefundable? What were the cancellation policies for your hotel bookings? I’m willing to bet that each company followed their policies in dealing with your cancellations and that you came in before final payment for Royal which was 90 days and after for NCL which was 120 days. I would bet you would have had the same answer from Royal as you got from NCL if you had tried canceling 30 days later. When you book with these companies you are agreeing to abide by their policies. You were not dealing with poor customer service with NCL. You were dealing with a company that offers you travel insurance to cover instances like this. You declined this coverage and failed to get outside insurance. This puts the risk on you once you are inside that companies final payment per the contract you agreed to. This is called taking personal responsibility for your financial decisions. It is not poor customer service to uphold company policy. You are not entitled to receive something for free that rest of us pay for. Your loyalties may lie elsewhere now, but I highly doubt that affect NCL in the least. I hope for health and healing for your wife and hope you learned the importance of getting insurance for your future travels.

Moderno for me even though I am not big meat eater. I absolutely love the Brazilian cheese rolls and roasted pineapple. I could fill up on those 2 alone

Sounds like Royal Caribbeans final payment date was 90 days out and NCL's was 120 days out and he cancelled somewhere in between those 2 dates. I'm betting if he had been inside Royal Caribbeans final payment date he would have been treated the same way by them as he was on NCL.

And what about all the people the company just ticked off because they used their common sense to purchase travel insurance only to find out they didn't need to waste their money on it since the cruise line doesn't follow their own refund policy? They just lost all future sales of insurance policies and are now obligated to bail out the people who come to them with a sad stories of having to cancel their cruise for this reason or that because it is now expected of them to do so because they did it for this person. Defeats the whole purpose of having the policies and insurance and there is no guarantee of customer loyalty from doing so. My common sense guess is they would lose more money reimbursing cruises and lost insurance sales than they would gain from customer loyalty and that would not make their share holders happy.

Common sense would tell you that if cruise lines made it a habit of using empathy and compassion to make business decisions, against their policies, they wouldn't be in business too long and they would have let down their stockholders. What makes this case more relevant than someone else's? This is the exact reason insurance is offered to the buyer. Common sense would advise purchasing the insurance if you don't want to risk losing your vacation funds. I use common sense in purchasing insurance for my cruises. I have used it once when we had a family death the day before our cruise. I received empathy from the cruise line when I called to cancel our cruise. I received my money back from my travel insurance. I had the dignity not to ask the cruise line to cover my losses. While I have empathy for the OP, I do not hold the cruise line responsible for the OP's decision to accept the risk by not taking out insurance.