DBrown8939

And I think that's the reason for the whole mess. Some guests on the Jan. 21 sailing could not accept the captain's decision to bypass Stanley for safety concerns related to potential afternoon storms. It is his ship and he has both that right and that responsibility, and yet a few passengers became disruptive. NCL changed the schedule to reduce the risk of unrest on later sailings (and rewarded the disruption by handing out $100 OBC). But the new itinerary is a very bad tradeoff: removing Antarctica (which was the main selling point of the cruise) and replacing it by two extra hours at a tender port that might not even happen. The current sailing has just missed Punta Arenas due to weather, and will miss Antarctica because of the itinerary change. The forecast for Stanley on Wed. is for showers and wind. For the sake of the Feb. 18 passengers, I really hope that the ship is able to anchor there. Otherwise, this will look like an even worse tradeoff in hindsight. The talk about speed restrictions is almost completely irrelevant. The restrictions may have tied NCL's hands as far as arranging a modified itinerary that made everyone happy, but they were not what motivated the change. NCL has said that they made the change to "optimize" the guest experience in Stanley, and everyone questioned it because it was so absurd. However, I believe they were actually being honest about it. They are NOT being honest by continuing to market this as an Antarctica cruise for next season under the original itinerary that they will almost certainly not be following.

Maybe some people would be interested in suing over this, but I would be happy to simply have an acknowledgement that they messed up. As of now, they seem to think that they did everyone a favor by cutting Antarctica from the itinerary and focusing on the Falklands instead. I've done five NCL cruises in the past 18 months, and had been planning more. Now they need to convince me that I should sail with them again. I think your point about the ship being not "fit for purpose" is relevant, but as to the tender ports and not Antarctica. For whatever reason, the tendering process on the Star is very slow compared to other ships, and their original schedule did not allow for any margin of error at Punta Arenas and (especially) Stanley. Their misguided effort to improve this is what led to the fiasco. This ship shouldn't be used on itineraries that include tender ports with tight time frames.

I would suggest that everyone on the impacted cruises open a case with NCL via the form at https://www.ncl.com/case-submission , unless a complaint was already registered with Guest Services. It's unbelievable that the only communication we have received on this matter is the letter on Day 1 that said they were "pleased to share" the revised itinerary with us. Given the amount of bad publicity that this situation has produced, I would have expected an apology email by now along with some kind of incentive to remain an NCL customer.

I was on the Feb. 4 not-quite-Antarctica cruise. According to a couple of reviews that I read, passengers on the Jan. 21 cruise were given OBC of $100/pp for missing the Falklands. Skipping the Falklands was a weather/safety decision that was perhaps overly cautious but beyond NCL’s control, and it cost them money due to cancelled shore excursions. Our change was more significant, was entirely NCL’s fault, and it saved the company on fuel costs – yet we got no OBC for it. It makes no sense. However, I noticed that I got double Latitudes points, despite not having the relevant promo code on my booking. I wonder if this is some kind of inadequate and poorly communicated attempt at compensation?