New York Daily News

[tekmom]

[quote name='Jill SC']There is a canadian travel company that books space on a cruise line every five years for an anniversary cruise. My first cruise was on their 35th anniversary cruise on the Royal Princess which held 1200 passengers. The company booked half the ship, 600 passengers, but did it over a year ahead of time, basically they were the first booking for that cruise. They released the 200 spaces they didn't need by the time final payments were due, two months before the cruise.
The main complaint of other passengers was that this company had booked early dinner seating for their 400 people, but again they were the first group booked.
There should be a cut off point for group charters. If you want to book a whole ship, it should be done a year ahead. Or the company should say they can only book the spots available. Four months ahead is too close to the cruise to start bumping everybody off. It would seem to me that it would be more trouble to call and cancel all the booked pasengers and make offers, rebook them, and then have to do all of the paperwork to book all of the chartered people, than to just tell the chartered people, "we have an empty ship next year that you can book."[/QUOT

They did charter it a year ahead. On the R Family forums, people have been booking it since July 2006. NCL should have bumped people then, but they kept selling cabins. The issue is with NCL, not Rosie.

[seafeet]

Well it looks like its not just the people who were bumped from the July 7, 2007 cruise that are upset about the "Rosie Cruise".. Seems like the council of churches in Bermuda are also upset that this cruise is coming to Bermuda. Take a look at their local paper the "Royal Gazzett". There has been several articles in the past (and as recent as today) expressing their dissapproval. Not judgements here, just telling you want their paper is reporting.

[Jill SC]

I didn't realize that it had been chartered a year ahead. Then the cruise line should not have been booking other passengers. Maybe they could have set a date for any unbooked charter spaces to be released for a last minute sale, But definitely NCL is at fault for double booking. At the very least they should have advised new passengers that they could only put cabins on hold for them and there was a strong possiblility that they would not be going on this particular cruise.

[want2travelbad]

[quote name='lvtotrvl1']This not only happens on Norwegian..do you know how many people have had this happen on HAL? I agree, it is terrible when it happens, but unfortunatly the cruiselines (all of them) do this and can do it. Don't blame NCL.[/quote]

ITA! My family was bumped from a HAL cruise to the Mexican Riviera, as someone or some company charted the whole dam (:D a joke for all of the HAL cruisers) ship. I have to say though that HAL made the situation right for our family. I asked for and they agreed to pay our airfare rebooking fees ($300 for our family of three), allowed us to book the same category stateroom on any future 7 day cruise that worked for us (we settled on Alaska in July) for no additional cost, and gave us a $50 pp shipboard credit. When I read about the recent pathetic offers from NCL for passengers bumped I feel bad for them.

[NowVoyager908]

I don't blame Rosie for this mess; love her or hate her, I doubt she held the cruiseline at gunpoint. What I find unbelievable is that passengers had their bookings cancelled, yet were allowed to re-book at a higher rate through the charter's travel agent. And if the possibility of the charter was known up to nine months ago, NCL really dropped the ball. Perhaps Rosie's group could have held a certain number of cabins for their use, leaving a certain number for non-charter passengers.

My family is booked on the cruise the week before. We started planning the trip about nine months ago. We had so many issues to take into account: when school was over, who could take which week, etc., etc. We had a pretty narrow window to work with. We were looking at the 7/7 cruise, but not everyone could get that week. The funny thing is the reason we're going is because of my niece's 16th birthday. She chose a trip instead of a party. I doubt we could have rebooked at this late date, considering how much rates rise the closer you get to the cruise date. She's be out of a party and out of a cruise.

[have fun now]

[quote name='seafeet']Well it looks like its not just the people who were bumped from the July 7, 2007 cruise that are upset about the "Rosie Cruise".. Seems like the council of churches in Bermuda are also upset that this cruise is coming to Bermuda. Take a look at their local paper the "Royal Gazzett". There has been several articles in the past (and as recent as today) expressing their dissapproval. Not judgements here, just telling you want their paper is reporting.[/quote]

Here's the link to the article you referenced;

[URL]http://www.theroyalgazette.com/siftology.royalgazette/Article/article.jsp?articleId=7d73fa330030002§ionId=60[/URL]

I still think NCL would have been smart to reschedule the 2 weeks dry dock to include July 7................ LOL:D

[GoHuskies!]

"Hello, Fairmont Hotel? I'd like to book your hotel--actually any of your hotel chain--for a week in mid-July. Yes, the entire hotel. We are having a grand reunion of our extended family to coincide with a wedding and several anniversaries. I understand that you probably have some rooms already booked, but we need the entire hotel in order to accommodate the family. Would you please check your calendars, your hotels and your bookings to see whether you can fit us in?--[--[I]LATER[/I]--]--Yes, this is she. Oh, that's great--I'm glad you found that one of your hotels can provide all of its rooms for our use. You say you had some bookings but you were able to have them released for us? That's wonderful--thank you very much."

Well, whether you like Rosie or not, you may be able to relate to this conversation if you have ever tried to book a large area for a family event. And notice that you would not have been told how the rooms would have been "released" for your use.

[GoHuskies!]

[quote name='want2travelbad']ITA! My family was bumped from a HAL cruise to the Mexican Riviera, as someone or some company charted the whole dam (:D a joke for all of the HAL cruisers) ship. quote]
Sounds like you got your wish. You want2travelbad and sure enough, you got to travel bad!:)