Please Help! NCL Hawaii cruise and air travel mess!

Please Help! NCL Hawaii cruise and air travel mess!

August 24, 2005

Dear Sir or Madam: I just recently booked a cruise with Norwegian Cruise Lines, Pride of Aloha through a travel agent at CruiseCheap.com, flying from San Diego to Honolulu and then touring four of the Hawaiian Islands. The travel dates on both the travel agent’s website and the NCL website indicated Sunday, September 4 – Sunday, September 11, 2005. This is perfect for us. We could enjoy our vacation, pick up the kids Sunday evening and be back to work as required on Monday morning. WHAT HAPPENED… When we booked the cruise through the travel agent, we asked requested that the air portion of our trip not to connect through San Francisco. We have experienced many delays and difficulties when traveling through San Francisco in the past and thought it may be wise to avoid it if possible and feasible. A few days later the travel agent called back and said that if we wanted to accept an alternative itinerary that avoided San Francisco and connect through Los Angeles instead, that it would cost approximately an additional $280.00. We asked the travel agent what the original itinerary was, so that we could compare our options and determine which one would be more suitable for us. The travel agent indicated that she could not provide us with both itinerary options, and we must make a blind decision regarding the one presented or elect to take the one that might possibly connect through San Francisco. However, she also indicated that LA and San Francisco were the only two options from the West coast, and San Francisco was used routinely. We decided that it may not be so bad to connect though San Francisco, and elected to avoid the $280.00 in additional fees, and accept any connection city for the air portion of our travel. HERE’S THE PROBLEM… To our surprise when we received our travel documents in the mail on this last Monday (8/22). The cruise line had added an additional day to our travel itinerary, flying us back into San Diego on Monday morning, September 12th. We have been speaking with the travel agent and NCL constantly over the last 3 days trying to get them to adjust hour air travel itinerary to honor the advertised travel days that we had originally booked and planned for. We must be back in San Diego on September 11th to pick up children from relatives (even if it’s very late in the evening). On Monday, September 12, the kids must be in school at 7:30AM, and I have to be at work promptly at 8:00AM. My travel partner must be at work at 6:00AM. We are both in public service jobs that simply do not have the flexibility to take unplanned vacation days. Vacation weeks are chosen approximately a year in advance. HERE”S WHAT THE CRUISE LINE HAS OFFERED… NCL is now telling us they must charge us approximately $600.00 to return us to San Diego on the 11th as we had planned. In our original decision, we chose not to worry about the connection city, however, we never could have imagined that they would not return us to San Diego on the 11th; We do not want to be blackmailed and bilked out of hundreds of dollars for them to stick to their advertised travel dates that we originally booked. WHAT WE HAVE DONE SO FAR… We told both the travel agent and the cruise line that it was not acceptable for us to add a travel day to our itinerary. We have checked with a few major airlines, and there are many flights available out of Honolulu that would return us to San Diego on the September 11th. We even attempted to work with the airline directly, but they indicated that the cruise line was the only party authorized to make any changes. The travel agent has also been attempting to work with cruise line on our behalf, but has indicated that we are at the mercy of NCL. We’ve spoken at length with both parties, but we are basically getting a blas