Right now we should be headed into New Calcedonia before heading to the Fiji islands with Princess Cruises.
It all happened on January 9th when we went to the Orlando airport headed to LA to then catch a flight to Australia for our cruise that left on January 11th (the day we would have arrived). The pilot on the flight to LA decided to wait for two passengers, which then delayed our flight by 30 minutes. Once we arrived to LA, there was a plane at our gate so we had to wait another 10 for them to move. We only had 50 minutes between flights so now we are 40 minutes late. We were told over the loud speaker to head to our gate - there were 7 of us. We raced to the gate only to find out the plane decided to leave 5 minutes early (EARLY!!!), thus we all missed it. They offered to send us the next day but we would have missed our ship so it wouldn't work for us. The ship was at sea for several days so flying to Australia and then off to the next port would have resulted in hotel stays waiting to leave, thus missing 3 days of the cruise. Not something we wanted to do. Plus, it wasn't offered to us. They didn't know what to do with us so they sent us home. Due to the late hour, Princess wasn't open for us to even discuss options - their emergency number for delayed travel has business hours, which we were 8 hours outside of...
We have been fighting with Delta to cover the expense of the cruise as Princess won't cover it, although we are begging them to roll it over into another cruise if possible. We are still waiting on that. Delta told us to file a complaint. I have filed two. I was then told I should hear in 30 days... I have never bought travel insurance as I have never had an issue like this. Our flight was scheduled by Delta directly and they were aware of the cruise times and date when I worked with them on the phone to schedule our flights.
So, as it stands we are now hoping to re-coup the expense from Delta and it's feeling like a battle we will loose. Loosing almost $6,000 isn't an option I am ok with. Will I get travel insurance going forward, yes. But I refuse to let this be a $6,000 lesson.
If you want to see how our battle is going, here is where it's currently raging. Feel free to leave a comment if you agree this is BS - we need all the support we can get and it only helps Delta pay attention.
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