When your trip goes awry like it did with Carnival’s cruise, you lose more than money. You lose your allotted vacation time for this year. Admittedly I have no marine experience, but here are the things I would have been wondering had I been a passenger:
The map shows they were nearer Cozumel than Mobile. And the drift was away from Mobile and towards Cozumel. Could Carnival have dug deeply into financial pockets and leased 15 planes at 200+ passengers each, flown them out of Cozumel and cut 2 days off this miserable experience?
Is Carnival giving people their full trip payment back? They should and they should be re-booking everyone’s return flights, paying for any extra fees or hotel nights they need to incur plus the payment for travel insurance. They cannot give you back your vacation time, so the refund should be generous and consider the adage that ‘time is money’.
Credits on future Carnival vacations: remember a credit is not dollar for dollar from the cruise line since their profit in the credit. So lets say you get a $500 credit from Carnival, it is really less than $500 since part, when used, is profit to Carnival. Credits should be substantial to take this into effect. And these passengers should be first in line when they use this credit. This means ahead of preferred travel agent clients as well as friends/family.
Finally the news media should mention more boldly, that Carnival owned Costa whose ship foundered last year. The media like to blame the captain not the company; but the buck stops at the top not just in an individual’s fatal error.
I think I like flying.
