Booked a 9 night Eastern Caribbean during Black Friday and felt like we scored. Just over $2700 total for me, my wife, and our two kids (4 years and an infant). Been looking forward to this for months.
Two days ago our travel agent calls and says Royal removed Haiti from the itinerary. Now there’s a longer stretch between ports, which suddenly makes our baby ineligible since she’ll be just shy of 1 year for that many sea days. With the original itinerary, she was fine. She literally turns 1 during the cruise.
We figured ok, we’ll switch to a later 9 night cruise. Nope. Royal wants a $150 change fee and the same cruise now prices out at $4700. They won’t honor the original price, won’t offer onboard credit, nothing. They also won’t refund, only future cruise credit, but all comparable sailings are thousands more.
We sail out of New York because we’re in NJ and didn’t want to fly with two young kids, so options are limited. Even tried downgrading to 7 nights. Still no flexibility. A supervisor just repeated policy over and over.
What really gets me is they apparently haven’t been sailing to Haiti since September, yet our cruise still shows Haiti on the website and they had no issue booking us with our child’s age. Now it’s somehow our problem.
Has anyone dealt with something like this with Royal? This just feels like a total bait and switch.
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