Stephanie and I decided to book a last minute cruise, actually two cruises, on April 21. 2015. We had picked out what we thought would be two inexpensive back to back cruises on the US West Coast, one a a 7-Day Wine Country Coastal Cruises leaving from Los Angeles on May 2, 2015, and ending in Vancouver, British Columbia on May 9, 2015, and the other a 3-Day Coastal Cruise leaving from Vancouver that same date, and ending in San Francisco on May 12. Both cruises were on the Golden Princess, and so we picked the same interior cabin on both segments of the trip to avoid having to relocate. This plan would give Stephanie two additional cruises to try and gain her Elite Status on Princess Cruises Captain’s Circle Program. These would be my first cruises as an Elite member, having reached the goal on our last short cruise to the Western Caribbean.
Once the ship arrived in San Francisco at the end of the second cruise, we planned to get an early morning “walk-off” disembarkation and then head directly over to the Enterprise Car Rental agency a few blocks from the pier. After renting a car, the plan was to drive out to the Napa Valley/Sonoma area in California and stay two nights, then head back into San Francisco for two nights before flying back home.
We booked the cruises through Princess to insure we had the same cabin on both segments, and then proceeded to book our airfare with US Airways, since they were the only airline with an early morning departure from home, with arrival in Los Angeles by 10:05 AM local time. We wanted to avoid travel and hotel costs by arriving in Los Angeles on Friday, the night before the cruise, so with the early arrival in Los Angeles on US Airways on Saturday, our embarkation day, we did not anticipate any troubles getting to the Pier for the 4:00 PM ship’s departure. We reserved our Super Shuttle rides from the Los Angeles airport to the pier, and booked our hotel in Sonoma.
All was going well especially since we only had a few days to do all of the planning for this trip. But then we hit a snag, a really large snag. Apparently, it is against the Federal Law to be on a non-US registered ship and go from one port in the US to anther without returning to the original embarkation port, in this case, Los Angeles. Yes, we were the victims of the Passenger Vessel Services Act (PVSA) of June 19, 1886. And that is the correct date, 1886. Since the second cruise returned to San Francisco instead of Los Angeles, and the fact that Vancouver is considered a “nearby coastal Port”, Princess made us pick one of the cruises to cancel. We were totally unaware of this law, but on looking back, it does explain some of the strange itineraries we have seen on some cruises. This is the reason cruises out of Los Angeles, going to Hawaii and back, stop over in Mexico for a short time, to circumvent the Passenger Vessel Services Act.
This was quite the surprise, and worse, left us with airfare home from San Francisco, and no good way to get there without adding some substantial costs, either in change fees, or one way airfares from Vancouver to San Francisco. Also, having to fly to San Francisco disrupted the logistics of our planned stay in that area
We looked at car rentals, but with two ships arriving in Vancouver at the same time, there were none available, which was also quite a surprise. I guess all of the West Coast Passengers were already booked with rental cars to get home.
Luckily, we had purchased trip insurance from Princess, a rarity for us on shorter, less expensive cruises, so we did have the ability to cancel the 7-Day cruise and only forfeit our $80 for the insurance. We would receive a credit for the full fare value of this cruise to be applied on another Princess cruise in the future. So that was also an option we considered.
We called US Airways about changing the tickets we had to fly home from Seattle, since flight times from Vancouver are really, really long in duration due to some lengthy layovers. The verdict, $561 in fees and airfare differences, ouch.
We then looked at an 7-Day Alaska cruise on Princess, leaving in and out of Seattle, but departing the day after we arrived in Vancouver, Sunday. The cruise was not badly priced, but we did not want to get home late on a Sunday night from Seattle, about 11:45 PM, and then have Stephanie get up to go to work the next morning. Plus, that was not the itinerary we wanted to do for an Alaska cruise, which we have not yet done.
We did see another 7-Day Princess Alaska cruise leaving Vancouver on the same day as we arrived there, but on another Princess ship, and ending in Anchorage. The flights from Anchorage were about the same additional cost as changing our flights to get home from Seattle, but after talking with the reservation folks at Princess, this was the same scenario as we faced originally, it violated the Passenger Vessel Services Act again since it was on the same cruise line, leaving out of Vancouver to another US port, even though a different ship.
We were ready to throw in the towel on the whole trip an opt for canceling, until we happened to see on the US Airways website that we had the ability to cancel our flight reservations for a full refund IF it was less than 24 hours since the reservations had been made. We called the reservations office on the phone, and were told that yes, we could request a total refund even though it was a few hours later than exactly 24 hours from making the initial reservation. Just for information, their policy is really up until 11:59 PM of the day after you make the reservation, not strictly an elapsed time frame of 24 hours, even on non-refundable tickets.
The refund request was made, and we were supposed to receive an email on the refund status, which did not occur, making us nervous. We had been told it could take up to 7 days for the refund to be “approved”, which also did not make us really comfortable with making alternate flight arrangements.
At this point, we had decided to go ahead with the first cruise, and then just stay two nights in Vancouver, and then head to Seattle for two nights, and fly home from there. This would require another flight reservation, this time through American Airlines (owner of US Airways). We went ahead and made a reservation with American, since we were only 8 days out from our initial travel day, and seats were already limited on the flights. We used their 24 hour “Hold” for the reservations to allow us some additional time to see if we would get any notification on our refunded US Airways flights, not desiring to have the cost of both sets of tickets to worry about.
Stephanie called US Airways the next day, my mind and patience were evaporated by this time with all of the changes in travel plans, possible scenarios, and now having to potentially find another set of hotels in Seattle and Vancouver. The ticket agent was helpful, and once she learned that we had been inside the 24 hour window, she was confident that the refund would be processed without any issues, but that it still could take 7 days.
With that information in hand, we went ahead and confirmed our reservation with American Airlines (actually it is still US Airways flights), with the same early departure flight we had on the initial reservation for our flight to Los Angeles. We selected American Airlines since we could apply for an American Airlines credit card, receive $100 credit on the account, and get one free checked bag (another $100 savings for all flights). The process was a little confusing, but all went through according to plan, except for two seat upgrades on the initial flight to Charlotte, connecting to Los Angeles. That flight is on a regional plane, with limited seats, so in order to calm Stephanie’s fears about sitting apart, we opted for the “Choice Seats” upgrade so that we were in adjacent seats. The upgraded seats were all that were available on that flight, so we also did not want to risk waiting to get seats once we arrived at the gate that morning. Just a small additional fare for some piece of mind.
All is now set for the trip, and we are once again getting excited to go. All of the travel plan changes had taken the excitement out of the trip initially, but once we got through the headaches of the changes, and found out we would be refunded the initial airfare reservations, we were once again looking forward to a last minute vacation. We are still disappointed that we will not be going to Napa, or spending more time in San Francisco, but we do stop in San Fransisco for an extended port day (8:00 AM to 8:00 PM) during the cruise.
Now we just have to figure out Hotels in Vancouver, Seattle, bus transportation between those two cities, and what we will do on port days during the cruise. All in the next 6 days…..