September 15, 2006

Dear Carnival Guest:

We want you to be aware that the Carnival Legend will be delayed returning to New York from the previous cruise with arrival now estimated at 4:00 PM. The ship was forced to make a significant route deviation in order to facilitate a special medical emergency evacuation.
For your comfort and convenience, if your travel plans are flexible, we suggest that you do not plan to arrive at the terminal for embarkation prior to 7:00 PM. There is very limited space, seating and services available in the terminal. Departure time will not be before 10:00 PM.
We sincerely apologize for this situation. However, the health and safety of our guests and crew are our number one priority. Carnival will provide you with a $20 per person credit to your onboard Sail & Sign charge account to cover lunch on Sunday.
In addition, please be aware that we may need to slightly modify the itinerary for this cruise. For updated information, please visit Carnival.com.
Most importantly, we want to thank you for choosing Carnival for your vacation. We are looking forward to welcoming you aboard the spectacular Carnival Legend.
Sincerely,
L 9ctztd_
Vicki L. Freed, CTC
Senior Vice President — Sales & Marketing

While I certainly understand the reason, I don't understand not giving more in compensation for what is essentially a loss of the first day of the cruise - with perhaps more disruption to come. $20 for lunch wouldn't cut it with me. Sure, it isn't Carnival's fault that a passenger apparently got very ill - but it isn't the new passengers' fault either yet they are paying the price so to speak.

Meanwhile Carnival gets another day of revenue from the current passengers.

quote:

Originally posted by Dave56:
While I certainly understand the reason, I don't understand not giving more in compensation for what is essentially a loss of the first day of the cruise - with perhaps more disruption to come. $20 for lunch wouldn't cut it with me. Sure, it isn't Carnival's fault that a passenger apparently got very ill - but it isn't the new passengers' fault either yet they are paying the price so to speak.

Meanwhile Carnival gets another day of revenue from the current passengers.

I kinda thought that myself since they will not only miss lunch, but probably dinner as well.

I just hope they get in touch with everyone so that no one shows up at 10AM (without eating breakfast ~ expecting to get on my lunch) just to be sitting there the whole day with nothing to eat.

Exactly what I thought when I read that. You pay for what they call a 7 day cruise (or whatever this one was) but in reality its really only 6 or at best 6 and a half. Now they are saying you won't be on the ship until 7PM and you may not be visting every place you had planned. For your trouble, we are giving you $20 to cover lunch? What about reimbursing me for the lost day that I paid for? Another example of CCL commitment to its customers. Bah! I'm really begining to wonder about what seemed to be a great turn around of CCL. From the party animal cruise line to a family line. But if they don't start satisfiying their customers better than this, they are not going to be getting much return business.

From what I can remember from comments I have read, there is going to be a port change. Something about Tortola switching to Grand Turk
or vice versa. Anyway, anyone on this cruise needs to double check the ports they will now be going to in case they have booked independent tours.

That happend to me on the Glory Last year. The ship came into Port Canaveral 8 hours late because it left Progresso Mexico late because of heavy winds. I did not find out until I arrived in Orlando. (I worked the late evening shift the night before, my flight left Toronto at 06:30 via Reagan airport - so I did not sleep the night before)

We did not start boarding until 8:00 pm and departed at 10:00

This caused us to miss the 1st port of Nassau

They gave us a meal voucher for lunch at the airport, and 100.00 on our sail and sign to compensate for the missed port

For those of you feeling a bit disgruntled by loosing a few hours of your cruise with inadequate compensation, you should consider the circumstances of the people on the prior week's sailing. Since the ship was over seven hours late in arriving into New York, most of us with arline reservations that day missed our scheduled flights. And some were not successful in getting other flights out on Sunday due to the late hour. Carnival didn't compensate us one bit. They offered no assistance whatsoever, either financial or even logistical. The best they did was to give us a free phone call to the airline to allow us to workout our own alternate arrangements, but any additional charges assessed by the airlines were to be at the passengers own expense.

I understand the need to deal with medical emergencies, but what none of us on board could understand was Carnival's decision to turn the entire ship around and head back to St. Thomas instead of airlifting the sick passenger off the ship, which has always been the case in my previous experience. While Carnival can claim this was not their fault, I do hold them responsible for a poor decision in dealing with the emergency. And leaving so many passengers stranded without flights home was a poor showing in customer service.