I couldn't sleep last night. Sure, the possibility of being bumped off our cruise was on my mind but the awful smell of a dead critter is what disturbingly still kept me awake. Remember how I said we had tented our house this past weekend? Well, it definitely killed more than termites!
Early yesterday evening, my poor husband had to crawl under our house to hunt down a suspiciously awful smell - gotta love my husband, who fearlessly strapped on knee pads and a flashlight for the unpleasant adventure. After about twenty five long minutes, he thankfully came out with a dead opossum about the size of our cat and discarded it. He found it clear across the other side of the house from the crawl space entry. We felt relieved to have that task over and settled in for the evening thinking the smell would now fade away.
Well, guess what, there's definitely a little relative of that opossum under there still. The smell only increased over the night. So, my poor dear husband, who had to go into work very early to finish all his projects prior to his scheduled vacation time for this cruise has to make yet another visit under the house after he gets home from work again today, yuk! - definitely, positively, without a doubt he deserves taking this vacation so now we are all crossing all our fingers and toes that someone else canceled or volunteered to be bumped with perks.
It's tentatively now only five days before we cruise and fly into NYC but have yet to get to speak with the appropriate HAL representative being they are located in pacific time zone so the waiting game continues for about 3 hours to call and hear if we can stay aboard our cruise.
It only gets better, I got an new email from the representative who originally sent the email about the overbooking and request to change over to a different cruise, which is basically a request to accept bumping - it is an "out of the office auto reply" - she herself is on vacation beginning today until April 14th. So, the new hurdle is finding the best person to talk to once that pacific clock finally rolls into 8:30am ship inventory opening time.
So for now, I amuse myself with memories in the planning and selection of this cruise...
We decided that this was going to be our 13th wedding anniversary present to ourselves, being we did nothing special on our tenth. My kids laughed at this and called it the lucky cruise.
My eldest son looked at the dates and said, "wow, we'd be on the ship for the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic" - not exactly a selling feature on a Transatlantic -yet overbooked.
My youngest son reveled in the fact that it went to Bermuda, "where the most ships have sank and right through the Bermuda triangle," with great enthusiasm.
Luckily, I am not a superstitious person(other than crossing my fingers and toes for this) because I'm still hoping to have the option to stay on this cruise.
The flip side is that yes they have offered some very generous options if we'd agree to volunteer to change from this cruise. One of the offers was a 29 day European cruise and we only paid for a 17 day. But.... all of the options are in later months(May, June, or October) and do not at all line up with airline reservations, hotel, museum tour reservations, etc Plus we like traveling in the shoulder season rather than the high season. But most of all, when you have been waiting and looking forward to a trip and are counting the days to leave - 10,9,8,7 and all the sudden at 6 you are asked to change it is downright disappointing. We knew that by booking our vacation with Liz on her discounted employee/family rate that we were considered standby, but never would have imagined that a company would try and bump so close to a departure when it's an international cruise booking and out of a port that is not our home port.
I've already tried researching what I can salvage from cruise related reservations -
American airlines will charge $200 per ticket plus the difference of the fair to totally change travel dates, cities, etc But the real bummer is that I had an amazing fare for this trip and can't touch that rate for future travel. As far as hotels, car rental ,etc some were prepaid and will have euro penalities to cancel while others will not. All prepaid museums in Italy are non-refundable but the bigger issue is they are hard to get during peak season so a bigger loss that way.
Other issues that I defintely can't put a price on for this trip that cost us dearly...
Dealing with my autistic son in assuring him that this will NOT happen every time we travel and that sometimes things happen beyond our control. By the way, this issue is more complicated than it seems, he is a control freak and a very concrete thinker.
My mother's health is at it's best today and will only get progessively worse with time. She has Parkinson's, is 73, and walks with a cane so time is of the essence when taking a trip of this magnitude with her. We really want to enjoy this experience with her and help her best see the things she has dreamed of seeing with her grandchildren by her side.
My husband's job makes it EXTREMELY difficult to get off planned vacation time. Every other vacation has been from the hip with about 2 weeks or less between reservation and actual travel. We were for once enjoying the planning stages etc rather than pack and go now method.
But, the real potential loss is that we had great deals, were eager to go, everyone is healthy and ready for travel plus we really loved the combination of land and sea that we had arranged.
For my mother and brother, who were joining us on this adventure -they had much more expensive airfare than us and it was with AirGorilla who claims to have a no refund policy. Hopefully AirGorilla shows some mercy somehow if we get bumped! Plus, they also had planned on staying abroad 34 days while we were at 25 days so they have way more reservations etc to deal with.
Anyhow, waiting, hoping, praying, and the outcome is unfortunately "to be continued'...
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