Well, it's now less than four days before we're scheduled to embark the MS Noordam, but we still are sailing in limbo for now. The ship as of 5pm pacific time was still "overbooked"; however the good news, or bad news, depending on how you look at it, is that they had approx 4 more cancellations today- probably voluntary bumps for their tempting and generous offerings.
I'm beyond torn, I could go on back to back 12 day European cruises in category S in May for giving up our two cabins on this 17 day itinerary which is beyond a sweet deal. It's tricky though, as we all happily chose the transatlantic and yet have varying opinions and preferences concerning the options that were offered to be bumped. How do you make a committed decision for a party of 6 ranging in age from 10 -73 about a vacation to Europe in less than 2 days???
We ALMOST volunteered to be bumped this afternoon. I called there, mustered the courage to say okay bump us and then the HAL rep that I've been working with assured me to wait it out til noon-time tomorrow as she believed the overbooking just might be resolved by then and literally wouldn't let me be bumped. Great, I finally gave in and went for the gold and she says "just wait" - what agony. We are tired of the stress and just want some certainty so we can look forward to a vacation rather than pull our hair out over it. Keep in mind that her 12:00 noon is to us, waiting ALL the way until 3pm wed (only about 72 hours before we are supposed to board the ship!) which we have to fly into NYC from Miami to catch - very nerve racking, maybe I will finally sleep this week when/if we board the ship.
Generally, I am euphoric right before a trip even if I'm in a frenzy to get ready. Clearly, I'm not feeling anything close to that now yet still trying to plow ahead forward through the choppy waters and get all our plans in order for IF we do indeed sail in three short days. One of the ports we looked forward to most was Casablanca and it was the most expensive and most tricky one to arrange economically so we could fully enjoy the intriguing sites that it offers - we really hope to visit magical Marrakech which is 3 hours from the port so doing this on your own is tricky and requires research and effort to get an awesome, safe, and economical visit.
So at three pm tomorrow, we stay or we fold period. If they can't guarantee that we most DEFINITELY have our cabins on the Noordam, then we will walk away with 2 cruises in deluxe suites to lick our wounds with over non-refundable airline tickets, stress, disappointment to have to wait for our trip, rescheduling vacation time, etc BUT I'm confident we will enjoy the amazing deal of 2 new cruises to look forward too. I'm sure many would call us crazy for not taking the deal immediately, but the situation is complicated with work schedules, existing reservations, and more. Either way, we will be happy to finally at least leave the limbo of standby - it's like "go to jail" in monopoly -everybody else is having fun, playing the game, reaping the rewards etc and you're just frozen there waiting to get a chance to roll doubles or pay to just get out of there.
I'm so behind in packing, laundry, housework, errands, arrangements etc now if we go as I've been consumed by figuring out how to cancel the reservations of our extended days after the cruise as well as the prearranged shore excursions that I orchestrated on our own rather than with HAL. I'll probably forget something important or worse, can somebody get me a glass of Shiraz please? - But I'm sure it will be blue skies by just after 3pm!
And so, our Noordam April 5th sailing conundrum, once again, is "to be continued" leaving us hanging overboard the balcony of cabin 4014...
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