Rebooking a Blackbeard's Cruise

[kitsapdiver]

Has anyone ever had to deal with the blackbeard charters rescheduling a cruise? I was scheduled for the cruise that left Nassau this Saturday, but at the last moment had to fly to Ohio, and my grandma ended up passing away the day my cruise was supposed to push off. I've talked to Blackbeards and they told me that their unofficial policy was to allow individuals to cruise on a standby status. Which means that I wouldn't get a confirmed spot on the cruise until the week of the cruise. And that they are a very busy company and it's very hard to make it work. The company themselves does not seem interested in helping me. It sounds like I'll need to own the process and push them, and call them every week to see if there are openings.

Does anyone have any suggestions for rebooking the cruise or stratagies that have worked for them in the past? The airline refunded the cost of my ticket because they couldn't get me to Ohio I bought a ticket on another airline. So I have the airline vouchers to get to Nassau already available to me.

Any suggestions/help would be appreciated.

[eliseaboo]

I've always had good luck with Blackbeard's, I'm surprised that they aren't being more helpful. But I imagine this is a busy time of year for them, and they just switched to Nassau from Freeport recently. The two times I have gone the boat has not been completely full, so hopefully it wouldn't be a major issue to go standby. Maybe if you tried asking them what weeks are good (if you have that kind of flexibility) or if you pushed it into the future a bit? I've been with them twice and had a wonderful experience both times. Who are you talking with? Maybe you have just not talked to the right person (as frustrating as that would be)

[kitsapdiver]

So I was able to rebook with blackbeard's June 11th today. They only book makeups within a week of the sailing, and I called Wed. and got the number of openings in June, July, and August, (and there werent' many), but luckily they had one left for the 11th, and I waited until today and nabbed it.

I was very fortunate with american airlines. I made reservations, but they couldn't take the voucher over the phone I had to go to an airport to pay so they reserved the booking on the computer system, and I headed over to Port Columbus Intl to pay for the flight, after redeeming my voucher it was going to be $280 bucks, but with the death certificate the airlines was able to do some airline magic, and make the difference in price $16 so I certainly can't complain about that.

So in the end things worked out with blackbeard (which was the result of a lil' luck), and the airlines were very , accommodating, but the only group that wasn't was the hotels in Nassau that I had booked on either side of the trip. For those I lost about 350 dollars, but for the opportunity to be with my family it was worth it.