Passengers expected a week in Alaska. A mechanical issue left their Royal Caribbean cruise ship stuck in Vancouver instead.
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Arielle Anderson and her family boarded a Royal Caribbean cruise to Alaska this week, but it never set sail.
The 28-year-old’s mom booked the trip as a gift, and they had “been looking forward to this since Christmas.” About two days after she embarked in Vancouver, Canada, however, the cruise line announced that the voyage aboard Serenade of the Seas had been scrapped due to a mechanical issue.
“To accommodate ongoing maintenance, we’ve had to cancel our sailing,” Royal Caribbean Group, the cruise line’s parent company, told USA TODAY in an emailed statement. “We apologize to our guests for the inconvenience and have worked with them to adjust their travel plans.”
The company did not share additional specifics about the nature of the maintenance.
A week or so before departure, the cruise line notified Anderson’s family that the weeklong voyage had been shortened by about half and would skip portions of the itinerary. “And we were devastated then because we really wanted to go to places in Alaska,” she recalled.
The cruise line offered refunds, but because her family was flying in from various parts of the U.S., the South Carolina-based lawyer said “it was going to be more of a hassle for us to cancel the trip and get refunded those tickets and do something else.”
Since their original Aug. 30 sailing date had been delayed, they drove to Whistler to explore before boarding the ship the following day.
The cruise line told passengers they’d have to clear immigration screening on Sept. 1 before departing, but the previously announced times came and went with no instructions, followed by an announcement that afternoon that the process had been delayed. Not all onboard venues were open – the casino was closed, for instance – but passengers had access to much of the ship and the option to get off and explore Vancouver in the meantime.
In another announcement that evening, however, they “canceled the whole thing,” giving guests until the following day at midnight to disembark.
“Everybody was kind of panicking, so we were all just sitting in one of the bar areas, and everybody was just on their phones,” Anderson said. “People were really upset because everybody was trying to find flights and hotels and stuff.”
Royal Caribbean offered impacted guests compensation, including a full refund, a future cruise credit worth 100% of their fare and reimbursement for flight change fees. Royal Caribbean Group did not immediately respond to an additional request for comment on Anderson’s experience.
The news comes after a Disney Cruise Line sailing was canceled in May after guests had already boarded, also due to a mechanical issue. Cruise cancellations are relatively rare but do happen for reasons including ship charters or when vessels need to go into dry dock for maintenance or refurbishment.
Anderson’s mother found a rental car and the family drove to a vacation rental near Bellingham, Washington, and the family kept their original flights home from Vancouver.
“We just got an Airbnb down here, and have just been hanging out around here, hiking and whatnot,” she said. “Definitely not what we planned, but (we’re) trying to make the best of it.”
Nathan Diller is a consumer travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Nashville. You can reach him at ndiller@usatoday.com.