Star Princess Review
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My husband and I were looking forward to a 32-day cruise around South America beginning March 2, 2010. Although we live in Michigan, we had planned to be in Florida until the end of February and arranged through Princess to fly from Miami to Chile. Unfortunately, on the morning of February 27 we learned of the earthquake in Chile. We immediately contacted our travel agent and Princess Cruises to get an update on our cruise. We were reassured by Princess that our cruise was still going as scheduled and that we should proceed to Miami for our scheduled flight on March 1 as planned.
We drove to Miami on February 28 and spent the night. We took a taxi to the LAN airlines terminal but upon arrival were informed that no flights were being allowed into Chile due to the earthquake. We were told the airport in Santiago was damaged and at that time they did not expect any flights would be allowed for four days (after two days LAN was allowed one flight a day into Santiago). We were told to get a hotel room (at our expense) and check back periodically. We contacted our travel agent and Princess and explained our situation only to be told that Princess makes travel arrangements as a courtesy for its passengers but they have no responsibility for making alternate travel arrangements; it was up to us to arrange another flight at our expense. We spent two nights at a Miami airport hotel hoping we would eventually get on a LAN flight. We finally gave up and headed back to Michigan.
Although we had travel insurance, since the cruise was not canceled (we just couldn't get to it!) we learned we would not be reimbursed for the cost of the cruise. We were eligible for a limited reimbursement for trip delay if we eventually caught up with the ship in another port. We contacted Princess again and eventually were told they could arrange for us to fly to Buenos Aires on March 9 to catch up with the ship on March 13. However, the stay in Buenos Aires would be at our expense, as well as the flight from Michigan to Atlanta and back. We were given three hours to make up our mind before the offer was withdrawn. We decided to go ahead.