This was supposed to be a Canada/New England cruise, with a repositioning at the end to Ft. Lauderdale, where Emerald Princess will spend the winter season. We are from Atlantic Canada and took this cruise for the US ports we were supposed to visit - Bar Harbor, Boston, Newport, New York and Charleston. Charleston turned out to be the only port we actually made it to, other than a service call in Boston, when no one was allowed off the ship except for the 90 passengers who had originally planned to end the cruise in New York.

On the second day in Quebec City, we were informed that they were monitoring Hurricane Sandy and were going to stay in calm Canadian waters until the danger from the Hurricane was past. So we entered the "Magical Mystery Tour" segment of the cruise (so named by the Cruise Director), where we visited unexpected ports such as Saguenay, (Quebec), Cornerbrook, (Newfoundland) and Saint John, (New Brunswick). Since we already live in this part of the world, these were of little interest. And I suspect most of the other 590 or so Canadians on board felt the same way.

It became obvious after awhile that, aside from avoiding the storm, which certainly cannot be criticized, Princess's main concern was to limit their extra costs in dropping off the 90 New York departing passengers, leaving the 2900 other passengers with very disappointing substitutions for the US ports missed. Magically, we arrived in Boston on the day we had originally planned to be in New York, and the 90 departing passengers were put on buses headed to the three NY area airports, thus minimizing the cost to Princess. We could have easily sailed out around the storm and gone to Nassau, Bermuda, or Princess Cays and still arrived in Ft. Lauderdale on time. In fact, there appeared to be no reason we could not have made full day stops in Bar Harbour and/or Boston, if they had not wasted so much time stalling in Atlantic Canada. Read more