Four couples accepted a deal in November, 2014 that was arranged over the phone from a salesperson's call and was connected to the royalbahamascl.com website. We have searched and searched for the actual company that sponsored the trip, but we've seen letterhead, website URLs, and various identities called "Bahamas Cruise Line," "Caribbean Cruise Line, "Holiday Cruise Line, and various sponsors in partnership with them. I suspect that they will keep whatever name is not scandalized by the customers' reviews. But, since they are so vague about the company's identity, it is not easy to write a review on them.

The initial website promised a cruise to the Bahamas' Freeport Island Grand Lucayan Hotel and also guaranteed us overnight stays on Feb. 7 and 8 in Fort Lauderdale at a Sheraton Suites Cypress Creek Ft. Lauderdale Hotel. We were told that we would travel on the S.S. Bahamas Celebration from the Port of Palm Beach on Monday, Feb. 9, landing in the Bahamas and staying for two nights at the Grand Lucayan Hotel. We also paid for a return trip to the Port of Palm Beach on Thursday, Feb. 12, landing at the Port of Palm Beach on Friday, Feb. 13 and staying again for one night at the Sheraton Suites Hotel. The cost for each couple was $932 which appeared to be a steal. We signed on for this trip two days before the Bahamas Celebration ship hit something in the ocean on Nov. 3 and was forced to dock, stranding more than 960 passengers. We knew we were cutting it close, since our trip was scheduled only two months later, but we were told that the ship was being repaired and would be ready when we were.

As the weeks passed and our attempts to get an itinerary were met with several unfulfilled promises to mail them soon, we began to get nervous. We saw in the fine print of one of the links to other documents we might want to scan that all of us had to sit and listen to a sales pitch of some kind. The phone sales reps said the sales pitch would only last for 60-90 minutes, and was the primary reason we got the cheap rates we got for the trip. Then, when we checked the Sheraton Suites, they had no reservations for any of us. Our calls to the sales reps were met with reassuring pleasantries, but then our investigations learned that the ship was not being repaired and the Sheraton had ended their partnership with this tour. Read more