My wife and I were very excited about our cruise to Cuba. We were scheduled to visit 3 ports: Havana, Cienfuegos and Santiago. Cienfuegos turned out to be only a 1/2 day visit! On our sail to Santiago we were notified over the loudspeaker by the captain that a crew member was ill and we would miss our visit to Santiago. As you can imagine, the reaction by the passengers ranged from disbelief to outrage. We recognized that the crew member would have to be taken off the ship for treatment (first informed that evacuation was to be by helicopter and shortly after we were informed that we would return to Cienfuegos). We then spent the night in Cienfuegos and were told that we had to 11:00 AM the next day to exit the ship to exchange our Cuban currency (CUC's) since we would not have that opportunity in Santiago where most passengers had hoped for time to shop. I waited in the heat for 2 1/2 hours to exchange my CUC's for US dollars. They then ran out of US currency, so I was forced to accept Canadian dollars.

After all this, we were informed that Fathom would give us a complimentary glass of wine at dinner to compensate us for missing our trip to Santiago! After long lines to complain at the tour desk, Fathom also gave us a $100/person credit and $19.77 refund on port tax at Santiago. This was less than 4% of the $3240/person we paid for this cruise!

We are sympathetic to the need to care for the ill crew member, but such a trivial compensation for missing a major part of the cruise is inexcusable.