Part 5 - Bliss is Ignorance

As the Bliss group cruise got closer it became evident that this was not going to be nearly as organized as the Seaside was. For the Seaside Amy had an itinerary uploaded to the facebook group by the end of October for our January 6th cruise. For the Bliss it was less than a week before the sailing when she finally had the itinerary uploaded.

She blamed it on NCL for delaying in telling her where and when her events would be held, which is entirely plausible but she could have easily posted an itinerary and edited it later when the date/time/place of the events had been finalized. What’s more she canceled our Nassau group excursion 5 days before we were to set sail and claimed she’d have to get our refunds sorted out after the cruise. We were slightly perturbed and alarmed by this but at that point what can you do?

Stepping back, the first glaringly obvious sign of real trouble was related to the pre-cruise activity she had planned for the Miami Thriller Tour Boat ride for all interested parties to participate in. She asked everyone who wanted to go to Paypal her $50/person for the admission. A simple search revealed that the cost for the ride was $38/person. Nearly as easily, a phone call revealed that group rates were available for $32/person. I went a step further and found a Groupon rate for $31/person. So what could be the reasoning behind Amy charging $50 for a $38 boat ride?

As the group leader and “tour guide” I do feel she’s entitled to get perks and/or financial benefit for the work she puts in, but I feel there are better ways to do it than blatant price gouging. For instance she could have called the company and asked for a group rate, split the discount with the group, and keep the remainder. I wouldn’t have a problem with that. She would’ve done the work to book the group, and gotten us a deal better than we could get walking in off the street, and she could made a little money at the same time; everyone wins. However, she’s the only one who wins when she price gouges well over the retail rate.

Even worse is the fact that I witnessed her using Groupon vouchers to pay for everyone to go on the Thriller Boat. So she charged everyone $50, spent $31, and pocketed $19/person. I refused to book through her and got my own Groupon.

Once onboard the problems continued. Amy was late or no-show to most every one of the group events onboard. On day two she was over 30 minutes late to the gift exchange, not to mention that her gifts were leftover Sea Cruisers visors and magnets from the January group cruise on the Seaside. On day three she was a complete no-show for the cabin crawl. On day five (Tortola) she came down to the meeting location for the group of folks that had signed up to do an excursion together to say that she wasn’t feeling well, and she wouldn’t be going on the excursion. This left the group scratching their heads about how to proceed. We weren’t in that group, but luckily for the folks who had planned to participate one of them decided to step up and lead the group so the day wasn’t a loss. Then of course there’s the Nassau debacle which I’ll get more in depth about in Part 6 - Scavenger Hunt for My Money.