Surprise cruise anyone?? Yes Please!

Recently I have seen the number of cruises I have booked as surprises increase…infact I have booked four in so many weeks which is quite a lot! Every time to I speak to a customer planning a surprise cruise for their loved one I have to say I get all excited and always think how amazing it would be if someone planned me a surprise cruise! If only….!

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Usually the surprise is met with excitement and is a huge hit with the person being surprised but recently I witnessed when the surprise goes wrong!! Just before Christmas I had a wife had book a cruise for her husband, she had taken a lot of time planning and choosing what she believed to be the perfect cruise. The plan was to give her husband his present on Christmas morning…..what could go wrong?! As I always do I got very excited and was eagerly awaiting her email to see how he reacted and really just to find out how pleased her husband was…I mean someone books you a cruise as a present who wouldn’t be over the moon?! I know I would.

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The email arrived only not the one I expected….the lady was frantic….all the planning she had done, she thought it was perfect but had overlooked one detail, and a rather big one at that. She had forgotten to speak to her husband’s boss at work, she just assumed as he had a pretty laid back work schedule that it would be no problem and didn’t run the dates past him. When she gave her husband his present on Christmas day she said the colour just drained from his face!! Oh no not the reaction you want……she said she knew straight away she had missed something! The dates she booked for their cruise clashed with a really important work commitment the same weekend and there was absolutely no way of him not being there!! She even rang his boss and begged to him to re arrange….but the answer was no!

Her poor husband was so upset and of course she was the same, both left with the prospect of losing the cruise if they weren’t able to change it, or even worse her going on her own and leaving him behind! After speaking to the cruise line and very luckily in this case being able to change the dates for a small admin fee, we were able to find a cruise that they were both free to travel on! I say luckily as this isn’t always the case and depending on the length of time before the cruise it does happen where this isn’t even an option and you would lose your money!

On this occasion although the surprise didn’t go to plan it all worked out in the end! The moral of the story is a surprise cruise is amazing and exciting but if not planned very carefully can result in disaster! The most important thing to consider is to make sure the person you are taking on the cruise is able to take holidays! Remember that the cruise lines have very strict terms and conditions that have to be followed in terms of cancelling and transfering your cruise if need be.

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I’ll carry on hoping that one day my other half will surprise me with a cruise…think I’ll have to start dropping some pretty big hints! Have you ever booked a surprise cruise or holiday for anyone? Did it all go to plan?  As always I would love to hear your stories.

Thanks for reading Abbi x

 

 


About Me

I have been in the travel industry over 20 years, what was meant to be a short summer working in Menorca when I was just 21 turned into many fantastic years within the industry. I have been lucky enough to travel to lots of destinations all over the world, including…

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