The Tribune

By TANYA SMITH-CARTWRIGHT

tsmith-cartwright@tribunemedia.net

RICHARD Brown said he cannot express how disappointed he is in Bahamas Paradise Cruise Lines for leaving him and his wife stranded in Florida, ruining their vacation to The Bahamas.

Residents of West Palm Springs, Brown and his wife, Elaine were originally confirmed to sail to Grand Bahama for vacation on July 8, but the cruise line for some reason, postponed the trip to July 10 only to present a “no-show” on the new date, leaving passengers stranded at the port.

“We had booked a trip because we do a timeshare at Mayfield Beach and Tennis Club which is a wonderful timeshare on Grand Bahama,” said Mr Brown. “We take the cruise line so that we can bring a little bit more stuff. So we were supposed to leave on July 8 and the day before we were supposed to leave they send an email saying no, that we were not leaving – we didn’t know what was going on.

“So, we kept calling and calling and never got anything back, but later that day we received a reservation for July 10 which was Saturday. This was fine, we missed one day at the timeshare. So we packed all our stuff, we go down to the port. We got there around 12 o’clock and there is a bunch of people there milling around, but nobody from Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line.

“There are people from Philadelphia and New York and we asked what was going on and they said the boat’s here but we can’t find anybody from the cruise line. We went inside the port and got hold of a security guard there and he said, ‘no they’re not leaving, that’s for sure.’ So we were kind of stuck, we didn’t know what to do, so I said let’s go to lunch and relax and see if we can’t fly over there (Grand Bahama).”

After continuously calling the cruise line to no avail, Mr Brown said they went to lunch and turned off their phones while in the restaurant.

“We went home and about 2:15 (pm) that day, we had the phones off when we were in a restaurant, we looked and there was a message. We picked up the message and it said basically we hope you got our email that we have cancelled the cruise to go to The Bahamas.

“It was 2:15 in the afternoon, but we never got an email from them. We have not heard one single thing from the cruise line after that until today when they left another message. We kept calling and calling and finally we just gave up.

“We never got a hold of them on any of the numbers we called or any of the emails. Between five and ten phone calls never once have we been able to get anyone. The message they left today was just that we should call them, but it’s the same thing. No answer.”

The Tribune tried to make contact with Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line several times to no avail. Phones rang endlessly with no answer.

“After a while of spending half an hour to 45 minutes…. when you’re at home you can do a few chores while you are waiting on somebody to answer the phone, but they have simply not answered the phone to numerous phone calls.

“It was Saturday at the port and normally they cruise. The security guard said the workers are on the boat. I asked him if they are leaving or not leaving. He said he can definitely tell me they are not leaving. Why didn’t they just have one person there standing out front telling us they are not going and that we should just go home? There was no spokesperson. No communication at all.

In an online advertisement, Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line attracts cruisers by boasting of being the only two-night cruise sailing from the Port of Palm Beach to Freeport, Grand Bahama. The advertisement also says the cruises sail every two days.

“We lost our timeshare,” Brown continued. “We’ve lost our vacation. Thank goodness for a wonderful Bahamian lady from the Mayfield, her name is Christina. She is the one who really said the cruise was not coming over. She said when we want to use the timeshare she would fit us in, but my wife has to go back to work.

“This was our annual vacation. Just to be blunt with you, I am very disappointed that we were treated this way… very disappointed.”

When the cruise line set July 10 as the new date. It sent out a communication stating the following reasons for the change:

“Based on protocols we have in place for the protection of all our crew and guests and due to terms laid out by the CDC for the return to commercial sailing, under what is known as the Conditional Sail Order (CSO), unfortunately an event occurred on the Grand Classica whereby the consequences mean that we must cancel your pending cruise.

“We will return to our scheduled service of sailings to Grand Bahama Island on the Grand Classica, starting Saturday, 10th July 2021.

“We know this news will be tremendously disappointing as we have all been waiting for over 15 months for the return of cruising and sailing to the beautiful Bahamas. This decision was not taken lightly but given the situation and out of an abundance of caution, we felt we had to make these schedule changes to protect the health and safety of all our guests and crew.”

Up to press time there was still no answer from the contact numbers for the cruise line.