We have had a really bad start but they bounced back
We had a really bad start with American cruise lines but read on it gets better. My parents are 86 years old and have some health problems so we have transitioned from ocean cruising to American cruising. We booked the cruise a week from departure because they were feeling good and the weather forecast looked OK. We booked the grand New England cruise round-trip out of Boston. The description has the cruise starts on July 25. But when you get into the details, you find out the night of July 25 put you up in a hotel. Now the hotel room is where the breakdown is happening. In the week that this cruise has been booked. I’ve checked with the cruise line every day at least once, and they cannot confirm the hotel room. They’re not confirming yes they’re not confirming no they’re just simply not answering and not responding. It’s bizarre. So currently I have two 86 year old people boarding a plane tomorrow to Boston and they have no place to stay or at least no place arranged by American cruise lines. What a bad way to begin a customer experience. Update 1.0 after 5 days of calling they assigned a hotel room today. I had a very good customer service experience with a manager named Geoff. Lesson to the reader so far should be last minute cruise makes ACL logistics hard and the experience is stressful. Update 2.0 my parents have been loving the cruise and rave about every aspect of the experience. They have already booked another cruise for next year. Takeaway for the reader is booking last minute with ACL can cause significant gaps on the system and you need to get to a manager like Geoffrey Lara Customer Service Team Lead. Geoff is the reason my parents got the luggage tags and the welcome letter and he thought through every aspect of their accessibility issues and made sure it went well. When you really need expert help ask for supervisor Geoff Lara he brings the magic.