Cruise Line Offers Lesson in Reading the Fine Print

On Wednesday, the cruise ship Riviera is scheduled to sail from Cadiz, Spain, on a 116-day around-the-world trip.

Most of the passengers will have paid more than $10,000 each up front, and many have paid more than $25,000, counting shore excursions and other extras. At least two made the reservations directly with the fledgling cruise line.

But the ship they and others will board is not the ship they paid for. Nor is Spain the place where they were supposed to embark. Nor is April the month in which they were supposed to be embarking.

The story of these late-in-the-game changes is a cautionary tale for anybody who hasn’t read the fine print or who has trusted a largely untested company with a big-trip booking or who doesn’t use a travel agent when booking a cruise. Here’s how this tale unfolded:

World Cruise Co., a Toronto-based line founded in 1998, planned a global cruise that was to begin March 26 in Athens aboard the Ocean Explorer I, a chartered ship. The prices for the 23-country itinerary began at about $100 per person per day, including meals, undercutting by half or more what other lines charge for global sailings.

About 400 customers signed on, including Dr. Jose and Betty Amador of Studio City, who bypassed travel agents and booked directly with the company.

Six days before the Ocean Explorer was to embark, the company said it sent notices to passengers of a change in ships. The new ship, the Riviera, is about half the size of the Ocean Explorer (200 passenger cabins to the Explorer’s 385).

The new ship would begin its journey on April 12 in Cadiz and end Aug. 4 in Athens. (To reach Cadiz, the line would fly passengers to Madrid and put them on a train to Seville, then a bus.) Port calls in Majorca and Sicily were canceled; port calls in St. Lucia in the Caribbean and Istanbul were added.

On March 20, the company sent, by express delivery, notices to passengers about the change, said Francesco Contini, sales manager for World Cruise Co.

The Amadors were already on their way to Europe, and the news didn’t reach them in New York until March 22, when they learned of the changes via the company processing their visa applications.

“This tremendously late notice was a very callous thing to do,” said Jose Amador. “They were not leveling with us.”

The cruise line said it had little choice when its subcontractor let it down. “This change obviously is not a nice one,” Contini said. “We know that the passengers would have boarded [the Ocean Explorer], and they would have been disappointed. . . . The cabins on the Riviera are nicer.”

Here’s where the fine print comes in. The company’s “terms and conditions” language, part of its contract with passengers, notes that vessels and dates are subject to change. Cruise lines commonly reserve the right to change ports and schedules (which sometimes happens because of weather) and also to change ships.

But veteran cruise travel agent Michael Hannan of San Marin Travel in Novato, Calif., thinks this switch is more drastic than any he’s encountered among major cruise lines.

Of the 400 booked passengers, 55 were reassigned to cabins smaller than their original accommodations, Contini said; those clients were given the option of a refund. But the other passengers, including the Amadors, were not. Instead, the Amadors and their prospective shipmates were offered a choice between taking $500 in shipboard credits or applying the full price of the cruise toward a future cruise.

By fax, the Amadors demanded a full refund but were rebuffed. The couple said they were also rebuffed by Ingle Life and Health, the Toronto company that sold them cancellation/interruption insurance, charging them 10% of the trip’s cost. A sales agent told me that the insurance is intended to deal primarily with passengers changing plans and that this change would not be covered. (For protection against failure of a travel provider, veteran agents say, travelers can usually get policies from a third-party insurance company rather than the one sold by the cruise line, as the Ingle policy was.)

Several travel agents said there were early signs that this cruise might yield surprises. And there were ways that potential passengers could protect themselves.

First, read the fine print in the cruise catalog. And if you go forward, read the fine print in the paperwork the cruise line sends you.

Second, in a market dominated by large, well-known players, World Cruise Co. is an unfamiliar name. (A sibling company, Marine Expeditions, dates to 1993, but it too has little track record with such elaborate itineraries.)

Thus, experience is a concern. So is price. “When you see something that’s that much below market price, you have to be extremely careful,” said Ada Brown, owner of Seaside Travel in Long Beach.

Finally, consider using a travel agent who specializes in cruises. Cruises can vary vastly--and seasoned agents can tell you what to expect and when to be skeptical. They can also tell you about similar itineraries.

And if there is a swap of ships? The law can protect consumers from “a material change in bargained-for arrangements,” regardless of contract language about changing vessels, said Michael Hughes, a Los Angeles-based deputy state attorney general. “They can’t put you in a rowboat,” he said.

Graham Lewis, the vice president for sales and marketing at World Cruise, estimated last week that fewer than 10 qualifying passengers had requested refunds. He said he expects the ship to sail with more than 375 passengers.

The Amadors consulted a lawyer and ultimately decided to take the cruise. It came down to a choice, said Jose Amador, between spending a couple of years in a court fight or spending four months taking their chances in some of the world’s most exotic ports.

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Christopher Reynolds welcomes comments and suggestions, but cannot respond individually to letters or calls. Write Travel Insider, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053, or e-mail chris.reynolds@latimes.com.