Unhappy Cruisers

Thanks for your article on World Cruise Co. (“Cruise Line Offers a Lesson in Reading the Fine Print,” Travel Insider, April 9). Your quote from several travel agents was right on: “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.”

Having suffered through three deadly months aboard a World Cruise Co. ship, I wish I had done just that. In my total ignorance of cruises, I signed up for the company’s first trip, billed as a “seven-continent millennium cruise,” on the strength of the name of its sibling company, Marine Expeditions. (I had been on a great adventure trip through the Northwest Passage with Marine Expeditions a few years ago.)

World Cruise Co. is a bunch of amateurs. They reneged on almost everything that was promised in their glowing brochures.

S. MERIC

Santa Monica

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Fortunately, my wife and I were two of at least 32 passengers who booked the World Cruise Co.’s “Lost Worlds” around-the-world cruise through Grand Circle Travel.

We had almost started out from California to New York when we received word that they were pulling their passengers off Ocean Explorer I and onto another, smaller ship. We thought this would be OK, but they called us a second time to tell us the new ship would be two weeks late, would be leaving from a port in Spain (the original port was Athens) and that they could not guarantee the itinerary.

Grand Circle offered us a 100% refund if we canceled, which we did, and they have already refunded everything we paid them directly. The World Cruise Co., however, still owes us for prepaid shore excursions; it has said it will pay us.

It makes a big difference when you are offered a full refund.

Grand Circle said they were getting many complaints from their passengers who were on the maiden voyage of this refurbished 1944 troop ship.

World Cruise Co. has a Web site, and the ship looked good to us there.

TED and PAT RADAMAKER

Claremont