Written by Nate Vallier, Alaska Travel Desk, 2025 World Cruise Crown Princess, June 24, 2025
Booking a cruise that’s going to traverse half of the world leaves a LOT of potential for things to go wrong. The cruise lines all updated their Contract of Carriage/Terms & Conditions to reflect they no longer guarantee itineraries and ports, that they are all subject to change without notice AND without reason.
On this Princess World Cruise, we’ve had a handful of wrenches thrown at us courtesy of Mother Nature – including arriving in Sydney 9 hours early, unscheduled overnights in Adelaide & Perth, Australia – and now we’re orbiting off the coast of South Africa due to pretty bad weather on the southern tip of the African continent.
This means we are NOT on schedule. In fact, we’re going to be 3 days late. So far we know that Cape Town & Namibia stops have been pushed back – Mindelo Cabo Verde excursions are now all showing “sold out” which has me to believe we’re skipping that small island archipelago south of the Canary Islands.
With the world cruise, comes the world’s weather. And along should be the expectations that things aren’t going to go on schedule either.
So the ONE benefit to booking thru a cruise line (didn’t think I would EVER say this) is the cruise line will just move you to the new day of arrival of the port, or refund you. Independent excursions will mostly refund or move you, but not all – so be sure to read the fine print and ask the tour operator if they offer full or partial refunds if the ship doesn’t make it into port. In Alaska, almost every operator WILL do this. But the rest of the world, as I’m finding out, doesn’t operate like that.
Now had I booked excursions for the next 30 days, I’d probably be spending a few hours of time contacting all the operators to move and hope they have room (as I’m now finding out in Cape Town the operator is full). So I’ve been focused on booking 4 or 5 days out and use Viator/GetYourGuide to get an idea of what’s out there, then look at my Fare Harbor/Ventrata contacts to see who I know (I’ve met a LOT of operators at conferences) and reach out to book direct.
Thankfully with our delay, I’ve been able to find an awesome locally owned firm in Durban that offers a trip to the Gwahumbe Game Reserve that doesn’t break the bank. And I definitely caught them off guard as there’s 3,000 “hungry” passengers on our ship and all of them looking for tours in Durban – Princess has been a bit slow to provide their offerings.
Now I was lucky – Endless Summer Tours had space and they were the FIRST tour operator I reached out to. I’ve heard from many guests on the ship that most of the TOs were full or not able to offer anything to them, so this is another reason cruise passengers need to stay alert to their surroundings and whats going on, and not wait. The moment you hear of your ship changing course, diverting, or cancelling – get on the phone to cancel or update your plans before everyone else does, otherwise you are going to spend a few frustrating hours getting everything fixed.