My family and I are going on the Wonder for Thanksgiving this year. I am in the process of researching travel insurance. I spoke to a cast member at Disney yesterday, and she said the cost of their insurance will be 8 percent of our trip cost. So, if you do airline, and cruise through them, it would be 8 percent of the cost. But, if you do airline tickets outside of Disney, it would not be covered by the Disney insurance. Also, I went to look at some popular vendors online, and found them to charge about 1/2 of Disney's price for trip insurance. It is a big difference. The next step is to compare the travel insurance coverage offered by Disney and outside vendors. I want to get good trip insurance, but I don't want to pay a fortune for it either. It appears, it pays to do a little research.
We are not located in the US, we actually live in Mexico, so all your replies have been super helpful. I really need to read ALL of the DCL websitre regarding insurance and if they would cover us.
It it does, then I will book it since we are travelling to Alaska with 2 minors and 2 seniors. With all those excursions, it will be best if we have it. Just not sure we will be covered by the DCL one.
Cruise insurance is interesting as not a "no brainier" at all.
Say for example you take a similar priced cruise annually, or more frequently than that. If the Insurance is around 5%, and you take it every time, after 20 cruises you have paid for 21. If the insurance never kicks in, you are paying for 21 cruises and going on 20. Even if insurance kicks in once you are paying for 20 cruises and going on 19.
Say you chose not to take insurance, and you missed 1 out of 20 just as above, you still paid for 20 cruises and went on 19, so you didn't loose anything by not taking it.
If you cruise often, and take insurance every time, you can say you like the protection, but eventually you are still paying for a cruise you don't sail.
Remember the insurance companies are selling the insurance for one reason; they believe the premiums will be greater than the claims.
If the cruise is not a frequent thing, or one in particular is more costly then you normally spend, that may be different, you may say you don't want to take the risk and can justify the insurance.
For every poster who has made a claim on their trip insurance, there are many more who have purchased trip insurance 5, 10 or more times and never made a claim. That money could have gone to upgrades, excursions or even another cruise, and is just as "lost" as money you spend on a cruise you miss with no insurance.
I agree that the travel insurance is a must for a cruise. It is worth noting that you need to fly in the day before if you use regular travel insurance as opposed to Disney. I think you have to be delayed at least 12 hours or something like that before your coverage kicks in. So if you were flying in that morning and a 4 hour delay was enough to make you miss the ship, it wouldn't be enough time to make your travel insurance kick in and you'd still be screwed. Not sure if the delay time varies by policy or not but I was told by a travel insurance company that its actually 24 hours. So we always plan to arrive by 2pm the day before the cruise
Do keep us posted!We have always bought insurance when traveling with my mom (now 82 y.0.). We had to use it for the first time on our last cruise (WBTA 09/2014) when my mom became very ill. She was almost put off the ship in the Canary Islands. She is still waiting to get reimbursed from Allianz (the insurance we purchased from DCL), but that is because she had to first submit to Medicare and her regular insurance and be denied. I am waiting to see if/when she gets reimbursed and then I plan on writing a quick review in case others want to know if it was worth it. So far her expenses have been about $3k. If she gets reimbursed it will make up for all those times we bought insurance, but if she doesn't, why bother??
As someone previously state, travel insurance is a personal decision and people that always buy it feel justified because they read about someone having to be helicopter medi-vac'd from Nowheresville and had huge medical bill.
Do you have a below ground storm shelter in your house? You can find stories about people who didn't have one and their house was destroy and everyone was kill in a tornado. Does that mean you need to run out and drop 10 grand for a storm shelter? It's up to you.
The bottom line is, the reason travel insurance companies make money is the odds are greatly in their favor. If they pay an claim for someone's $10,000 vacation, that means with there were 100 people who paid $100 insurance costs and they got nothing! So 100 people paid for insurance and 1 person befitted from it.
Of course this is true of ANY insurance, right?!
Do you buy extended warranties on electronics, cars, tools, etc? If you do, you are wasting your money! Yes, you can always find a story about some guy whose car blew up the day after his warranty expired. But those are the horror stories they use to sell their produce. If you graph reliability vs time with 'failures' on the y-axis and time on the x-axis you will end up with a curve that looks like a bathtub. You will find most of the failures happened during the first year - this is called infant mortality. But this is the period that is already covered with the manufactures' warranty. After the first year the failures are very low until you move out the time axis a ways until you read end of life failures. So the 'extended warranty' period covers the MOST RELIABLE portion of the failure/reliability curve!
I'm not trying to equate extended warranty to travel insurance just trying to show that people selling insurance play on your fears. Some people worry all the time so paying a few hundred is the price they pay to so worry. Personally, I refuse to worry and live my life expecting calamity. If good fortune befalls anyone, it will be me. I am the lucky one! God looks after me too so I've got that going for me.