Anyone planning a backup vacation?

[TheSpooph]

My family is currently scheduled on an extended family cruise on the Fantasy in early June. By the time the cruise rolls around, everyone will be vaccinated and boosted AND made it through COVID (except for one that hasn’t caught the virus). All that said, there are several people nervous about cruising. The nerves range from quarantining onboard to reduced amenities. And given that so much can change between now and June - good or bad - we are thinking of planning an alternative vacation, just in case.

I was curious if anyone else has done this. Since we have about 6 weeks left to make a decision on the cruise (PIF is early March), we don’t want to cancel quite yet. But if we want to stay at a beach house instead (which is the current plan B), we want to make sure we find a vacation rental that works.

Normally, I would LOVE planning two vacations… but this time it’s just leaving me exhausted and stressed!

 

[MomOTwins]

I have an idea for an alternate vacation for our Alaska but I’m not going to start ironing out details until I know a bit more. Too depressing to throw in the towel just yet!

 

[goofballs]

We are all-in on our March break sailing, but I do have backup plans with lodging and transportation in place in case one of our party tests positive at the port.
It’s March break and I am availability is already scarce and $$$$, so this will give me some peace of mind.

 

[anricat]

For our June cruise on the Wish, we are following up with a few days at WDW just after. Yes, I've been wondering in my mind about needing to think about tacking on at WDW or maybe Universal or just doing a few other things in the area (Cocoa Beach, Space Center, there's a flight museum in Orlando that has an airplane from my father's old airshow squadron that I want to see). Our WDW stay is on points, but I'm completely out of points so I'd have to rent or maybe a split stay at rack rate (*gasp*) and I'd need to add park tickets because our APs are expired and we just bought three day tickets. So there are a lot of moving parts that I would need to scramble to sort out.

But we did it last summer. We had originally had booked 2 days at WDW, 4-night Fantasy, and then 3 days at WDW. When our Fantasy cruise was cancelled (which I knew it would be) we ended up rearranging our WDW stay, but that was different because I had enough points and I was able to pretty easily get us rebooked for those middle days and we had APs so I didn't need to worry about extra park tickets. We didn't renew our APs this year because we have two cruises booked!

We have a 9-night southern on the Fantasy booked in July and that sucker is a NO GO for me with altered ports. There's been some discussion of it on our FB meet group. We are paying a premium for that southern itinerary and I just do not to want to do it if they end up having to change it to a western. Not worth it to me.

 

[TheSpooph]

I have an idea for an alternate vacation for our Alaska but I’m not going to start ironing out details until I know a bit more. Too depressing to throw in the towel just yet!

I know, right!! We have looked forward to this cruise for almost 3 years - it’s a rebooking of a 2020 cruise that we booked in 2019!! But at this point, I’m not even looking forward to it.

I’m worried others in my party will be disappointed and vent about it to me. I’m wanting a relaxing vacation - not one where I play interference!!

 

[TheSpooph]

We are all-in on our March break sailing, but I do have backup plans with lodging and transportation in place in case one of our party tests positive at the port.
It’s March break and I am availability is already scarce and $$$$, so this will give me some peace of mind.

how are you going to cancel your back up plan if you get to cruise? The place we are booking has a cancellation date long before we set sail.

 

[Tay N Evie's Mom]

DH and I are booked on the July 21st 9 night southern Caribbean cruise to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. We are PIF because of our cancelled May 2020 cruise FCC funds. With DCL relaxing the cancellation dates, we have until May 22nd to decide to go or cancel. We will re-evaluate how everything is going the beginning of May and then make the call to go or cancel. Our backup plan is Hawaii, if there aren’t too many hoops to jump through to gain entry into the state. If not, we’re thinking about flying into Miami and driving down and exploring the Keys. We haven’t made any specific reservations at this point, just hoping we can still do the cruise.

 

[mzspaz]

We had a backup plan in place....as well as a backup to our backup. If we had a positive hit before boarding, we had a rental car reserved and we would have picked that up. We would have either driven down to Key West and over to the Gulf Coast or we would have started to drive back to Pennsylvania depending on how everyone was feeling. I had a reminder set on my phone to cancel the rental car if we had made it on the ship.

I had researched and pinned several different hotels and activities in Key West and Florida with contact information saved so that I could have done some juggling as we sat in the quarantine tents waiting for our luggage to be returned.

I felt we were ready!

But none of that was needed as my DH got a positive hit on his at home Covid test on Wednesday. We were due to fly out on Thursday and were supposed to be boarding the Fantasy today.

 

[CamColt]

When we were booked on the August 9th (first cruise back) sailing last year we really had no idea if it would go or not. I had a back up WDW vacation planned and booked, everything except the tickets and park days reserved since those were nonrefundable. Thankfully I got to cancel everything for the 4 days we were on the ship and I kept what we had for the first 3 days, pre cruise. it worked out perfect but was stressful waiting to find out and worrying about park reservations.

 

[Stitch'sCousin]

You actually have until early April to decide as DCL changed the PIF date to 60 days before your sail date for cruises through September 30, 2022. https://disneycruise.disney.go.com/featured/book-with-confidence/

 

[TheSpooph]

You actually have until early April to decide as DCL changed the PIF date to 60 days before your sail date for cruises through September 30, 2022. https://disneycruise.disney.go.com/featured/book-with-confidence/

Thank you for that!! I knew it was 60 days but for some reason that meant March and not April. Now we have more time to decide/debate/go crazy!

 

[tvguy]

2022 is pretty much not happening. Looking to 2023 now for any vacation.
We hoped to go to Spring Training in March, but with the lockout, there likely won't even be Spring Training this year, forget covid.
Our 40th Anniversary is in June, and nothing on the horizon yet with covid at record levels now, who knows where it will be in June.
But I will admit, it depends where you are in your life. We are 6 months into retirement, so we no longer have to squeeze vacations into 4 weeks a year, putting in vacation requests in a year in advance and hoping they get approved, and hoping there isn't a snag. Our neighbors daughter and family went to her husband's parents in Ireland for Christmas, caught covid, turning their 2 week vacation into 2 weeks vacation plus 2 weeks quarantine in Ireland. I haven't heard, but both were afraid they might lose their jobs.
So to be honest after 42 years of rushing off on scheduled vacations, it is VERY nice to just sit and enjoy my house, my yard, and walking my neighborhood. Such a treat after 42 years of the rat race. I know the thing my mom enjoyed in 28 years of retirement was the ability to just get up and go if she wanted to. Find a $299 7 day cruise that leaves next week, you're free to go. If covid slows, I am certainly willing to reconsider travel, I have the time and money.

 

[goofballs]

how are you going to cancel your back up plan if you get to cruise? The place we are booking has a cancellation date long before we set sail.

Booked with favorable cancellation policies a year ago when they wanted travelers back and can cancel plan B on embarkation day. Will cancel from the port if we get “clear to sail” and move onto plan B if we do not.

 

[Cheburashka]

I wonder how much of this angst is based on where people live. Some states have pretty much gone back to normal life, while others are still in close to lockdown mode. Where you live might affect your outlook. In Florida, life is pretty normal, and people cruise all the time right now.

 

[kshu2014]

We're in the same boat! Our cruise is mid-April, but we've also booked a week at Disney World just in case. Our final payment for the WDW resort/tickets would not be until mid-March, so we still have a little bit of time to decide.

 

[TheSpooph]

I wonder how much of this angst is based on where people live. Some states have pretty much gone back to normal life, while others are still in close to lockdown mode. Where you live might affect your outlook. In Florida, life is pretty normal, and people cruise all the time right now.

We live in MO and it’s more or less back to normal. And I have traveled by airplane a few times in the last few months, which is also helpful from a getting-back-to-normal stand point. But my office is still encouraging people to maximize working from home and schools are closing because their staff is out with Covid. So there are a lot of mixed signals for sure.

But I do think you make a valid point. The more you read about problems, the more worried you are could become. I think that’s where some in my group are coming from. They read about the NCL cruise to nowhere and started wondering if that could happen to us.

 

[KVH]

With 5.6M deaths, much as people would like to think things are normal, I would doubt it. We're walking away from $3,000+ in FCCs to move our April B2B to next year. It's not just about being safe (although with my wife's cancer, that is a concern). Cruising, to me, is a bit more dependent on experience. As opposed to say hiking in the Olympics (one of our replacement vaca's). If I'm going to pay DCL's premium, I want the better experience that time will provide in the future. Of course, we won't mention that a lot of the other sailings currently available (so we could use our FCC) kinda stink in many cases. We're not into the turn-and-burn stuff out of PC.

So we're taking this time to catch up on our national parks visits. Maybe a trip to the coast in winter to watch the storms roll in (it's a WA/OR thing). And, of course, a DL trip to get our fix until next year.

 

[MomOTwins]

I wonder how much of this angst is based on where people live. Some states have pretty much gone back to normal life, while others are still in close to lockdown mode. Where you live might affect your outlook. In Florida, life is pretty normal, and people cruise all the time right now.

In Florida you can drive home if you get denied boarding though. That’s huge.

 

[tvguy]

I wonder how much of this angst is based on where people live. Some states have pretty much gone back to normal life, while others are still in close to lockdown mode. Where you live might affect your outlook. In Florida, life is pretty normal, and people cruise all the time right now.

Absolutely where you live seems to be a factor. They are preparing surge hospitals here to open in February and National Guard Medical teams will be arriving then to take over normal medical care so that regular staff can handle the surge of covid patients they expect. The last two weeks there has been an uptick in restaurants closing because they have so many staff members out with covid.
Won't get into Florida, that state hasn't been normal in two years, they just have taken a different path. Cruises are getting canceled left and right, and itineraries shifted because ports don't want cruisers yet.

 

[soniam]

We will most likely do our July 9 night Southern Caribbean from what I see now. If a deadlier, more virulent variant comes along, then we will have to talk. It's the 4th rebooking from a Summer 2020 cruise. I would love to do the southern ports. DH and I have done most of them, but DS hasn't been. If we can't do those ports, just being on the ship will still be great. We love sea days anyway. We do plan to do WDW and Universal beforehand, so that's something.

We were hoping to go to Japan this summer. I will have to make the call in a few weeks. Luckily, I still can't book anything for Japan, because they aren't letting tourists in. I think we will be doing Disneyland, Universal Hollywood, and Knott's instead. I think we will get at least 1 vacation in this summer, so it's not the end of the world.

It could a lot worse, but of course, things could be better too. Really hoping 2023 at least comes through. We would like to do a big cruise, probably Greece, for our 25th anniversary.