Last year, William “Kip” Thompson and his wife, Beni, began planning “the vacation of a lifetime.” It would be for themselves and their five offspring, the youngest of whom is 15.

Soon, the south Roanoke, Va., couple will have four in college at the same time, yikes. They figured summer 2023 would be their last chance in years to have an all-in-the-family vacation.

So they splurged. They booked a seven-day Alaska cruise package, in a luxurious three-bedroom suite, aboard the Norwegian Jewel. The package included five days of post-cruise land travel in Alaska, as well as air travel for all seven Thompsons.

They booked it through Norwegian Cruise Line, a well known Florida-based cruise operator. The trip’s cost was $60,619.17. Kip Thompson, a local eye surgeon, paid that fully five months in advance.

Some weeks before they were to leave, NCL sent the Thompsons their itinerary, including flights. Beni Thompson noticed a potential hitch almost immediately. They were flying on the same day they were supposed to board the Jewel. That made her nervous.

She said she contacted Norwegian Cruise Line twice by phone about that specific concern.

“Everything I’ve ever seen about cruises said, never travel on the same day you’re boarding a ship,” because of the potential for airline delays, Beni Thompson told me. She mentioned that to the NCL representatives as well.

Both reps assured her the family would make it to Vancouver in time, because “we were leaving on the first flight of the day and hardly anything ever goes wrong with those,” Beni told me. As a result, the family stuck with the original flights booked by Norwegian.

The big travel day was June 28. Early that morning, the Thompsons were to board a Delta flight in Greensboro that would fly them to Atlanta. There, they’d catch a connecting Delta flight to Vancouver, British Columbia, where the Norwegian Jewel would leave its dock at 4 p.m PDT.

The Thompson’s first flight was scheduled to leave Greensboro at 5:41 a.m. The Thompsons were at the airport, but that airliner didn’t take off. The fight was canceled because its crew, which had been delayed flying into Greensboro the night before, lacked the minimum number of required rest hours to fly early that morning to Atlanta, Kip Thompson told me.

The Thompsons called NCL. A rep informed them the cruise line could not rebook them on flights that would get them to Vancouver on time. The family should work with Delta, to see if there was another way to get them to Canada, NCL told them.

Another flight delay in Charlotte

According to Delta, there was a possibility.

Delta booked the family on an American Airlines flight from Charlotte that was supposed to arrive in Seattle shortly after noon. Then they could catch a short Delta flight to Vancouver, and make it to the Jewel on time. But it would be tight.

So the Thompsons hurriedly drove 90 minutes from the Greensboro airport to Charlotte, where they caught the American flight to Seattle. Unfortunately, it was delayed by more than an hour.

The American flight landed in Seattle around 1:30 p.m. PDT. By then, their Delta flight to Vancouver had left its gate. (The two cities are roughly 140 miles apart.)

In desperation, the family tried to hire an Uber to Vancouver. But none of the three Uber drivers they contacted had passports — which the driver would need to get the family across the Canadian border.

Kip Thompson contacted NCL again. Was it possible they could board the Jewel at its first stop in Ketchikan, Alaska? Kip said NCL told him a rule prevented the family from boarding at any port other than Vancouver.

The land package portion of their vacation would not begin until the cruise ended seven days later. Thompson inquired whether there was any way his family could do that part of the trip.

NCL replied no. Thompson said he’s never gotten a decent explanation as to why.

2-day summer-travel nightmare

So on June 30 around 5:30 a.m., the Thompson clan landed home in Roanoke after a 48 very frustrating hours. They never took their planned Alaska trip-of–a-lifetime.

Shortly thereafter, Kip Thompson began asking Norwegian Cruise Line for a refund. He did that via email. Initially, an NCL “guest experience coordinator” sent Thompson a denial letter addressed to a different unhappy NCL customer, Monica DeGraff of Golden, Colorado. (This becomes noteworthy later in the narrative.)

Next, NCL sent Thompson a correctly addressed denial that was identical to DeGraff’s — in other words, it was a form refund denial letter. Ultimately NCL offered Thompson $2,500 back. That constituted some taxes and service charges for dining and beverages that Thompson had paid as part of his $61,000 prepaid travel package.

Dissatisfied, Thompson escalated his refund request with the cruise operator. But that didn’t do any good. The latest communication he received was Aug. 7 from Roger Farinas, the cruise operator’s “guest experience supervisor.”

“After a review of your case at length, we have determined that your concerns have been addressed in accordance with our policies,” Farinias wrote Thompson. “While we are sorry to learn of your continued disappointment with our previous responses, our position in this matter remains firm.”

I learned details about the botched vacation from the Thompsons last week. Tuesday, I wrote Katty Byrd, Norwegian Cruise Line’s vice president of guest services, about the Thompsons’ issues with NCL.

“It appears to me that Norwegian Cruise Line’s policies have cost Dr. Thompson $58,300, because of canceled flights that Norwegian booked and for which the Thompson family was on-time. It wasn’t their fault the flight NCL arranged for them was canceled,” I wrote Byrd.

“From that perspective, it seems less than fair that Dr. Thompson should have to eat that $58,300. Am I looking at this the wrong way? If so, please tell me how and why.”

Norwegian Cruise Line responds

Byrd never replied. But Friday morning I received an unsigned email message from NCL’s public relations department.

“Although Norwegian Cruise Line offers flight arrangements as part of our cruise package, we do not have direct control over the operations of the airlines and are not responsible for their cancelations,[sic]” the message said.

“Per our air policy terms and conditions, ‘If there are delays, cancelations, [sic] or any schedule changes within 72 hours of your departure time, you will need to work directly with your airline for re-accommodations. These changes are beyond the control of NCL.’

“Additionally, as a convenience to our guests we offer the option to deviate flights up to two days pre cruise, which the guest did not elect to do.”

(Weeks before their travel, Beni Thompson tried to persuade NCL to book her family on earlier flights. But the NCL reps pooh-poohed her concerns, and assured her flying a day earlier was unnecessary.)

NCL’s response continued: “The guest is ineligible for a full refund as they did not purchase travel insurance. It is because of unexpected situations, such as this, that we strongly recommend guests obtain travel protection insurance. Without travel protection, we are unable to provide an exception to our cancelation [sic] fee policy.”

Kip Thompson says he was offered travel insurance, by NCL, at the time he booked the cruise package. But he turned it down without inquiring as to the price.

That brings us back to Monica DeGraff, the other unhappy Norwegian Cruise Line traveler. Recall that when Thompson first asked NCL for a refund, the cruise operator replied to him with a letter addressed to DeGraff in Colorado.

NCL’s letter also denied her a refund for a different Norwegian cruise. So I called DeGraff and asked for her travel story. Turns out it was very similar to the Thompson’s nightmare.

She had trip-protection insurance

DeGraff bought a 10-day cruise in Italy and Greece for herself, her teenage daughter and her mom aboard Norwegian’s Breakaway Voyage. That ship departed May 26 from Rome. Norwegian arranged their flights for the same day as the cruise’s departure.

The DeGraffs missed the cruise because a flight NCL booked them on from Toronto — the second leg of their air travel to Rome — was delayed. That plane didn’t arrive in Rome until the Breakaway Voyage already had left. The airliner was so late leaving Toronto that DeGraff and her family never got on it, because they knew they would miss the ship’s departure.

DeGraff had purchased trip-protection insurance offered by NCL as part of her vacation package. She told me it cost about $200 per person. Though she later made a claim for $11,000 (the amount she advance-paid for the missed cruise package) the insurance company denied it.

Instead, the insurer paid DeGraff, her mom and daughter $500 each, the maximum coverage in the insurance policy for airline flight delays, DeGraff said. That paid for their flights back to Colorado, but not much else.

DeGraff told me she’s invested more than 50 hours trying to get an $11,000 refund, or a credit for future travel, but she’s been stymied by NCL and the insurer that wrote the policy.

Collectively, the two families are out $72,000 because they could not take cruise vacations with Norwegian Cruise Line because of delays with flights booked by the cruise operator.

Everyone reading this will draw their own conclusions from these sad stories. Here are a few:

First, I’ll never book anything on Norwegian Cruise Line because its refund policies seem unfavorably skewed against its customers. (It would seem less frustrating to flush the money down a toilet. At least with that, there’d be no expectation of a vacation.)

Second, I’ll never buy trip-protection insurance for a vacation unless I’m absolutely certain it’ll fully cover my losses if the vacation doesn’t happen because of airline delays. Those occur at every single airport, every single day. (In that respect, the policy Norwegian sold Monica DeGraff was almost worthless.)

Third, is the old saw about arriving at least a day early at the port of departure for any planned cruise. It’s solid advice. I’ll take that if I ever book a cruise.

We’ll wrap this up with the last sentence from the final, four-paragraph form letters Kip Thompson and Monica DeGraff each received from Roger Farinas, Norwegian Cruise Line’s guest operations supervisor. Here it is:

“It is our hope that over the course of time, you will consider Norwegian Cruise Line in your future travel plans,” Farinas wrote to each.

Was he kidding?