Cruise Critic Post and its Removal

I posted the following on the Celebrity Connections Roll Call Board sponsered by Cruise Critics yesterday September 19:

Don's arrangements were made directly with an Italian agent (Remo)and he had to make payment in Euros. Because of the exchange rate fluctuations and difficulty in obtaining Euros in advance of arrival, Don had required no advance payment, but only "payment in full" once we were on board. The reason given for cancellation was that not enough people (30) had signed up. Don did not want to assume the liability for possible shortages and for those people who made last minute decisions not to go. Who can blame him?

People would reserve space on the tour, only to cancel when, as one poster said:

As cruise time nears, some of our plans are changing. Because of this, please delete XXXX from your Rome tour. Thank you

How can anyone hope to make plans and coordinate a tour when the participants have this kind of mentality. A reservation should be considered a commitment, subject only to missing the cruise because of sickness or death.

The attitude that one can jump into and out of a tour reservation not only creates a problem for the person planning the tours, but everyone else who made the commitment and the reservation. Thank you Don for you effort. I'm sorry that the tours have been canceled, but Julia and I look forward to meeting you and your wife on the cruise.

There is much more to this story than what has been printed here. Some of what Don has said in our email exchange will be posted on our website, subject to Don's approval. As a disclaimer, I never talked to or communicated with Don before today. I am just a passenger who appreciated his efforts – efforts that were thwarted by the vicious acts and posturing of other people posting on this board. Shame on them.

Be very careful making group arrangemets with people you don't know. They may be just setting you up for what will cost you a lot of money. Just because someone posts here does not mean that they actually are going on this cruise. We have pretenders among us. We have shills that make reservations they had no intention of honoring. Fortunately Don is an intellegent man and saw through the plot. Enough said.

Within 3 hours, the post had been removed without comment or notification. This is in accordance with Cruise Critics terms of service, and I have no argument with that.

Apparently to control what had become an ugly problem with impostors making reservations with Don, knowing that they were not going to honor them, and the resulting posturing of these impostors, the Cruise Critic board decided to curtail discussions of the private tours on the board.

The problem then became one of verification and accountability. Who were genuinely interested in the tours and who had just signed up to sabotage the program? Don had the indications that of the 30 reservations, 20 were genuine, with the other 10 by people who never intended to go. Indeed, they were people who might not even be on this cruise, just lurking, looking for trouble.

A couple identified as Michele and Christopher were going to have a Sail-a-way Party in Penthouse Suite 6148, competing with Don's party for people on his tours given in his adjacent penthouse. The problem was, Michele and Christopher never had Suite 6148, and after creating the party and getting many people to switch, have disappeared , making no additional posts on the board.

With all the uncertainty in his reservation list, and being unable to make any additional posts on the board to try to untangle the mess, Don had no choice but to cancel the whole thing. A few people who either out of jealousy or envy spoiled it for everyone else.