For a stress-free holiday avoid using Imagine Cruising

I would have like to complain to Imagine Cruising directly but there is no email contact information on their website. If you want an stress-free holiday I suggest you avoid using Imagine Cruising.

I booked a relocation cruise on 19th February 2019 from Sweden to Italy (14 days). I paid a little bit extra to use Lufthansa Airline. I declined the offer of R7000 for transfers to and from the airports for myself and my husband.

We couldn’t check into our flights the night before we left SA but thought nothing of it. When we got to the airport on the day of departure we found out even though we paid extra for Lufthansa, we were booked on a SAA flight. My entertainment unit on the plane’s earphones didn’t work. Our luggage were supposed to be transferred directly to our connecting flight from Frankfurt to Sweden but again, our luggage stayed behind in Frankfurt while we were flying to Sweden. We spent a lot of time trying to find our luggage and then to wait hours for it to arrive in Sweden (11PM at night it finally arrived). I don’t blame Imagine Cruising for SAA’s incompetence, I am upset that I paid extra to fly with a specific Airline, where this Airline would carry us to Frankfurt and the same Airline would take us to Sweden but Imagine Cruising though it best to put us on the airline we are trying to avoid.

Our travel documents from Imagine cruising stated the Ship will be at Sweden Port. Sweden has more than one Port. I phoned the emergency contact to find out which port to go to, and the agent told me that if I used their transfer services, the driver would have known where to take us. It then became clear that this agent didn’t have his laptop with him. He ended the call saying he would phone me back. 41 minutes later I received a WhatsApp saying he can not reach me asking for my booking number.

Imagine Cruising quoted us R7000 for transfers. With us going to 2 different ports, our total transfers came to less than R2000.

We then finally embarked the ship to find we were put in a cabin with 2 single beds where they could not be moved next to each other. For 14 days, for my husband’s 50th birthday present, during a time we both had our birthdays, we had to sleep in separate beds. One bed was a single sleeper couch, smaller than a normal size single bed. We booked an inside cabin, not a cabin for kids. It was Imagine Cruising's responsibility to ensure we get a normal cabin.

Nothing can compensate for the loss of 16 days holiday spent being stressed out and angry and upset.