One of the reasons that my husband and I decided to go on the Star Princess South America cruise, was so that he could do the Antarctica excursion, that Princess offered.
The Star Princess docks in Punta Arenas, Chile and the passengers get transferred to the Airport, take a 3 hour flight to Antarctica, spend 3 to 5 hours on Antartica and fly 3 hours back. The cost of this excursion is $2200 per person.
Since my we live in Florida, we do not have extreme cold weather gear, and my husband bought some and borrowed some. He brought a whole suitcase to South America which only held his cold weather gear.
The day of the excursion, my husband had to be off the ship by 6:00AM. It didn't matter, as he was very excited in anticipation of this once in a lifetime opportunity. He awoke early, packed up all his cold weather gear, met at the arranged location on ths ship and off he went.
On the bus to the airport the tour company told the passengers that unfortunately Antarctica was fogged in and they would not be going. Instead of returning the passengers back to the ship, they were flown to Paine National Park in Chile, and were charged $1,000. Now Paine National Park is extremely beautiful and I don't want to take anything away from it.
However,my husband was very disappointed to say the least. He felt like he was held hostage by the cruiseline as they knew that they were not going to be able to go before they left the ship, as Antarctica was fogged in. In fact, in doing a little research, this excursion only goes about 20% of the time. This fact is not listed in any of the cruiseline literature.
The tour company had 44 people, charged $1,000 per person and made a whopping $44,000for the day. There was a family that paid $4,000 to go to a Park.
We complained to the cruiseline, and it has yet to be resolved, however they did say they would review it and it should take about 4 to 6 weeks.
On the positive side, the rest of the cruise was fantastic, and we had no complaints, with the ship, service or food.
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