Carnival Vacation Club - The Little Engine That Couldn’t
My in-laws are avid cruisers, and have cruised all over the world - from the Bahamas to the Mediterranean. They have been on a wide variety of cruise lines, from Carnival to Costa and many in between. When they were approached about the Carnival Vacation Club during a cruise they took, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Basically, you purchase a set number of points from Carnival Vacation Club, and you redeem those points toward cruises. In their pitch, they make it seem like by using points, it works out that your cruise is discounted from what you would pay if you bought your cruise in cash instead of vacation points.
There is only one good thing I can say about the club. It is no longer available to buy into. Thank goodness that other unsuspecting vacationers won’t get sucked into this nightmare.
I did learn in my research for this blog that Carnival Vacation Club is not owned and operated by Carnival Cruise Lines, however their association with each other seems to be a blurry area to me. They were obviously allowed to sell this stuff on Carnival Cruises, and the Carnival logo appears on some of the club documentation. Hmmm….
The sad part is that so many people - my in-laws among them - were on a vacation, enjoying the luxury of a cruise, resistance lowered by the sounds of the sea hypnotizing them into things they otherwise might not do - and they were lured into this mistake of a vacation club.
Carnival Vacation Club is putting together a new incarnation of itself. Run, folks. Avoid it at all cost.
Sadly, we bought into this sham back in July 2004. We were on a first time cruise with our kids. The sales people promised us 30 to 50% savings on future cruises, which NEVER materialized. Every time we tried to book the cruise through the “vacation club” the points we would use equaled to or exceeded in cost the price of a cruise if we would have paid for it outright on the Carnival website. We complained and complained to no avail. We just finally decided to use our points instead of lose them, so we booked a cruise -only to find out they have more hidden fees now for using your points. VERY SAD indeed. If there is another one of these things being ready to be released on unsuspecting cruisers - I pray that more people read these complaints and let them know they should run folks, RUN….
I’m sorry you’ve had an experience similar to the one my in-laws had. They also learned during the course of our cruise that they were not entitled to the benefits of their cruise line status because they used points to pay for the cruise (for example, they are gold members with one cruise line that would not allow them the priority debarkation because they were there on points).
A Carnival Cruise Club rep has made repeated phone calls to my in-laws to try and get them to purchase into the new plan. I don’t know how the new plan works, but you have to pay $50 up front, and I convinced them not to get involved. I hope other people find this blog and realize that even though on the face of it, it seems like a reputable company offering you a great price for their product. It’s a scam, it’s not worth the money you pay into it, and the hassles to use it are aggravating at best.
[...] a comment on a previous post I made about the Carnival Vacation Club, which you can find here - http://skamarakas.com/anna/2008/08/05/carnival-vacation-club-the-little-engine-that-couldnt#comment-... . It reminded me that I had not taken the opportunity to update the situation with the club, or [...]