She boarded the ship. Her cruise was canceled before it ever set sail

Arielle Anderson and her family boarded a Royal Caribbean cruise to Alaska this week, but it never set sail.

The 28-year-old’s mom booked the trip as a gift, and they had “been looking forward to this since Christmas.” About two days after she embarked in Vancouver, Canada, however, the cruise line announced that the voyage aboard Serenade of the Seas had been scrapped due to a mechanical issue.

"To accommodate ongoing maintenance, we’ve had to cancel our sailing,” Royal Caribbean Group, the cruise line’s parent company, told USA TODAY in an emailed statement. “We apologize to our guests for the inconvenience and have worked with them to adjust their travel plans."

The company did not share additional specifics about the nature of the maintenance.

A week or so before departure, the cruise line notified Anderson’s family that the weeklong voyage had been shortened by about half and would skip portions of the itinerary. “And we were devastated then because we really wanted to go to places in Alaska,” she recalled.

The cruise line offered refunds, but because her family was flying in from various parts of the U.S., the South Carolina-based lawyer said “it was going to be more of…

Original source: https://www.usatoday.com/travel/