Royal Caribbean cancels Alaska cruise at last minute after passengers were already onboard

Royal Caribbean threw in the towel on Saturday and decided to cancel its planned sailing to Alaska after discovering repairs would take longer than expected.

Guests boarded the ship on Friday after being told their sailing would be delayed by two days, but would sail on Sunday. Radiance of the Seas was scheduled to depart on Friday, but the amended itinerary dropped a port visit so it could stay in Vancouver for a few extra days.

Around mid-day on Saturday while still in Vancouver, an announcement was made over the public address system to inform guests their sailing would be cancelled in order to fix an ongoing issue with its propulsion system. 

Guests are expected to disembark the ship tomorrow.

“As you are aware, our teams have been vigorously working to have Radiance of the Seas prepared to set sail on our shortened April 26th sailing,” the letter given to passengers in their staterooms read.

“Despite our best efforts, circumstances beyond our control have delayed our sailing further.”

“As a result, we’ll regrettably have to cancel our April 26th, 2024 cruise.”

The sailing will not occur at all, and guests must disembark the ship by April 28th at 4:00pm.

Royal Caribbean issued a further apology saying, “we understand the disappointment due to this unfortunate turn of events. We truly extend our sincerest apologies for the continued unforeseen disruptions to your vacation.”

Royal Caribbean has not yet made a comment on exactly what is wrong with the propulsion system. 

How will passengers be compensated

All guests will receive a 100% refund for the cost of the cruise. This includes refunding passengers of any taxes and fees for the cruise. 

In addition to the 100% refund, guests will also be receiving a Future Cruise Credit (FCC) of 100% of their cruise fare paid to be used towards a future sailing. Royal Caribbean has stated guests will receive this FCC by May 10th. 

Passengers have been notified that they will be expected to disembark by tomorrow, April 28th 2024 by 4:00pm local time. 

Anyone that booked flights with Royal Caribbean will have their flight arrangements automatically re-scheduled.

The cruise line will reimburse any travel change fees up to $250 for domestic travel and $400 for international travel.

They will also reimburse up to $250 for hotel costs, per stateroom, per night, for two nights.

What happened to the cruise ship?

Earlier this week, Radiance of the Seas set sail on a 4-night sailing from Los Angeles to Vancouver. During the sailing guests were quickly notified  of a “technical issue with one of its propulsion systems” and that the rest of the planned port stops would be skipped.

Initially passengers for the April 26th sailing were given a letter onboard notifying guests of a delay that would be occurring due to the time it would need to take for crew members to fix the faulty engine and propulsion system.

Royal Caribbean notified guests that the ship would be welcoming passengers onboard but that the ship would remain at the embarkation port for two additional nights in order to give the crew time to fix the propulsion issue that has disabled one of the ship’s engines. 

The letter delivered to all passengers onboard stated the following message from Royal Caribbean, “While repairs for the technical issue that we encountered on our previous sailing are still underway, we discovered that we’re going to need some extra time to get the ship in tip-top shape for you. Although we’ll conduct our boarding as planed for our April 26th, 2024, Radiance of the Seas sailing, we’ll now set sail on April 28, 2024.”

After delivering this message to all guests Royal Caribbean addressed the problem with the following apology, “We’re terrible sorry for this last-minute change. We understand this news is disappointing, but we hope you’ll join us on the alternate itinerary planned.” 

The change in itinerary at the time meant that Radiance of the Seas would need to adjust its schedule and that some changes would be made to the current Alaska sailing. This included missing an originally scheduled port stop in Juneau Alaska. This sailing was meant to be the first of the Alaskan cruise season for Radiance of the Seas. 

However, there is now a more recent development that has completely changed this cruise sailing again for passengers currently onboard Radiance of the Seas. 

The second time this ship had a last-minute cancellation after guests boarded

It’s deja vu for Radiance of the Seas as a similar situation occurred last year in Alaska that resulted in two cruises being cancelled, and one was after passengers had gotten onboard.

Radiance of the Seas was scheduled to depart from Seward, Alaska on September 1, 2023 and Vancouver, Canada on September 8, 2023 for seven-night cruises along the Alaskan coast. Both voyages were canceled due to a technical issue with the ship’s propulsion system.

The ship underwent repairs and was able to resume sailing with the September 15, 2023 voyage.

The similarities less than a year apart are uncanny and quite unusual.