If you read my last post, you know about our cruise saga. When we finally got back on a ship in September 2021, we thought the ad nauseum cycle of cancellations and re-bookings was over.

The second phase of our attempt to finally use up the cruise credit—i.e., the interest-free loan that Norwegian Cruise Line has been enjoying on our behalf—was going to be in January of this year. The plan was to drive down to Orlando, Florida, for a few days, including a day at Discovery Cove. Then we would drive to Tampa, Florida, to embark for a five-day Caribbean cruise.

We were already in Tampa when Norwegian informed us—a day and a half before embarkation—that the cruise was cancelled. The basically-harmless “Omicron” variant of COVID-19 was to blame. Sheer absurdity. So we still haven’t been able to use all the money we paid Norwegian in 2019.

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Melissa and I love cruises. Our first was our honeymoon—a seven-day Alaska cruise on Holland America Line in 2005. Since then we have tried to go on a cruise every two or three years. So far, our longest was a fourteen-day cruise for our tenth anniversary in 2015—back to Alaska on the same ship from our honeymoon.

We ended up on a charity cruise to New England and eastern Canada in 2016, then had a big non-cruise trip to Taiwan and Hong Kong in 2017, so we took it easy for a couple years. But 2020 was going to be a big travel year; we got our “TSA Precheck” and “Global Entry” cards and everything. It would start with our embarkation on a fourteen-day Hawaii cruise in April.

That cruise was in the second round of cancellations by Norwegian Cruise Lines in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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