In March of 2023 my dad told me he was going to take a three year cruise around the world, which would be departing from a Turkish port on November 1st, 2023.
My mom was dying. She passed away that May, and he didn’t want to face living in their house of forty-eight years without her, so he started making lists and decisions about what to store, what to send to the ship, and what to say bon-voyage to.
I didn’t sign up for the cruise; but I’ve been on quite a trip ever since he decided he would be one its adventurers.
Life at Sea with the Miray cruise company was supposed to be an epic journey. Sort of like Lewis and Clark becoming a floating neighborhood – except without a boat, because the first one didn’t have enough fuel to cross the ocean, and the second ship got bought by somebody else. Miray has offered an array of excuses and is now trying to sell cabins for a new cruise set to sail in November of 2024.
I’m a storyteller at heart, and so I’d like to share my account of the three year cruise and what happened before it didn’t happen.
My intention is not revenge, and I’m not writing this out of bitterness. Maybe there’s a lesson or two that I could share, or somehow offer somebody else a form of commiseration. Mostly, I’m writing this for my own form of entertainment, because I like to string words along – maybe a little like Miray strings their passengers. Okay, that was mean. Sorry.
Let’s just say, that three year cruise left quite a bruise upon my plans, so I might as well see what good can come from the pain in the stern it was to me.
I’m writing from the perspective of an adult child of one of the passengers who seems to have been scammed. I’d like to give some behind the scenes scenarios. It’s still unclear if my dad was purposefully misled or not; but I have some serious doubts that everything Life at Sea did to put together their supposed three year cruise was on the up and up.
So, join me on this journey as I explore the story of the three year round the world cruise with Life at Sea, who never bought a boat and has became quite good at giving their customers the run-around…