“The Life of a Tour Planner” – March 2023

It was like a normal “night-before-a-tour” evening. We were all packed and ready to go – actually, we were ready much earlier than normal. The plan was simple: have dinner, indulge in some Netflix, and go to bed early as our flight was departing at 5:00 am from Charlottetown.

We were meeting the rest of the group (who were flying out of their select cities like Halifax, Moncton, Fredericton) in Toronto so we could fly as a group to Miami for our Southern Caribbean Cruise departing from Florida.

Then the text came in…

At 7:30 pm, one of our clients in Halifax messaged me that their flight was delayed by 2 hours. Sure enough, I checked my email and found out flights from Charlottetown and Fredericton were now cancelled with no alternate flights booked so down to the office I went to try and solve this puzzle.

First thing was to message all passengers and let them know what was going on and then I was on the phone to call Air Canada for replacement flights. After being on hold for two and a half hours (can we PLEASE get rid of terrible elevator hold music now?) the call was put through and immediately disconnected.

Now I won’t lie to you… I *may* have said a swear word! 🤫 Immediately, I was researching flights online and I could not see any flights available for the next two days. At this point, my mind was racing to figure out this travel puzzle.

It was not until the next day that we discovered the flights they had rescheduled us to were departing Tuesday… Our cruise was to leave Florida on Monday. I’ll let you do the travel math on that.

Finally, I was able to speak to Air Canada by mid-morning Sunday (special shout out to customer service agent Monica for all her hard work!) and I was doing a little happy dance as they were able to work us onto a flight out of Montreal to Fort Lauderdale on Monday morning. “This is great” I thought but how do we GET to Montreal?

Never fear: Coach Atlantic is here!

Our local heroes, Tanya and Rhonda, worked in tandem to find us a bus and a driver. It took a lot of creativity and coordination but in the end, a Coach Atlantic bus took us to Edmundston and then another took us from there to the Montreal airport, finally arriving early Monday morning.

Thankfully, our flight to Florida left on time but as with travelling via air these days, we had one more concern: luggage. I am happy to report that everyone got their luggage 😮‍💨 and we successfully transferred to the Celebrity Edge where we were able to start a wonderful cruise of the Southern Caribbean.

When I look back, I find it surreal that we took a bus overnight to Montreal to catch a flight to our cruise for the next day. As a tour operator and well-seasoned traveler, I could not imagine expecting people to navigate that situation on their own. While it’s certainly not impossible, it can put a damper on your long-awaited vacation! Not our group though – they were amazing and so appreciative of all our efforts to make it happen. It meant a lot to us as organizers to have such a cooperative group who trust that we will figure it out. It was a bonding moment, for sure.

The journey was interesting to say the least but the cruise made it well worth the way. The cruise was amazing – The Celebrity Edge was beautiful and is top-notch quality with so much to see and do onboard, ports of call were excellent with stunning views and the weather could not have been better.

Cheers to good food, good memories (and travel insurance)!!!

Now that we are home, we all have a shared experience that we will never forget and will certainly be a conversation starter. When we meet each other on another tour or at a gathering, we can say “Remember that time we had to take a bus to Montreal to catch a flight so we could board our cruise? Good times!” … Too soon? 😬