Woman sold apartment for 3-year world cruise, now in flux

• The cruise, announced in March, is now in limbo, with plans to sail around the world.
• Prospective passengers paid up to $109,000 a year, according to CNN.
• The customers are now asking for refunds amid the internal turmoil, a prospective passenger told Insider.

Customers who spent thousands of dollars on multi-continental cruises are demanding refunds after a case against the cruise line’s founding employees surfaced, months after the venture went public.

The MV Gemini Cruise, the first of its kind, was unveiled in late February and plans to depart from Istanbul in November and visit seven continents and 135 countries. The trip is now being wary of customers coming in due to management issues.

The MV Gemini cruise is organized by Murray Cruises and its subsidiary Life at Sea Cruises. But the relationship between Life at Sea at Miray for the project was severed this month, CNN reported, citing a former manager of Life at Sea Cruises.

At a press conference on March 10, he said the ship would be “fixed” ahead of the voyage, now months away. Mirai Cruises did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment, but told passengers during a May webinar that the trip was still on, CNN reported.

Kimberly Arizzi was one of the first to sign up in March and sent a $5,000 down payment for the cruise at the time, contacting the Life at Sea sales team directly, Arizzi told Insider. But the uncertainty aboard the ship and the crew’s trepidation caused her and other would-be passengers to withdraw their plans.

“I thought I had my life lined up for the next few years,” Arizzi told Insider. “It wasn’t just furniture that I was missing, it was yacht-topia – the idea of ​​being in a like-minded community, all doing something together for the first time.”

A woman sold her apartment before the trip.

Arizzi, who lives in Chicago, sold thousands of her clothes, furniture and televisions in preparation for the vacation. She recently retired and sold her apartment and moved into a trailer park, she said.

Jim Cramer, another passenger, told Insider that the trip was a “dream trip” at first, but now he’s “not sure if the Mirai can pull it off yet.”

In a Facebook group called Community for Life at Sea, which has about 800 members, Mike Peterson, a former managing director of Life at Sea, questioned whether his company would be ready to ship by November, after parting ways with Mirai for refunds. .

Arizzi’s deposit was returned on April 20, she told Insider. Prospective customers have until the end of June to send a deposit in crisis, Peterson said.

Peterson did not immediately return Insider’s request for comment.

The two companies that organized the trip split up.

Arizzi explained to Insider that there was a breakdown between Life at Sea and Miray, whose parent company Miray holds two to three webinars a day to ease customers’ worries about their future travels.

The webinars also left some with mixed feelings, she added.

“It was like a press conference where astronauts go to the moon and they look really pissed, but it’s supposed to look fun,” Arizzi told Insider. “You promised too much, and probably over promised.”

Arizzi told Insider that Mirai plans to move forward with the ship by inviting customers to Istanbul three days before to enjoy the cruise. She will not participate or at least not make another deposit next year. She decided to take a short cruise until the winter “and see what’s in store for next year.”

“I believe the Gemini ship will continue, but I don’t think I’ll be happy about it,” she said.