In reality, it looks like they just stopped offering the cruise I was on and moved the ship to an entirely different itinerary. It was a comedy of errors: the letter had the correct ship name at the top, but then went on to mention our cruise on was cancelled because one of the highlights was a port stop in, so they had to cancel. A couple of weeks ago, I got an email notifying me that our cruise was cancelled. I had originally booked a European cruise during my son’s spring break using the Ocean Prime offer for a free MSC cruise ( full details about how you can turn a $95 credit card into a free cruise anywhere in the world). If you want to skip ahead and just read about that, see the section titled “Summer 2024 awards to Europe are actually pretty easy to find right now”. If you’ve got Europe on your mind (particularly for the summer Olympics), now is your time to plan. A lot of this post is about that process, but a seemingly unrelated takeaway that will be more relevant to many readers is that summer 2024 business class award availability to Europe is plentiful right now from a number of cities. It quickly turned into a bit of a puzzle game that made award searching fun. With the largest number of partners and the ability to mix and match and create deliberately circuitous routings, it’s just a lot of fun to nerd out on the possibilities. That’s less because of the specific “deal” I’m getting and more because Air Canada Aeroplan’s frequent flyer program is designed for people who live for complex, exciting award redemptions. In the process, I slipped back down the Air Canada Aeroplan rabbit hole and came out of it with plans that excite me for next year. Then, MSC cancelled our cruise, which sent us scrambling for replacement plans. My wife and I, having participated ourselves in the casino cruise matching shenanigans about which I’ve written volumes, had a free cruise booked for the family next April and our award flights were all set and booked also. It all started when MSC cancelled my free cruise.

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