A woman sold an apartment to a world cruise for 3 years, and now it’s in flux

• The cruise announced in March, with plans to sail around the world, is now in limbo.
• Potential occupants paid down payments on rooms costing up to $109,000 a year, per CNN.
• One potential passenger told Insider that customers are now asking for refunds amid internal uncertainty.

Customers who have spent thousands of dollars on A multi-year cruise billed to hit every continent They are demanding their money back after issues arose with the cruise company’s founding employees, months after the project was announced.

Announced in late February, the first-of-its-kind MV Gemini Cruise was set to launch from Istanbul in November, with plans to visit all seven continents and 135 countries. The flight is now riddled with administrative problems that make customers anxious about getting on board.

The MV Gemini cruise is organized by Miray Cruises and its subsidiary Life at Sea Cruises. However, ties between Life at Sea at Miray and the project were severed this month, According to CNNQuoted from the former Managing Director of Life at Sea Cruises.

In a March 10 press release, Miray Cruises stated that The ship will be “repaired”. Before the trip, now it’s months away. Miray Cruises did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment, but said in a May webinar for passengers that the cruise is still ongoing, according to CNN.

Kimberly Arizzi was among the first to sign up in March, sent a $5,000 down payment for the cruise at the time, and reached out directly to the Life at Sea sales team, Arizzi told Insider. But uncertainty about the ship and a change of staff caused her and other potential passengers to back off their plans.

“I thought I had my life ready for the next few years,” Arizzi told Insider. “It wasn’t just the furniture I lost, it was the concept of the boat—the idea of ​​being in a like-minded community, of doing everything together for the first time ever.”

A woman sold her apartment before the trip

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

Jim Cramer, another potential passenger, told Insider that the trip was initially a “dream trip,” but at the moment, he’s “not yet confident Miray can make it happen.”

In a Facebook group for the Life at Sea community of nearly 800 members, Mike Peterson, former managing director of Life at Sea, wrote that his company had issued refunds after the split with Miray, and cast doubt on whether it would be ready to sail. by november. .

She told Insider that Arizzi’s deposits were refunded on April 20. Potential clients have until the end of June to send deposits amid the wrangling, according to Peterson.

Peterson did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

The two companies organizing the trip split up

Arizzi echoed that there had been a breakdown between Life at Sea and Miray, with parent company Miray holding 2 to 3 webinars a day to assuage customers’ concerns about the cruise’s future, she told Insider.

She added that the webinars have left some with mixed feelings.

“It was like a press conference where astronauts go to the moon and look really gloomy, but they have to look excited,” Aresi told Insider. “They promised too much, and maybe they promised too much.”

Arezi told Insider that Miray plans to go ahead with the cruise, inviting clients to Istanbul three days in advance for parties on the boat. You won’t be attending, or making another deposit for next year at least. She decides to take a short-term cruise until the summer to “see what happens next year.”

“I think the Gemini ship will last, but I don’t think I’m going to be happy with it,” she said.