Ex-flight attendant Meredith Shay splashed out a staggering £444,000 for a cabin with a balcony on a three-year cruise around the world – but, things didn’t exactly go to plan
A woman’s once-in-a-lifetime world cruise quickly descended into chaos – before she even stepped on board.
Last year, Meredith Shay couldn’t contain her excitement as she revealed to the Mirror she was one of 1,000 passengers slated to sail to 135 different countries over three fantastic years. The ex-flight attendant forked out a whopping £444,000 ($562,000) for a seventh-floor cabin with a balcony on the huge vessel – funding the mega trip from the sale of her home.
“I’ve no children or grandchildren so I am free, happily so at this point. Why not do something like this?” she said, explaining how she booked the trip with Life at Sea just 12 hours after hearing about it. “I like new experiences as it keeps me fresh. I’ve been looking for about two years [for a long cruise].”
But after selling most of her worldly possessions, giving notice on her rental, hiring out a storage unit, and packing her four suitcases for the cruise, disaster struck. Meredith, from Florida, was supposed to board from Miami last year, but operators issued a last-minute change, meaning the cruise would set sail from the Bahamas.
Then, she was told the cruise had been cancelled entirely. Vedat Ugurlu, the owner of Miray Cruises, which owns Life at Sea, announced the reason for such a last-minute cancellation was simple: they couldn’t afford the ship. He cited ‘unrest in the Middle East’ following the October 7 attack, and said he was ‘extremely sorry for the inconvenience’.
The company, which filed for chapter seven bankruptcy in July of this year (a legal process also known as liquidation) promised to refund passengers in three instalments. But instead of mourning the loss of her three-year holiday at sea, Meredith says she’s chosen to look on the bright side of life.
“[It] may sound like a stressful situation to navigate – having no roots, no fixings – but I’ve found it liberating,” she told The Guardian. “Who else has the kind of freedom that I do now, with nothing tying me down to any one place?”
The ordeal hasn’t put the American off travelling, and she announced plans last year to board a different cruise through Patagonia, Antartica and Argentina. She also revealed intentions to fly over to Saudi Arabia before visited the nearby hotspot of Dubai. “Who knows where the adventure will take me,” she added.
In an exclusive interview with the Mirror, she concluded: “I did sell my house. I put everything into storage, moved out of my apartment. I was about to sell my car. But I am not a ‘woe is me person’. There is a song over here, ‘dust yourself off and try again’. That is what I’ve done. I had a 12-hour pity party, then said, ‘Okay you’re free. Do something’. No encumberments at all.”
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