Georgia Peach

My nephew is being married Nov 17, and the honeymoon is planned for the week of Thanksgiving. Nonref tickets were $363. each. As of this morning the hotel they reserved is underwater, and will cancel the reservation at no cost. The best Delta will do is rebook them for $150. each. To me, the best plan is to lose the $300. and go somewhere else, since many of the places they wanted to go may not be available due to the storm. Is there any way to get Delta to waive the rebooking fee and salvage the honeymoon? Thanks!

catwings01

What places will they want to see that you believe might be affected? The city will be all set with holiday lights and windows, the tree lighting will take place the week after - buses start running tomorrow and subways (at least in Manhattan) will be at least partly up and running. This is New York City and it will come back quickly - now if they were planning on outer borough travel or trips that might be slower to return. What hotel were they staying at? I would just cancel it and rebook somewhere uptown or midtown.

WhiskeyBravo

If you are a business losing $1 million/day, think about how many fans and how much new carpet you can lay in three weeks

I would say cancel the hotel either way, and then two or three days before they leave book a hotel (the same one or a different one) because they will all have sales on like crazy cause all the locals just got their apt's back (by then) and everyone with travel plans (like yourself) cancelled.

I have a feeling there will be a 1-2 week window where hotwire type sites will be a goldmine of NYC hotel rates.

NYCflip

Like everyone else said previously, I would change to an uptown hotel (the downtown hotels---south of 34th Stree--are the ones mostly affected). No reason to change the honeymoon away from NYC.

MSPeconomist

There are some fun downtown neighborhoods, but most of the interesting tourist stuff is midtown or uptown. However, before just canceling the hotel reservation, try to negotiate. If the place will credibly be open and operating as normal by the trip, try to negotiate a better rate. Alternatively, try to make the hotel put you into a good place at a good rate, perhaps a property in the same chain that's higher category for the same price you were promised at the original hotel that's now underwater.

ejh25

Agreed.

jb008

If you check out the NYC flood zone warning maps basically assume anything in Zone A was flooded and assume anything in Zone B that borders on Zone A also was flooded. The water damage was relatively small regions of the island whereas a large portion of the southern part (roughly below 34th St) lost power. Power should be back within about a week or so for basically all of Manhattan.

If access to mass transit is important, any hotel 57th Street and North should be fine and there's some great hotel options on the Upper East Side (UES) or Upper West Side (UWS) that might fit what you/they are looking for. Subway service will be running from 59th and North starting 11/1, with buses running throughout all of Manhattan. Things should steadily improve from there.

If they're looking for things to do, some day trips via Metro North or Amtrak also will get some access to some beautiful scenery and interesting New England-esque areas. At this point you basically have no additional downside if you wait until closer to cancel the tickets, but I'm pretty confident NYC will be well on the way to recovery even within the next 10 days.

~A former NYC'er and proud New Yorker!

P.S. I'm happy to provide some more info if it'll help - feel free to drop me a pm.