The Time We Were Almost Held Hostage in Freeport: The Truth about Those Free Trips to the Bahamas

You may have seen those boxes in various restaurants and stores that proclaims, “Win a Free Trip to the Bahamas!” You also may have wondered if they’re a scam. Well, they’re legitimate, but with most free things, there’s a catch. This blog post summarizes the experience I had for my birthday trip, which was a free overnight cruise and resort trip for two that one of my closest friends transferred to me as a wedding gift. What should have been a relaxing few days turned into a battle to get home. Please note that this post isn’t to disparage any companies, but just to share my personal experience so that others can be aware.

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No Such Thing as Free Lunch

We’ve all seen them. It’s lunchtime and you walk into a take-out restaurant — let’s say Jamaican or Chinese — and you notice a small table with a clear box on top of it. There’s a sign that reads, “Win a Free Trip to the Bahamas!” or “Free 7 day/6 night Vacation in the Bahamas” or some other variation. The sign asks you to fill out your information on a card and drop the card in the box for a chance to win. I may have filled out these cards with my parents’ information as a kid, but as an adult, I don’t think I’ve ever submitted one. Besides, what’s the chances of actually winning, right? Wrong. Based on my experience (and on what people have shared in various Reddit threads), a lot of people win them. Pretty much everyone who submits a card may hear back from the travel agency organizing the trip. This makes sense after remembering that there’s no such thing as free lunch. These agencies can market that a trip is “free,” but there will be many other things to pay for in order to actually go on the trip. Before I review my experience of the trip, I’ll go over how much had to be paid first.

One of my dear friends was the one who won the trip, and she was sweet enough to transfer the trip to me as a wedding gift. Despite everything, I’m entirely grateful for this gesture, because she could have easily taken the trip herself or transfer it to a family member. This also demonstrates that these trips can be taken by anyone. Even if it was your personal information that was included on the card, that doesn’t mean that it has to be your information that’s under “traveler.”

The screenshot below shows all of the fees that we had to pay for this “free” trip. Most of these were already paid for by my friend prior to her transferring the trip to us.

This is how the home page of the travel agency portal looked. Many different “travel agencies” offer these free trips, but the one that organized ours was Hewitt Travel.

Regardless, I wanted to go somewhere for my birthday, and it seemed like we would’ve still paid more going on a cruise and staying at an all-inclusive ourselves (or so I thought at the time), so I paid the “Travel Payment” fees and went for it.

Spoiler: It was not worth the money! The entire experience was underwhelming.

A Review of the Ship - Bahamas Paradise Cruise Lines

These travel agencies partner with different cruise lines to offer the free trips to the Bahamas. I suppose it depends on cruise ship availability and the partnerships the agencies forge with the cruise lines. No matter what vessel you end up getting on, they’re not going to be nice ships. Most of them will be old Carnival ships (and Carnival is great, but we already know that they’re a budget cruise line) that these smaller cruise lines have repurposed. For our trip, the cruise line was Bahamas Paradise Cruise Lines and our vessel was the Grand Classica. Bahamas Paradise Cruise Lines is a new company — founded in 2014 — that specializes in discount two-day cruises to Grand Bahama Island. The company’s online presence is great; the website is nicely designed and the Instagram page is also well-curated. Because of this, I had pretty good expectations for the ship. When we got on the ship, it wasn’t bad, but it definitely wasn’t really nice. There were just two tiny pools, a couple jacuzzi tubs, and a bunch of lounge chairs. No frills. There was a bar on the pool level, at least. But of course the alcoholic drinks aren’t included (I did purchase a couple frozen drinks and they were delicious!).

We had an interior stateroom because we weren’t trying to pay extra money. The room was decent. Overall, the ship was clean and I saw many employees use disinfectant machines for the staterooms. The employees always had masks on and the buffet dining room wasn’t self-serve. I know a lot of people are wary of getting on a cruise because of COVID, but I think one is just as likely to catch COVID at a grocery store. So I will say, don’t hesitate to get back cruising if that’s your thing!

There were also very few guests on the trip over to Freeport and back. I spoke to some of the employees and they said it was just a slow time of the year, and that they were relatively busy during Christmas and New Year. So if you miss cruising but are hesitant about COVID, I also recommend booking a cruise during Mid-January to the end of February when bookings are slow (I’m sure mid September to early November is similar). Because there wasn’t a lot of passengers, there wasn’t a ton of entertainment. Many of the lounges and bars were empty. On the trip back, I did get to participate in a trivia game and I won a free drink for coming in first place!

The food at the buffet wasn’t great, and I didn’t expect it to be. However, the food at the dinner restaurant was delightful, so that was a pleasant surprise. All of the staff was super friendly.

There wasn’t too much to do on the ship but eat, drink, and walk around, but we tried to make the most of it. We went to sleep pretty early on both voyages.

A Review of the Resort - Viva Wyndham Fortuna Beach

Around 8 am the following morning, the ship docked at Freeport, Bahamas. We already paid roundtrip tickets for a shuttle organized by the cruise line ($15 roundtrip a person), so we packed up, disembarked, and then got on the shuttle. According to Hewitt Travel, guests have the option of 3 hotels to choose from:

• Taino Beach Resort

• Viva Wyndham Fortuna Beach

• The Bell Channel Inn

I chose the Viva Wyndham Fortuna Beach resort because it was the only all-inclusive on the list, and I don’t usually stay at all-inclusives, so I figured why not have my food and drink taken care of? Because of this choice, I had to pay hefty resort fees per person for each day we were there (though I’m not sure if resort fees were required at the two other hotels — maybe so).

Viva Wyndham was mediocre. Our room was clean but not really modern. I found the pool area to be quite nice, but that’s as much as it goes for the hotel’s infrastructure (unlike the RIU Ocho Rios in Jamaica, which is the only other all-inclusive in which I’ve stayed. The property was modern and beautiful). We checked in that morning, received a tasty welcome drink, and relaxed by the beach and pool while waiting for our room to be ready. It was a really windy day, so we didn’t get into the pool or ocean, just the hot tub where we had conversation with other guests.

The buffet restaurant was gross, but again, I expect all buffets to be gross. The drinks were mediocre. I love frozen drinks and their frozen drinks were a let down. They were the pre-made slushie kind that melted far too quickly.

We had about two and a half days at the resort before returning to the ship to head back to South Florida. The following day was the only full day we had at the resort to swim, play, and relax. I was looking forward to it, especially since most of my travels are pretty active and this was a change of pace for me. Unfortunately, that’s not what I received…

Almost Held Hostage at the Resort

I won’t get into too many details here, because this post is getting long enough as it is. The next morning, we took a rapid covid test because a negative result within 24 hours is required to embark on the ship. Perfectly logical rule. The resort offered its own rapid tests, at $16 USD a person. After our samples were taken, we received our results 15 minutes later:

My results were negative, but Abraham’s were positive.

Well, according to Bahamian law, visitors who test positive during their stay must quarantine for ten days at the visitor’s expense. We knew this and respected this rule. Our issue didn’t lie in this requirement; it lied in our belief that the resort was swindling guests to get more money out of them. Here’s our hypothesis:

• Abraham was feeling totally healthy. Yes, people can be asymptomatic with Covid, but he just tested negative two days before in order to board the ship. I tested negative and also felt healthy.

• Guests have to pay $50 USD per person, per night during their quarantine. You have to remain inside of your room and 3 meals will be dropped off at your door. Oh yeah, and you can’t have any alcohol. AND you have to be a hefty fee to have the resort’s doctor come and clear you from quarantine.

• The resort offered Abraham a PCR test at the cost of $150 USD, but the catch is that the result won’t be available until 48 hours (after our ship departs); so we would be forced to spend extra time at the resort and pay extra money anyways.

• After getting on the ship the next day, we met passengers who were in the same predicament as us and were finally heading home after 14 extra days in the Bahamas. They told us people they met who keep receiving a “negative” test result and have quarantined for almost 30 days.

• Therefore, we believe that the resort is partnering with the private healthcare company that offers the testing to give some guests false positive COVID results so that more money is generated for both the resort and healthcare company.

A very long story short, we weren’t satisfied with the testing at the resort. Right after Abraham tested positive, our regular resort wristbands were cut off and we received highlighter yellow ones. We were escorted back to our room and stayed there for most of the afternoon concocting a plan. We escaped from our room (James Bond-style and all), left the resort to get a PCR test from another company (and the cost of the test was much lower), returned back to the resort, snuck in some time walking along the beach, and then got back to our room. The next morning, Abraham received a negative result from his PCR test. We told the resort, hopped back on the shuttle, and were able to board the ship (luckily). I will spare most of the details, but just know that we were beyond nervous and that it all felt like an action movie.

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Needless to say, I won’t be taking any more “free” trips. Have you experienced something similar?

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