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CANCELLED - Unfinnished Business | FINLAND |24th - 26th Jul 2020

Hi all, It's with sadness that me and Ian have decided to cancel the Finland CF Live.

We acknowledge that although there are still a couple of months until the Live was supposed to start, the Covid-19 situation remains uncertain and we think it's only fair to give you as much notice as possible. This is not a decision we have taken lightly with many people,including organisers, having booked travel arrangements.

When travelling in cars, sharing hotel rooms, and queuing/riding near people from outside of our own household, is is virtually impossible to maintain a safe distance apart, as advised by both Government and health organisations. The risk of contracting Covid-19 in these situations is high, even if everybody is feeling well, and it would be wrong of us to encourage that risk.

In emails from the parks, they cannot guarantee they will be open, or operating all rides, in time for our visit. Even with social distancing measures in place, it would not give us the unique CoasterForce experience that we all enjoy when visiting theme parks. The UK Government is set to impose a 14 day quarantine on anybody entering the UK from abroad. The Finnish Government currently has a 14 day quarantine policy in place for anybody entering the country. This follows on from from ‘essential traffic’ being allowed into the country, unfortunate visiting theme parks is non essential (we’d argue this!). The vast majority of attendees are British or not native to Finland, so a mandatory quarantine either on arrival or upon return will cause significant upheaval for most of us. Although the quarantine rules may be abolished by end of July, there is no guarantee they will be. Adequate travel and medical insurance might be difficult or expensive to obtain. In some instances, insurance companies may void policies for non-essential travel. The Finnish Government has in recent weeks restricted movement by closing main roads in and out of cities. If the virus spikes again, these restrictions could be reimposed during our visit, limiting our travel between parks and hotels. More details on the Finnish restrictions can be found here; www.raja.fi/current_issues/guidelines_for_border_traffic

Both the certainty of the virus transmission, alongside the uncertainty listed above, has led us to make this tough decision.

We realise that some of you will be disappointed by this news, but we hope most will understand that the core values of a CF-Live is to enjoy ourselves in a safe environment and return home with big smiles on our faces. We might attempt this Live again in 2021 and, if we do, you will be offered first refusal.

Refunds

You will be refunded in full all of the money you have so far paid to CoasterForce for this trip. Every refund has to be individually processed, so it may take up to a week to return your money. Please check your emails, and junk folders for further information on this.

We’re just as gutted as you are that it’s not going ahead but we, as a group, have to be sensible and responsible towards one another. We are truly sorry.

Chris
 
Thanks Chris and Ian, that cant have been an easy decision to make. Personally I think it’s the right choice and it does give us some certainty, though I do understand others may have rather held out hope longer. I hope everyone is well, stays safe, and I look forward to meeting the group at a future event once things are a bit more normal. Take care all.
 
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Thanks Chris and Ian.
Fully understandable under the circumstances.

Thanks for all your work trying to plan this Live in the first place too. I'm sure it would have been great.
Hopefully it will happen another time.
Best wishes to you and everyone who were supposed to be on the trip.
Take care.
 
Chris said it well above. It is gut wrenching to pull this when we know everybody was looking forward to it. It’s the unpredictable nature of this pandemic that meant we had to draw a line at some point. If we cancelled too early, we wouldn’t have given it time to play out. If we left it late, it would’ve left uncertainty dangling until possibly the last moment. With two months to go, now seemed like the right time to make a decision with the information available to us. We hate to disappoint and can’t say sorry enough.

I’d also like to pay borderline homosexual gratitude to Chris. Chris convinced me to run with an organised Live again, and he took this task on with incredible gusto. Chris created a brilliant itinerary, scored some great deals and handled the organisation superbly. I really look forward to the next event Chris organises. Mate, thank you. I owe you a pint.
 
Bloody gutted but in all honesty I’ve been waiting for this announcement to happen and I think it’s the right decision .
Thanks for all the work put in so far Chris, fingers crossed for next year!
 
Second what everyone else has said really, not really the time to take on the responsibility of a big group trip with so many unknowns so I can fully understand the decision. Big thanks to Chris for his work!
 
To the surprise of no one, but still a shame it had to be done. Thanks for not keeping us dangling and thanks for trying.
 
I think we all hoped that we'd get to visit Finland with our friends and have an amazing time doing so, but I also think most of us were realistic about the current situation, and had resigned ourselves to the fact that it probably wasn't going to happen. As time went on, it became clear that this call was going to be inevitable. It sucks, it really does, but it was the right call to make.

Thank you to Ian and Chris for your efforts, both in organizing the logistics of a Live that won't be coming to fruition any time soon, but also for your honest and open communication throughout this difficult period. You've done a great job in keeping us informed of where things stand under the circumstances, as even when the message was "we're going to wait and see how things play out", it was at accompanied by "this is the back-out plan if we have to pull the plug, and this is roughly when we'll have to commit one way or the other". Your handling of the situation has been exemplary, and at no time did I feel like I was in the dark regarding what had happened. You've been awesome.

To all of my fellow CFers that I now won't be seeing over the summer: Take care, stay safe, and I hope to see all of you wonderful people again before too long.
 
Very sad but understandable decision. Hopefully we can rearrange for the same trip when the World returns to normal.

Thanks for all the organisation that you did and the detailed updates along the way!
 
People who have flights already booked are you going to wait a bit and see if they get cancelled (easier to get a refund) or are you getting vouchers etc now? Just wondered what the consensus was as I know quite a few people had bookings in place.
 
Could be wrong here but until the carrier cancels the flight you have absolutely no legal right to a refund unless your ticket has a flexibility clause in it.

You could " try " and request a refund before the flight is officially canceled, however, this relies 100% on the goodwill of the carrier being on your side and not the actual law.

Carriers are staggering flight cancelation for many reasons, one of them is to prevent a run on their cash reserves.

As far I'm concerned the money I spent on my flight has been accounted for already, as a result I am in no rush for the money to be returned to me.

In the scheme of things, a couple £100 is not exactly that important compared to what else is going on in the world at the moment.
 
.Ac. said:
Could be wrong here but until the carrier cancels the flight you have absolutely no legal right to a refund unless your ticket has a flexibility clause in it.

You could " try " and request a refund before the flight is officially canceled, however, this relies 100% on the goodwill of the carrier being on your side and not the actual law.

Carriers are staggering flight cancelation for many reasons, one of them is to prevent a run on their cash reserves.

As far I'm concerned the money I spent on my flight has been accounted for already, as a result I am in no rush for the money to be returned to me.

In the scheme of things, a couple £100 is not exactly that important compared to what else is going on in the world at the moment.
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I am aware of the refund policy, hence why I said it's easier with a cancellation, I was more asking whether people were going to wait and see if they got a cancellation or not.
 
I booked with Finnair and last time I checked their covid policy covered flight up until 30th June, so I’m in wait and see mode. Personally I’d hold out rather than voluntarily choose a voucher. This whole situation is unprecedented and we just don’t know when we’ll be able to travel again and even the some of the more financially stable airlines might not survive, which could render the voucher worthless.

There’s also the slither of hope that maybe this will all wash over and we can go visit the parks anyways, unlikely but you never know?
 
Fi said:
I booked with Finnair and last time I checked their covid policy covered flight up until 30th June, so I’m in wait and see mode. Personally I’d hold out rather than voluntarily choose a voucher. This whole situation is unprecedented and we just don’t know when we’ll be able to travel again and even the some of the more financially stable airlines might not survive, which could render the voucher worthless.

There’s also the slither of hope that maybe this will all wash over and we can go visit the parks anyways, unlikely but you never know?
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That's basically my thoughts really, wait a few weeks to see what state everything is in then I think. Mine is Norwegian. They're already offering a voucher but I'd rather not have to take one if I can get a refund. Not the end of the world though I suppose.
 
SilverArrow said:
That's basically my thoughts really, wait a few weeks to see what state everything is in then I think. Mine is Norwegian. They're already offering a voucher but I'd rather not have to take one if I can get a refund. Not the end of the world though I suppose.
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Norwegian have been struggling for a while so there’s probably quite a highly probability there won’t be an opportunity to use a voucher they offer unfortunately.
 
Fi said:
Norwegian have been struggling for a while so there’s probably quite a highly probability there won’t be an opportunity to use a voucher they offer unfortunately.
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Will have to see how it all plays out. What fun!
 
I’m also taking the “wait and see” approach. Finnair actually seem to be quite flexible with flight bookings up the 30th June - I had a look at the site the other day, and it implied that they were able to refund fixed tickets for flights before the end of June if foreign office advice was still advising against international travel.

If my flight either gets cancelled outright or they extend their policy to cover my flight dates, I’ll take the refund. If that’s not an option, worst case scenario, I can recover some of the cost via. travel insurance, but I’d lose my excess that way, so I’d rather not go down that road unless I have to.

That said, I wonder whether travel insurance would cover a voucher for future travel if the airline goes out of business. If I can’t get refunded in full, if the voucher covers the full cost of a trip I know I still intend to make at some point, and if the worst case scenario is that I lose the excess on a travel insurance claim that I’d be paying anyway if I didn’t take a voucher, that might not be a bad option. I suppose it’ll be something to ask about if it gets to that point.
 
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