November 4, 2025 • 45 mins
Scott dives into the unfortunate situation with Showroom Travel and the cruise experiences featuring reality and Challenge talent they mishandled and that are now being cancelled. An awful ordeal that people should begin the process of getting their money back for immediately. Hopefully this provides some added detail and context for those affected or just interested overall. Simply put...if you booked anything Challenge or Reality related through Showroom Travel...get your money back ASAP. If you are just following all of this from afar, try not to have too much fun at other people's expense. A lot of people have been financially affected by this sham of an operation and although you may get a kick out of rooting for certain cast-members (or things associated with them) to fail...this is not the time or the place.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What's up everybody? Scott here and not gonna do a
whole spiel podcast brought to you by this. You didn't
come for me, you came for d Because this is
not an episode I want to be recording. It's just
one I feel obligated to record, just to continue to
download all you guys, give you guys information on everything
going down with the Showroom Travel reality cruises, one of
(00:21):
which was set to take sale this Thursday. Cruise itself
is taking setting sail, you know, Carnival Royal Caribbean. These
cruise lines, they don't even really know what's going on
with this stuff, So just so you guys know that,
but just want to, you know, fill in some of
the gaps for those of you guys who are either
following from Afar we're directly affected, and we're you know,
(00:42):
hoping to meet a lot of your favorite cast members
this week on the cruise, and then and then the
hundreds of you who have booked for future cruises because
those are not going to happen as well. So I
just want to make sure everybody has all the necessary
info and then and you know, I'll try to break
this down in detailed fashion and go in a timeline
and things like that. Read you got some of the
(01:03):
statements from some of the cast members they've already put out.
But just to catch everybody up in case you just clicked,
you know, listen on this and you thought it was
gonna be me talking about Saturday night's main event, or
you know how Olivia's baby shower was this this Sunday.
In the last year or so, you may have seen
several cruises being promoted by by cast members. The first
(01:27):
of which I believe that involved Challenge cast members is
the one that was announced about a year ago, put
on sale, sold very well from what I'm told, all
things considered, and then was supposed to leave this Thursday. Okay,
Now I just wanna just just you know, just so
everybody knows how this operation worked even on a good day,
(01:51):
is that this isn't a cruise company putting on these cruises,
so you know, it's not like a sixth man if
you will, who is a great company that puts on
cruises like the Jericho Cruise and the Impractical Jokers Cruise
and for Chryser's Cruise, and you know Kiss Cruise, three
eleven crews, you name it. These these cruises that are
music themed, comedy themed, wrestling themed, et cetera, where the
(02:12):
whole boat is there for that mission. Okay, And these
themed cruises have been very successful. A lot of you
guys have probably been on some or heard of them
and gotten fomo. And when you heard, oh, there's going
to be a challenge cruise or a reality cruise, you
jumped up at the idea to be able to attend one.
I get that sounds awesome. What this company was doing,
Showroom Travel, the guy behind the whole thing's name is
(02:33):
Mike Gibson. What they were doing is they were operating
more like a travel agency. What travel agencies usually do
is they put together travel groups. They're able to procure
people discounts and provide you know, added activities and do
some of the legwork on the booking end. And that's
the function they provide, and usually it's almost meant to
be more cost efficient for the passengers, not you know,
(02:56):
less cost efficient. So what Mike and Showroom Travel we're
doing was they were up charging people. Basically, I believe
customers were paying somewhere around you know, two to three
times more than it would be if you had just
gone through Royal Caribbean or Carnival to buy a regular
cabin on this cruise. They were charging say, three thousand
dollars for a one thousand dollars cabin. The caveat being
(03:19):
that if you booked through them, you would get to
hang out with the slew of cast members and talent
that they were booking for the crews Okay, and they
were providing you know, meet and greets and live panels
and workouts and other fun stuff. Sounds pretty cool that
being said, you know, just from Jump Street. I think
something that people didn't realize is that they weren't about
to set sail with two thousand people on a boat
(03:39):
all there to meet Johnny Bananas and car Maria. That
wasn't the case. They were always going to be a
smaller group within a larger boat, and hopefully it would
still you know, feel like a functioning, you know, themed event,
even if you know, sort of smaller in the totality
of the of the entire boat. Okay, all right, but
that's how this thing was run. The money, the up charge,
the fference between the one thousand dollars regular cabin and
(04:02):
the three thousand dollars you're paying this guy. That's the
money that he was presumably going to use to book
the talent, secure them, give them whatever fee they wanted. Obviously,
have to fly them in, put them up the night before,
potentially the night after. And you have to imagine there's
other expenses that go into this thing. Staffing people who
ideally on the boat would be providing security or you know,
(04:22):
being in coordinator positions, be able to get talent from
point A to point B. This stuff just doesn't run itself.
That being said, you know, he reached out to some
cast members first, got them involved, and they you know,
of course, yeah, cruise, that sounds fun. Oh I get
to go on a cruise for fun, and you're going
to pay me this great fee. Great, And so that's
why about a year ago, flyers started going up and
(04:43):
you started seeing, you know, advertisements for this cruise that
was supposed to leave this Thursday, involving Johnny Bananas and
Tory and Kara and Pauli and Casey and Nanni in
a lot of great names, and I believe you know
a lot of you guys bought cabins almost immediately and
it was considered to be sold out. The the travel
company saw the success of this and decided, hey, let's
hit the ground running, let's book some more of these.
(05:07):
That's when I was reached out to. They invited me
to be on the cruise that is set to take
place in January. They booked me like talent. Obviously, I'm
not a cast member on the show, but being that
I host a podcast about it and host panels and
things like that, I thought, I think that they thought
it would be fun to have me there doing said
things on the boat. So they booked me the same
(05:27):
way they booked Wes and Jordan and Kyle and Rachel
and Tina, and in this somewhat different group of people
that were supposed to go on the one in two months,
there were some overlap. There was a couple of people,
I believe Mark and Michelle and Devin who were set
to be on both. Now, then he started announcing more
and more cruises and you know, putting a Big Brother
(05:48):
Cruise on sale, a Survivor cruise on sale at Flora
Bama Shore cruise on sale, cruises that involved a plethora
of reality talent from from different shows, and just more
and more and more and more. Okay, now I mentioned
this because I think you know the reason this is
all going kaboom for lack of a better term, at once,
and why everyone who is involved or has bought a
(06:10):
ticket or a cabin or whatever you want to call
it for any of these cruises should be listening to this.
And although it is coming to a head with this
one this week, this is this entire company and guy
is I don't even want to say likely, you know,
is going to go down for having collected all this
money from these people and not being able to provide
the experience that they paid for. Okay, So if you
(06:30):
you know, bought a cabin for any of these cruises,
the one in January, any of them that have showroom
travel on it, if that's who you dealt with when
you book this, click pause right now and go and
start trying to get a refund. Now you know, this
company is probably not going to get back to you.
Hopefully they do, but you know, if they don't, don't
let that stop you. You should go and you should
talk to whoever you paid through, whether it was credit card, company, bank, whatever,
(06:54):
file a fraud case, whatever you got to do to
get your money back. So the thing that complicates this
thing further is the timeline of all of this, and
the fact that now there's a bunch of people who
a few days before this cruise were supposed to leave
are now finding out that the people they booked the
cruise to see and to hang out with, they're not
going to be there. Many of these people are already
(07:16):
in Florida or have obviously made travel arrangements, cleared their
calendar and spent, you know, a ton of money to
go on a cruise on Thursday. You know. How those
people want to handle it, you know, and how any
of you want to handle it is up to you.
If it says you have a cabin on the cruise,
then then you probably do. And if you want to
just go and have a good time on a regular
(07:38):
Royal Caribbean cruise, then then go and do that. You
know that that's up to you. I can just tell
you that booking a regular cruise is going to be
far more cost efficient and would have been hypothetically and
I know that ship has sailed poor choice of words.
But if you are in a position to to not
do this and to get fully refunded, obviously, I think
that's probably the way to go. You know, it really
(08:02):
sucks that so many faces that you know and trust
are associated with not just this cruise, but any of
these cruises. And I can tell you, you know, firsthand
that the reason these people wanted to be involved in
something like this is it sounds awesome, right, you know,
as much as it sounded awesome to you guys. Hey,
I get to do two things I love. I get
to go on a cruise and I get to hang
(08:22):
out with a bunch of reality cast members. Oh I
get to hang out with them for a few days.
You know. Oh, I might get to hang out in
the pool with them. You know, you know, it sounds
like the best of both worlds. I get it. Similarly,
these cast members were flattered to be offered the money
that they were offered, the opportunity that they were offered
and get and get offered to do something they don't
get asked to do all the time. The reason they
(08:43):
don't get asked to do these kinds of things all
the time is they are very very hard to pull off.
Speaking on behalf of someone who you know, hosts and
runs and produces modestly sized events on land, you know,
in venues that have an infrastructure for being to put
on shows and things like that, Like even those aren't easy, right,
(09:04):
and those are something as you know, like when when
we have lineups, like you know, there's budgets you have
to stick to, you know, travel doesn't you know, come free.
Like there are things that go into this stuff that
you know, at the very best hopefully makes them profitable.
But at the at the worst and at the least
you want to make sure that you're not in a
position where you don't even have the money to put
them on to begin with. Now, the the issue with
(09:30):
with this whole operation is that it's not that every
cruise was specific to Okay, this cruise did well. All
you guys bought your cabins, you did your job, All
these cast members are ready to set sail. Therefore, this
cruise is going to happen the larger infrastructure which lack
thereof and company and this guy just didn't run his
(09:51):
business well, didn't plan his year well. And that's why
there's there's not the you know, resource in place to
be able to have these cast members on this cruise
on Thursday. I can tell you because I was actually
physically with some of these people on Sunday and I
was in Phoenix for Olivia's baby shower, and you know,
(10:14):
Michelle was there, Casey's there, Josh was there, Anissa was there,
who was initially supposed to be on this but she
had pulled out a few weeks ago, months ago that
was never even publicized by them. Shows how little they
cared about actually delivering what they had promised. But like
Casey for instance, you know, she lives out west. She
needs a flight to be able to be in Florida
(10:34):
to be on a cruise, and she did not have
a flight. None of these people had hotel rooms for
the night before that they would obviously need to have
if they're going to be there for a boat that
leaves on Thursday, Which brings me back to the timeline
of it all and whatnot, And sadly, why this is
coming to a head so soon before so many of
you had or have plans to take part in this
(10:56):
one on Thursday is that the communication breaked down only
really started recently. Cast members only really started to feel
funky in the past few weeks when they were met
with silence from their contacts at this company when they
would want to know, hey, is my travel all set?
Is my plus one? On the cruise docket? Do I
have my WiFi paid for? Is there the credit that
(11:19):
you promised that would pay for Wi Fi on the
boat or pay for the alcohol package or what have you,
and just getting nothing, you know, nothing from the guy
getting getting passed along to lower level employees or contacts
or whatever who were just saying all they needed to
say to get it further a day further down the
line and eventually come you know, Sunday, Monday is really
(11:41):
when these cast members decided, hey, we need to say
something and we should you know, formally put out statements
that you know, looking like we're not going to be
at this thing. And you know, obviously you know, the
the money aspect of it. I don't want you guys
to think that these are just selfish cast members who
just aren't going to do it because they're not getting paid.
That's not it's the the the sign of you know,
(12:03):
if there's no money for this or that, is there
money for any of this stuff? You know, and the
band aid needed to be ripped off this thing as
soon as possible. Ideally it would have been ripped off
several weeks ago, if not months ago. When this guy
realized he didn't have the funds to put on this cruise.
It's it's absolutely business malpractice that the second he realized
this thing wasn't going to take place, he didn't put
(12:24):
out word to you guys immediately so you could start
adjusting your plans accordingly. But that's not what people do
usually when they are you know, bad operators, and when
they are you know, tucking and running, they usually wait
as long as humanly possible. And the guy did finally
put out a statement yesterday, following some of the statements
(12:44):
from the cast members and whatnot. Even leading up to this,
there were some red flags about this operation. A Big
Brother cruise happened this summer. People had awkward feelings coming
out of that. You can go and you can watch
some tick talk videos that people made about their experience
on the cruise. You know, obviously, people like myself other
(13:06):
cast members were receiving emails have you seen this? Have
you heard this? You know? Even that you know you
know again starts making you look at this differently. Okay,
is this being run by somebody who has the wherewithal
to put out a ethical experience, let alone a financially
viable one, or one that is not going to go
could put at some point the survivor one then happened.
(13:27):
And as far as them happening, they happened. Most of
the people who attended felt like they got a version
of the experience that was advertised. The cast members that went,
I guess some of them went just for the free cabin.
Some of them went to get paid, and they were paid. Now,
those people were likely paid by and with the money
that came in for say this November cruise or the
(13:50):
January cruise, and this guy and this company are using
the funds for these future cruises to pay for the
earlier ones, because let's be honest, if those earlier ones
ones didn't go off without a relative hitch. And I
say that in quotes because if you watch all these
TikTok videos and things like that, the the sort of
rumors and gossip that came out of these cruises were
bad enough on their own, but at least they happened,
(14:13):
you know, at least no one came out of those saying, oh,
the jig is up, this whole thing is a scam. Now,
obviously this one, with the amount of people involved, the
amount of cast members involved, et cetera. This is where
it's all come to a head, and it would have
come to a head earlier, you know, but the guy
obviously used the funds from this one, probably for future ones.
(14:35):
That's why he was announcing so many of these. I mean,
if you see, like you know, and and when I
was sort of contacted at first to hey, do you
want to would you do one of these? You know,
have you heard about this one they just put on sale,
and you know, and you know, Wes and other cast
members are thinking about maybe you know, hopping on board
(14:56):
for another one, and they're telling me when they're gonna
do it. I mean, the idea of doing one in January,
just two months after one in November sounded honestly silly, right.
It sounded like a bad time to do one, Like
you would probably want to schedule it so that if
everyone went on the November one and they had a
great time, they'd be able to book the January one, right,
It just didn't It just already from the start seemed like, Okay,
(15:21):
this guy is putting as many of these on sale
as possible to get money to come in on the
front end. He clearly needs it, now, does he need
it for the cruises that are about to take place.
Does he need it for personal reasons? Who knows? As
we now see by him cutting and running. You know,
the possibilities are literally endless, and it sucks because at
the root of this, what you have is a lot
(15:42):
of people, whether they are passengers, lash customers, who really
wanted this to be so and really wanted this to
be a cool thing they get to attend, and then
cast members who really want to be a part of
something that sounds fun for those people where they get
a version of a vacation coupled with, you know, a
great experience for their followers, for their fans, for viewers
of the show. Show right, it sounds like a win win. Okay.
(16:02):
Sometimes in life, when things sound too good to be true,
they are and this is unfortunately one of those situations. Look,
there's a lot of cast members that were and are
supposed to go on this one on Thursday. I could
tell you a lot of them are still trying to
maybe even make good on it and go and obviously
not even make a dollar off of it. Maybe you
have to pay their own WiFi, pay their own alcohol package,
(16:25):
lose money on it just because they feel that bad
about having let you guys down on a few days notice.
If they were given word even a second earlier, they
would have put out a statement earlier. They would have
you know, put the kibosh on this. They would have
canceled this earlier. I've been following it from Afar because
the one that I was booked for is in a
couple months. So obviously those of us who were booked
(16:46):
for that one, myself, Wes Jordan, Rachel Tina, these are
obviously people who care deeply about you guys as well.
We kind of have the quote unquote luxury and always
knew we would have this of seeing how this November
one played out, and the worst case scenario, okay, the
people for the January one are going to at least
have a two months heads up. Well, you know, as
(17:09):
is made clear by everything this week, you know everyone involved.
And when it's everyone involved, I just want to say,
it's I think it's just this guy, and maybe is what?
And again I guess I have to say allegedly, I
don't even know, because but the people that he's brought
in to facilitate and help in the quote unquote agents
who have maybe helped you along the way on the
phone and stuff. These are people who I think work
(17:31):
on a commission basis. I don't know how much they
know about this stuff, and I believe they were probably
late led astray as well. There was a group of
them that apparently after the Big Brother one, were either
like let go or not paid or whatever. Some of
these people would come to our shows and at first
we're like, you know, you know, trying to get people
to sign up, and then they came to a show
afterwards and they were like, oh no, we no longer
(17:51):
associate with the guy, We no longer work for or
with the guy again. Another red flag, and you know,
it's sucks. Obviously a lot of these red flags along
the way, but these are not even just red flags
that myself or cast members started to kind of sniff out.
Many of you guys sniff this stuff out as well.
I've been getting emails all year sort of things experiences
(18:15):
you guys were having. Hey, it's really shady that you know,
they don't answer my calls and they have to call
me back the next day, or you know, it's really
shady that they're you know, marking this up to this
extent or that I called the cruise line to book
an excursion. They don't even have a reservation under my name.
And yeah, you guys who who if this smelled funny
to you guys early on, you guys were right and
you're being proven right now. And for those of you
(18:37):
guys who decided to bow out and not do it,
you know, more power to you and you should be
glad you did so. For those of you guys who
didn't and who chose, you know what, I'm going to
hope for the best and wish for the best. It
sucks that you are now being punished, but hopefully if
you are not, and even if you are supposed to
go on the one this week, hopefully you're able to
get as much money back as possible. Hopefully you can
(18:57):
turn those flights into credits that you can use down
the line, things like that. But if you are signed
up for any of these, you know, especially the one
in January, you know that when that flyer went out
earlier this year had my face on it and Wes's
face on it, and Devin and Mark and everyone you know, please,
you know, start to try to get your money back asap.
And if you do want to still go on that
(19:19):
cruise because you made the time and your in your
family schedule and things like that, get all your money
back and then just go and book it through the
cruise line and do it that way. Because this whole
third party way and with this company, this company is
going down in a myriad of ways, and I highly
recommend just cutting and running as best possible. Yesterday, Mark
(19:40):
and Johnny put out this statement to our fans and
everyone who planned to attend Showroom Travel Cruise is with
our heavy hearts that Mark Long and I announced we
will not be attending this event. Despite our best efforts
to fulfill our commitment. The owners of this company have
become completely unresponsive and failed to uphold their obligations. Additionally,
it's been discovered that this event was sold under Feralt's pretenses,
and their action are potentially criminal in nature. To our
(20:02):
fans and anyone who purchased tickets based on our announced participation,
we sincerely apologize. We're making this statement now so you
have time to adjust or cancel your plans accordingly for
full transparency. No payment or compensation of any kind was
ever rendered to us for this event. We do not
take lightly when our names or likenesses are used for
fraudulent activity. As such, we will be pursuing all available
(20:23):
legal action to hold those responsible for this misrepresentation accountable.
So that's what they've put out. Shortly thereafter Casey put
out this statement, and I believe Josh Martinez and Torri
Dill and Michelle are kind of all sort of in
unison with this one. It breaks our heart to share this,
(20:43):
but due to circumstances completely out of our control, we
will not be attending the cruise organized by Showroom Travel,
led by Mike Gibson. It was our full intention to
fulfill our contracts, show up as talent, and create an
unforgettable experience for the fans who trusted this company. Unfortunately,
after discovering unpaid contracts, canceled hotel reservations, missing security details,
and a complete lack of itinerary or communication, it is
(21:03):
becoming possible for us to safely and responsibly move forward.
We are deeply sorry to everyone who spent their time
and money believing in this event. We know how disappointing
this is, and we hope you are able to recover
any funds you invested. We encourage everyone to seek their
own counsel on how to best proceed as each situation
may differ. We were genuinely looking forward to celebrating with
(21:24):
you all and we're heartbroken that it has come to this.
Thank you for understanding with all of the challengers. And
here's I got to say this also, So obviously there's
hundreds of people I don't know what the total is
who are directly affected by this one this week and
in general, people who bought in some capacity a cabin
(21:46):
put down a deposit again is directly affected. And then
I get that there are just thousands and thousands of
people watching with a bowl of popcorn online who are
going to comment on this, give their two cents. And
there's the shot and freud element of it. I've read
posts about like well that's what you get for wanting
to hang out with Tory and Casey on a boat
haha ha lol lol. First of all, a to be
(22:10):
rooting for anyone to go through this is you know,
psychotic and you're the worst kind of person around. B
this cruise sold very well based on these people's involvements. Okay,
it was obviously put on by somebody who should not
have been running a company like this and whose business
(22:32):
practice was just completely unethical and flawed in a myriad
of ways. To anyone who thinks that the Survivor one
or the Big Brother one, this summer taking place and
this one not taking place is a sign that those
shows are better, those people are better, et cetera. I
hate to break it to you, but what is likely
the case is that the funds that were brought in
(22:53):
from this one were used to pay those people to
make sure that those actually took place, so that the
jig was not up earlier. You know. And I don't
know that for a fact, but you know, I think
that that might be the case. You Know, what sucks
is is that the benefit of the doubt that you
(23:13):
want to give everybody in life, right, And you also, again,
the last thing you want to do is let people down, right,
And the last thing you want to do is be
the person who you know puts fear or uncertainty out
there too early. Right. And I can tell you, like
I said, these people, I was with them Sunday, We're
still gonna do whatever they could to be there Thursday
if it was possible. But the stuff that goes into this,
(23:36):
it's not as simple as just like you know, oh
this is a you know, get together at a bar
to watch the challenge or something like that. You know,
this is you know, you're asking these people, many of them,
to travel to Florida now on their own dime, you know,
get on a boat that presumably they have a cabin in,
but they don't know for sure. And again then be
on a boat with a bunch of people who you know,
(23:58):
paid to come see them, but without any of the
proper infrastructure, security, staffing, etc. That was promised to them
from the get go. And that stuff is necessary, you know,
and you know, people need to know what the boundaries are,
you know, what the time constraints are for the time
you would spend with these people. You know, I've been
on to Jericho Cruises and I can tell you that
there is a ton of staff in place to facilitate
(24:22):
the ongoing back and forth between the wrestlers and the
bands and the comedians and things like that and the
regular passengers. And again, this is doable because the entire boat,
the entire cruise itself, is functioning for that purpose. That's
not the case with this. So here's the guys statement.
This is Mike Gibson's statement. He's put this out yesterday, finally,
(24:44):
you know, three days before this thing on Thursday, he's
put this out. Now, I gotta say, this guy has
been unreachable to everyone. And again when I say this,
this is me speaking hearing everything kind of secondhand, because
again knowing that ours is in a couple months, you know,
we've sort of been letting this play out with this
one because look, this is the immediate issue, this is
(25:08):
the one on Thursday. But I've been being kept in
the loop and this guy's text have been coming up
green for weeks. Nobody's been able to get him on
the phone. And the only people who have been speaking
on his behalf are sort of no offense to them,
lower level employees that aren't really authorized to make any
decisions say anything with certainty. And we're kind of just
saying everything cast members needed to hear to push it
in another day, push it another day, push it another day.
(25:30):
When it was all bs, this statement finally goes out yesterday.
I believe he posted on Reddit. I believe he might
have posted it on his travel company group, etc. This
is what he writes statement. Sadly, I bit off more
than I can chew. I've used revenue from one cruise
and lapsed it into paying deposits for other postgame cruises
and action a lot of businesses do with mass cancelations
(25:52):
and failure to hit sales goals on future cruises. The
funds have not been made to pay for all talents
to participate in this cruise. This is the sole responsibility
of me, the sole owner of Showroom Travel, Mike Gibson.
Deposits made through Showroom Travel, which is all access funds
added to the wholesale cost of the cruise, are held
in a reserve account through our credit card processor. We
(26:14):
advise that you dispute all transactions made through Showroom Travel LLC.
Your disputes will be approved immediately as they are received,
and Stripe will reissue payment back to your original payment
method within five to seven business days. This was not
my intentions for any of these cruises. Your agents are
very limited on information and knew no different. They are
(26:36):
all amazing people simply trying to help people. I understand
this carries no way to any of you, but I
truly do apologize for this. The cruises are paid for
and reservation numbers are active. You will have no issue boarding,
even if you dispute the charges, because showroom travel is
separate from Royal Caribbean. Okay, so I guess it's only
Royal Caribbean. I don't know. I keep saying Carnival too,
(26:58):
so Royal Caribbean. Okay, fine, all right, So this is
this is his statement. First of all, it's littered with
spelling and grammar errors, which to me is a reason
why I suggest everyone, when you're putting out an important statement,
run it through chat, GPT or something, just to make
sure you don't have errors and stuff. And by the way,
I saw a couple of people running the Challengers statement through.
(27:19):
They like, was this written with AI? And it said
it was. Well, yeah, again, if I'm sending an important email,
putting out an important thing, run the draft through AI,
you know, because when you're putting out an important statement
like this, having it littered with errors only makes you
look worse. Not that this guy could look any worse
at this point, but it doesn't help. Look it's just sad.
(27:42):
It's as sad. It's an unfortunate thing. I can speak
personally because I am someone who I'm sure when earlier
this year, when it was announced that there was another
one of these. Maybe some of you guys couldn't have
attended the one for November schedule wise, maybe it has
sold out. You were excited to see that there was
gonna be another one two months down the line, that
Wes would be there, that Kyle would be there. Maybe
(28:03):
some people who book both of them because it was
relatively different group of cast members. You know, if you
saw my name and face on there and you thought,
oh cool, I'm going to get to see a fun
panel challenge many a panel on there, and that's why
you want tickets. Like, I'm truly and utterly sorry, and
I really hope that you can get your money back
for this. I just want everyone to know that the
(28:23):
cast members did not in any way want this to
happen or think that this would happen, and they ultimately
wanted to deliver you the experience that you were told
you were get you would get. Now, a lot of
other stuff is coming out about this guy, and I
don't even want to get into that because I'm sure
it'll come out and everything like that, as far as
(28:44):
other trouble that this guy has maybe allegedly gotten into
in his personal life or otherwise and things like that.
But when this operation was presented to any and all
cast members, you know, it sounded on the up and up.
The numbers and figures and the experience that was given
to them, and the paperwork that was given to them
sounded and looked professional. It seemed as if it was
(29:06):
a travel company that had had success, if not specifically
with doing reality cruises, at least was a travel company
that was on record as having delivered successful trips for
people in the past. And more than that, these are
cast members who wanted to bring you guys something cool.
When it was brought to them, yes, it felt cool
(29:26):
for them and in turn was supposed to be cool
for all of you guys. This is obviously going to
continue to you know, I think, take over the internet,
and people are going to be talking about it at length.
I'm surely here multiple cast members divulge their experience dealing
with the guy or not dealing with the guy. I've had.
I've actually never spoken to this guy, Mike Gibson directly.
(29:49):
I was operating through a mediator. I say that just
because you know all the cast members who and I've
been hearing again secondhand them how hard it's been to
get a hold of this guy. I did witness a
phone call with some of the cast members and the
guy over the summer after there were some concerns after
that Big Brother cruise. And I can tell you that
(30:12):
this guy always said, you know, you know, always had
the magic answer of this and that or whatever and whatnot.
And and you know, does your spider sense begin to
go off? Sure, but do you really just hope for
the best in that you the last thing you'd ever
want to do is let down hundreds of your fans,
of your followers who in good faith wanted to spend
(30:33):
time with you on a cruise. And I can tell
you just you know that that is the reason that
so many cast members a got involved, and so many
cast members were hoping for the best throughout this thing.
I now am just making it my goal for everyone
to know that, yes, this one is this week, and
(30:53):
this is the one where these people are getting super
screwed and are going to have the hardest time, you know,
fixing their travel plans and what not. But that if
you have booked any of these through Showroom Travel, And again,
I know that there are other companies who are doing
similar things so I want to stress that if you
are set to sail on any other cruise that is
not showroom travel related, that they were not the facilitator
(31:16):
of the reality talent, that you might still be good.
So I don't want everyone to go and run to whatever. Now, look,
this is going to reflect poorly on anyone who's doing
anything cruise related, water related, boat related, anything, right, you know,
you can have trouble, you know, I'm sure Sebastian is
going to have trouble getting people to go on as
fishing charters, you know, after this, because there's such a
(31:36):
stench and stink on it. But so that being said,
I just want to make sure if for whatever reason,
there's another cruise. I do know, Trishelle, I believe, went
on to one earlier this year that I think was
put on by another company, and she spoke very highly
of the experience and everything like that. So there are
other companies doing things. I don't want them to get
kind of caught in the back press of this, in
the in the in the wind tailwind of all this.
(31:58):
So make sure I'm talking about showroom travel here. But
if you booked for the reality Travel Extravaganza Cruz that
was set to be Martin Luther King weekend. Start getting
your money back. And you know, again, if you are
someone who is involved in this one this week and
(32:18):
you chose to, you choose to go on the cruise anyway,
and you know that there's probably not gonna be any
cast members there, and who knows, maybe a bump into one,
maybe one or two of these cast members, specifically the
ones who live in Florida, the ones who know, hey,
there is a cabin under my name. Maybe they are
so nice that they are going to go and they're
going to be on that boat and you bump into
them on the buffet line or what have you. I
know that not every single cast member has come out
(32:40):
and in detailed forms said what they're doing, so it
is possible that happens. So I do not want to
speak for them. I can I think I believe having
had independent conversations with some of these people, I believe
I can speak for Wes and for Tina and for
Rachel in saying that we will definitely not be taking
part in any way the one in January, and that
(33:02):
is effectively now just a regular Royal Caribbean cruise. Okay,
And if you booked a cabin through showroom travel. It
is possible you have a cabin on that cruise, but
that you will not be rubbing elbows with any of us.
We will not be on there. We are trying to
get the word out as quickly as possible so that
you guys, hopefully now have about two months to get
(33:22):
your ducks in a row, get your fraud claims in,
get your money back, get your deposits back, any travel
that is related to it. Hopefully you can at least
get credits. I know sometimes hotels can be you know,
sting you with that stuff, so just call them and
do what you can explain the situation. You know. I
know that airlines ever since COVID have been fairly flexible
when it comes to at least issuing credits for this stuff.
(33:45):
So that like, at the very least you might not
get your money back for the flight, but you might
be able to put it towards a different flight, And
if you're somebody who travels quite a bit, it should
still be fairly useful within the calendar year. So get
on that stuff like that. That's why I'm trying to,
you know, put this out there for those of you
guys who want to listen and look. More of this
stuff is going to come out. I'm sure it's going
(34:06):
to be a huge scandal. You're going to read a
lot about it, You're going to see a lot about it.
You're going to see a lot of people chirping and
this and that, and having fun at the expense of
the cast members involved, ha ha ha ha. That's what
you get for one to hang out with so and
so whatever, ha ha. And having fun essentially sadly at
the customer's expenses, who literally their expenses and their finances
are seriously affected by this. And that's before you even
(34:28):
include just like the mental health of it all, the
disappointment of it all. Hey, it sucks to have things
canceled taken from you, things like that, even in the
best of circumstances, and these, I would say are probably
the worst of circumstances. So, if there's someone out there
that's listening to this and you in any way are
having fun at just watching this play out, maybe it's
making you feel better about having not booked yourself, or
(34:50):
maybe you always had a feeling this is what it
was going to be. And for those of you guys
who that was the case. You know, more power to
you for snuffing it out, but you don't need to
rub it in everybody's face. I'll just say that if
anybody has any questions, I'm happy to help, try to
help in any way I can. I'll be honest. Like
(35:11):
I said, it's you know, my ability to even point
you in any direction is sort of limited because, like
I said, this this company and this guy, I don't
know that they're even going to be you know, directly
talking to people at this point. I'm like they have
ceased direct contact with the cast members on this next
one for the past few weeks and have only been
sort of you know, putting small little band aids on
(35:34):
it and whatnot and telling them what they want they
want to hear and need to hear, to kind of
push it one day further, one day further, one day further,
and now this is all just kind of you know,
going up in flames. So you know, again, sorry to
anyone who and and look this is coming from someone
who I and a lot of people have made the
(35:54):
connection here. If you guys remember about seven or eight
years ago, it was around the time we started doing
this podcast. It was a party operation, and the guy
ended up getting a little over his head with that
as well, using you know, the next events, then the
money that came in from that to pay the exorbitant
(36:15):
cast fees he was paying people for past events, and
when those didn't sell and these didn't sell, he eventually
cut and run and left a bunch of people needing
to submit for credit card refunds and things in that.
And those were for like parties again on land and
this and that, and people would be out a few
bucks here, a few hundred bucks here, and fine, but
that put a stench on this whole world for a
year at least, you know, and people have been, you know,
(36:37):
mentioning that guy's name and talking about how this feels
like that, and this is similar to that, but it's
worse because, you know, unlike a two hundred dollars party
ticket or whatever those were, these are two thousand dollars,
three thousand dollars cruise experiences people were buying with additional
travel expenses and things like that, and all that stuff
has now been taken from everybody. A lot of these
people had these plans on their calendars for years or
(36:58):
for a year at least, and now that's being taken away,
not to mention all the cast members who have been swindled,
whose faces and names and likeness have been used to
calm these people. And it really sucks. So and this
is coming from somebody who obviously works in a similar space.
And I put a lot of time and a lot
of heart and a lot of thought into the events
(37:18):
that we put on and the shows that we put on,
making sure that we deliver the experience that we try
very much so to advertise and uphold, and when we can't,
we try to make good on it. We try to
be you know, in the interests of interests of transparency,
any changes or alterations, we try to put them out
there to you. And we try more than anything to
just to not bite off more than we can chew.
(37:41):
And I'm now using his words. It's literally the first
sentence in his statements, sadly, I bid off more than
I can chew. And you know that's something that that's
step one, biting off more than you can choose step one,
you know, obviously being able to own up to that
(38:01):
now a little too little, too late. It's not just
about not biting off more than you can chew. When
you do bite off more than you can chew, it's
how you handle it. And unfortunately, the way that this
guy handled it was just pushing it further and further
down the road, robbing Peter to pay Paul, using one
cruise to pay for the other, announcing another cruise. And
this is what this guy was doing. I mean, if
(38:21):
you saw earlier this year, there was a cruise where
he announced CT for it before he had formally committed
to it, and then CT put out this video in
his car saying, oh I never signed up for this cruise,
and then okay, magically the next day or two, okay,
now he is on board. And that's because he basically
was able to say, oh, you got to pay me
this number, and the guy said sure, sure, whatever he
could to solve that problem, he said, you know, now
(38:44):
he's got and I'm sure maybe let's say fifty people
went and booked for that one in March. Guess what,
he's probably taking that money and immediately using it to
pay for whatever debt or whatever things he had on
the forefront. And that's kind of what this thing ended
up becoming and doing. And that's not just fighting off
more than you can chew. Okay, that's knowing not knowing
where or how to spit out the extra shit that
(39:06):
you bid off, you know, and not handling it well
and not knowing how to just swallow it and take
it on the chin. And instead of realizing because this
guy realized he bid off more than he could chew,
probably months ago, and instead he bid off more and
more and more and more. And so you know, one
of them he bid off is the one in January
that myself and Wes and Rachel and Tina and our
(39:27):
faces were on there and we feel terrible about that.
And then there are future ones. So if Shotroum Travels
name is on the cruise that you had interested in
going to or booked to go to, get out. Now,
this one, this week, sadly, is sort of patient zero
in that the most people are going to be directly
affected by this. It is so close to the time
(39:48):
that it was supposed to take place that, you know,
people's plans are almost it's almost impossible. And I'm sure
there's certainly people down there and things like that. But
the silver lining, and I mean this in I mean
this in the nicest way possible, is that now everyone
is looking to this talent, hopefully future customers as looking
at this as a and this is how you should
take it. I'm telling you right now as a as
(40:11):
a sign and as a in my opinion, as a fact,
that all showroom travel experiences are going to cease to
exist in the manner in which they were advertised to you.
And thus you should get out now while you can. So.
Once again, this is terrible, and I really feel for
(40:31):
everybody involved, cast members alike. They do not like letting
you guys down. I can tell you that they really don't,
and I certainly don't. If you know anything about me,
you know that I do not. So to anybody involved
in this, I'm sorry. It sounded like it would have
been really cool had the right person been at the
helm of it. But I imagine if if the right person
(40:54):
had been at the helm of it, it would have looked
a lot different, you know what I mean. Maybe not
as many faces on that flyer, because maybe you can't
afford that many names and faces. Maybe not as big
of names because maybe you can't even afford to give
those people what they want. Maybe not as many cruises
or all at once, because a smarter person, or a
more savvy person, or at least a more ethical person
(41:14):
would have planned them out and timed them out so
that they didn't you know, hemorrhage each other when it
came to interest level and things like that. But that's
not how this whole thing was run. And yeah, so
I honestly don't even know really what the ultimate goal
of recording this was. I just kind of wanted to
put as much information out there as possible, and you know,
(41:38):
hopefully this was meant to absolve all the you know,
the casts and talent or anyone, whether it's you know,
whether it's someone you you know, spoke to a friend
who talked you into wanting to be a part of
one of these or whatever, hoping to just absolve all
of them, because you know, this company and this guy
and everybody who was you know, deputy to speak on
(42:00):
his behalf were just telling people exactly what they needed
to hear. And when the proof of concept cruises arose
like everyone's sitting back, let's see how this big Brother
one goes. And look again, you can go and you
can watch those TikTok videos. It's not like those. There
wasn't a little bit of bad press that came out
of those, But it wasn't they happened, right, They happened
that people went, they set sail. The experience was similar,
(42:23):
similar to what was advertised, and the casts were paid
and things like that. Okay, now there's a Survivor one.
Michelle was even on the Survivor one when she got back.
How did it go? Yeah, there's stuff I would change,
but it happened. People seemed happy, everyone got paid, okay.
And that's the problem is that the band aids that
were put on those and those that those that happened
(42:44):
that could have been a sign earlier on for this
one in November, those were paid for and those were
only possible because this guy was using the funds for this.
And now there's no funds to fly in a casey,
or book a room for Josh, or make sure Carl
Marias plus one is on there, or staff up any
of the positions that are needed to even facilitate this experience.
And you know, I read that he was even up
(43:04):
charging people and upselling them on like VIP experiences that
the cast members didn't even know about, like oh, a
limo ride to the dock with the cast and you know,
Champagne toast and things like that that cast members were
never even told about this, let alone was there ever
any plan put in place to deliver on these promises.
And and I mean when you think about the fact
(43:25):
that he's up charging and upselling people in that capacity
and then doesn't even have the funds to book the
hotel rooms for the people involved, I mean, this is
just such a bit off. More than you can chew
is the understatement of the century. And again, biting off
more than you can chew is something that you know,
many people have done and will do again. But it's
how you handle it, and it's where you spit out
(43:48):
the food that you can't handle, how soon you do it,
and how you deliver that information. And this guy was
just you know, from the start, he was just not
the person to have done this. So anyway, sorry to
anybody involved. If there's any I don't know if there's
any other assistance I can provide or anything like that,
you know, email me Challenge Media Podcast at gmail dot com.
(44:09):
But as if it isn't certain already, just wanted to
reiterate the January one. There will not be any of
us or none of us are taking part in that,
So please get your money back as soon as you can.
And uh, yeah, I I uh, I hate, I hate
that this happened, but you know, let's let's all just
move forward and move past it. Uh. And if you
(44:31):
are listening to this again, I gotta say this, do
not have fun at do not do not let this
be a fun thing. The shot and freud, if you
know the term, do not just have fun watching this
play out? This is uh. You know, a lot of
a lot of good people were negatively affected by this.
And just because maybe some cast members that you're not
a fan of where we're involved, you know, you don't
(44:53):
need to joke about all it's because that's what you
get for wanting to do anything with these people. Because
these are even if they're not your favorite cast, remember,
these are good people too. They didn't want to let
anybody down. So but sadly, by proxy, there are a
lot of people that have been let down. So all right, everybody,
enjoy the rest of your day, and yeah, take care.
What's up everybody? Scott here and not gonna do a
whole spiel podcast brought to you by this. You didn't
come for me, you came for d Because this is
not an episode I want to be recording. It's just
one I feel obligated to record, just to continue to
download all you guys, give you guys information on everything
going down with the Showroom Travel reality cruises, one of
(00:21):
which was set to take sale this Thursday. Cruise itself
is taking setting sail, you know, Carnival Royal Caribbean. These
cruise lines, they don't even really know what's going on
with this stuff, So just so you guys know that,
but just want to, you know, fill in some of
the gaps for those of you guys who are either
following from Afar we're directly affected, and we're you know,
(00:42):
hoping to meet a lot of your favorite cast members
this week on the cruise, and then and then the
hundreds of you who have booked for future cruises because
those are not going to happen as well. So I
just want to make sure everybody has all the necessary
info and then and you know, I'll try to break
this down in detailed fashion and go in a timeline
and things like that. Read you got some of the
(01:03):
statements from some of the cast members they've already put out.
But just to catch everybody up in case you just clicked,
you know, listen on this and you thought it was
gonna be me talking about Saturday night's main event, or
you know how Olivia's baby shower was this this Sunday.
In the last year or so, you may have seen
several cruises being promoted by by cast members. The first
(01:27):
of which I believe that involved Challenge cast members is
the one that was announced about a year ago, put
on sale, sold very well from what I'm told, all
things considered, and then was supposed to leave this Thursday. Okay,
Now I just wanna just just you know, just so
everybody knows how this operation worked even on a good day,
(01:51):
is that this isn't a cruise company putting on these cruises,
so you know, it's not like a sixth man if
you will, who is a great company that puts on
cruises like the Jericho Cruise and the Impractical Jokers Cruise
and for Chryser's Cruise, and you know Kiss Cruise, three
eleven crews, you name it. These these cruises that are
music themed, comedy themed, wrestling themed, et cetera, where the
(02:12):
whole boat is there for that mission. Okay, And these
themed cruises have been very successful. A lot of you
guys have probably been on some or heard of them
and gotten fomo. And when you heard, oh, there's going
to be a challenge cruise or a reality cruise, you
jumped up at the idea to be able to attend one.
I get that sounds awesome. What this company was doing,
Showroom Travel, the guy behind the whole thing's name is
(02:33):
Mike Gibson. What they were doing is they were operating
more like a travel agency. What travel agencies usually do
is they put together travel groups. They're able to procure
people discounts and provide you know, added activities and do
some of the legwork on the booking end. And that's
the function they provide, and usually it's almost meant to
be more cost efficient for the passengers, not you know,
(02:56):
less cost efficient. So what Mike and Showroom Travel we're
doing was they were up charging people. Basically, I believe
customers were paying somewhere around you know, two to three
times more than it would be if you had just
gone through Royal Caribbean or Carnival to buy a regular
cabin on this cruise. They were charging say, three thousand
dollars for a one thousand dollars cabin. The caveat being
(03:19):
that if you booked through them, you would get to
hang out with the slew of cast members and talent
that they were booking for the crews Okay, and they
were providing you know, meet and greets and live panels
and workouts and other fun stuff. Sounds pretty cool that
being said, you know, just from Jump Street. I think
something that people didn't realize is that they weren't about
to set sail with two thousand people on a boat
(03:39):
all there to meet Johnny Bananas and car Maria. That
wasn't the case. They were always going to be a
smaller group within a larger boat, and hopefully it would
still you know, feel like a functioning, you know, themed event,
even if you know, sort of smaller in the totality
of the of the entire boat. Okay, all right, but
that's how this thing was run. The money, the up charge,
the fference between the one thousand dollars regular cabin and
(04:02):
the three thousand dollars you're paying this guy. That's the
money that he was presumably going to use to book
the talent, secure them, give them whatever fee they wanted. Obviously,
have to fly them in, put them up the night before,
potentially the night after. And you have to imagine there's
other expenses that go into this thing. Staffing people who
ideally on the boat would be providing security or you know,
(04:22):
being in coordinator positions, be able to get talent from
point A to point B. This stuff just doesn't run itself.
That being said, you know, he reached out to some
cast members first, got them involved, and they you know,
of course, yeah, cruise, that sounds fun. Oh I get
to go on a cruise for fun, and you're going
to pay me this great fee. Great, And so that's
why about a year ago, flyers started going up and
(04:43):
you started seeing, you know, advertisements for this cruise that
was supposed to leave this Thursday, involving Johnny Bananas and
Tory and Kara and Pauli and Casey and Nanni in
a lot of great names, and I believe you know
a lot of you guys bought cabins almost immediately and
it was considered to be sold out. The the travel
company saw the success of this and decided, hey, let's
hit the ground running, let's book some more of these.
(05:07):
That's when I was reached out to. They invited me
to be on the cruise that is set to take
place in January. They booked me like talent. Obviously, I'm
not a cast member on the show, but being that
I host a podcast about it and host panels and
things like that, I thought, I think that they thought
it would be fun to have me there doing said
things on the boat. So they booked me the same
(05:27):
way they booked Wes and Jordan and Kyle and Rachel
and Tina, and in this somewhat different group of people
that were supposed to go on the one in two months,
there were some overlap. There was a couple of people,
I believe Mark and Michelle and Devin who were set
to be on both. Now, then he started announcing more
and more cruises and you know, putting a Big Brother
(05:48):
Cruise on sale, a Survivor cruise on sale at Flora
Bama Shore cruise on sale, cruises that involved a plethora
of reality talent from from different shows, and just more
and more and more and more. Okay, now I mentioned
this because I think you know the reason this is
all going kaboom for lack of a better term, at once,
and why everyone who is involved or has bought a
(06:10):
ticket or a cabin or whatever you want to call
it for any of these cruises should be listening to this.
And although it is coming to a head with this
one this week, this is this entire company and guy
is I don't even want to say likely, you know,
is going to go down for having collected all this
money from these people and not being able to provide
the experience that they paid for. Okay, So if you
(06:30):
you know, bought a cabin for any of these cruises,
the one in January, any of them that have showroom
travel on it, if that's who you dealt with when
you book this, click pause right now and go and
start trying to get a refund. Now you know, this
company is probably not going to get back to you.
Hopefully they do, but you know, if they don't, don't
let that stop you. You should go and you should
talk to whoever you paid through, whether it was credit card, company, bank, whatever,
(06:54):
file a fraud case, whatever you got to do to
get your money back. So the thing that complicates this
thing further is the timeline of all of this, and
the fact that now there's a bunch of people who
a few days before this cruise were supposed to leave
are now finding out that the people they booked the
cruise to see and to hang out with, they're not
going to be there. Many of these people are already
(07:16):
in Florida or have obviously made travel arrangements, cleared their
calendar and spent, you know, a ton of money to
go on a cruise on Thursday. You know. How those
people want to handle it, you know, and how any
of you want to handle it is up to you.
If it says you have a cabin on the cruise,
then then you probably do. And if you want to
just go and have a good time on a regular
(07:38):
Royal Caribbean cruise, then then go and do that. You
know that that's up to you. I can just tell
you that booking a regular cruise is going to be
far more cost efficient and would have been hypothetically and
I know that ship has sailed poor choice of words.
But if you are in a position to to not
do this and to get fully refunded, obviously, I think
that's probably the way to go. You know, it really
(08:02):
sucks that so many faces that you know and trust
are associated with not just this cruise, but any of
these cruises. And I can tell you, you know, firsthand
that the reason these people wanted to be involved in
something like this is it sounds awesome, right, you know,
as much as it sounded awesome to you guys. Hey,
I get to do two things I love. I get
to go on a cruise and I get to hang
(08:22):
out with a bunch of reality cast members. Oh I
get to hang out with them for a few days.
You know. Oh, I might get to hang out in
the pool with them. You know, you know, it sounds
like the best of both worlds. I get it. Similarly,
these cast members were flattered to be offered the money
that they were offered, the opportunity that they were offered
and get and get offered to do something they don't
get asked to do all the time. The reason they
(08:43):
don't get asked to do these kinds of things all
the time is they are very very hard to pull off.
Speaking on behalf of someone who you know, hosts and
runs and produces modestly sized events on land, you know,
in venues that have an infrastructure for being to put
on shows and things like that, Like even those aren't easy, right,
(09:04):
and those are something as you know, like when when
we have lineups, like you know, there's budgets you have
to stick to, you know, travel doesn't you know, come free.
Like there are things that go into this stuff that
you know, at the very best hopefully makes them profitable.
But at the at the worst and at the least
you want to make sure that you're not in a
position where you don't even have the money to put
them on to begin with. Now, the the issue with
(09:30):
with this whole operation is that it's not that every
cruise was specific to Okay, this cruise did well. All
you guys bought your cabins, you did your job, All
these cast members are ready to set sail. Therefore, this
cruise is going to happen the larger infrastructure which lack
thereof and company and this guy just didn't run his
(09:51):
business well, didn't plan his year well. And that's why
there's there's not the you know, resource in place to
be able to have these cast members on this cruise
on Thursday. I can tell you because I was actually
physically with some of these people on Sunday and I
was in Phoenix for Olivia's baby shower, and you know,
(10:14):
Michelle was there, Casey's there, Josh was there, Anissa was there,
who was initially supposed to be on this but she
had pulled out a few weeks ago, months ago that
was never even publicized by them. Shows how little they
cared about actually delivering what they had promised. But like
Casey for instance, you know, she lives out west. She
needs a flight to be able to be in Florida
(10:34):
to be on a cruise, and she did not have
a flight. None of these people had hotel rooms for
the night before that they would obviously need to have
if they're going to be there for a boat that
leaves on Thursday, Which brings me back to the timeline
of it all and whatnot, And sadly, why this is
coming to a head so soon before so many of
you had or have plans to take part in this
(10:56):
one on Thursday is that the communication breaked down only
really started recently. Cast members only really started to feel
funky in the past few weeks when they were met
with silence from their contacts at this company when they
would want to know, hey, is my travel all set?
Is my plus one? On the cruise docket? Do I
have my WiFi paid for? Is there the credit that
(11:19):
you promised that would pay for Wi Fi on the
boat or pay for the alcohol package or what have you,
and just getting nothing, you know, nothing from the guy
getting getting passed along to lower level employees or contacts
or whatever who were just saying all they needed to
say to get it further a day further down the
line and eventually come you know, Sunday, Monday is really
(11:41):
when these cast members decided, hey, we need to say
something and we should you know, formally put out statements
that you know, looking like we're not going to be
at this thing. And you know, obviously you know, the
the money aspect of it. I don't want you guys
to think that these are just selfish cast members who
just aren't going to do it because they're not getting paid.
That's not it's the the the sign of you know,
(12:03):
if there's no money for this or that, is there
money for any of this stuff? You know, and the
band aid needed to be ripped off this thing as
soon as possible. Ideally it would have been ripped off
several weeks ago, if not months ago. When this guy
realized he didn't have the funds to put on this cruise.
It's it's absolutely business malpractice that the second he realized
this thing wasn't going to take place, he didn't put
(12:24):
out word to you guys immediately so you could start
adjusting your plans accordingly. But that's not what people do
usually when they are you know, bad operators, and when
they are you know, tucking and running, they usually wait
as long as humanly possible. And the guy did finally
put out a statement yesterday, following some of the statements
(12:44):
from the cast members and whatnot. Even leading up to this,
there were some red flags about this operation. A Big
Brother cruise happened this summer. People had awkward feelings coming
out of that. You can go and you can watch
some tick talk videos that people made about their experience
on the cruise. You know, obviously, people like myself other
(13:06):
cast members were receiving emails have you seen this? Have
you heard this? You know? Even that you know you
know again starts making you look at this differently. Okay,
is this being run by somebody who has the wherewithal
to put out a ethical experience, let alone a financially
viable one, or one that is not going to go
could put at some point the survivor one then happened.
(13:27):
And as far as them happening, they happened. Most of
the people who attended felt like they got a version
of the experience that was advertised. The cast members that went,
I guess some of them went just for the free cabin.
Some of them went to get paid, and they were paid. Now,
those people were likely paid by and with the money
that came in for say this November cruise or the
(13:50):
January cruise, and this guy and this company are using
the funds for these future cruises to pay for the
earlier ones, because let's be honest, if those earlier ones
ones didn't go off without a relative hitch. And I
say that in quotes because if you watch all these
TikTok videos and things like that, the the sort of
rumors and gossip that came out of these cruises were
bad enough on their own, but at least they happened,
(14:13):
you know, at least no one came out of those saying, oh,
the jig is up, this whole thing is a scam. Now,
obviously this one, with the amount of people involved, the
amount of cast members involved, et cetera. This is where
it's all come to a head, and it would have
come to a head earlier, you know, but the guy
obviously used the funds from this one, probably for future ones.
(14:35):
That's why he was announcing so many of these. I mean,
if you see, like you know, and and when I
was sort of contacted at first to hey, do you
want to would you do one of these? You know,
have you heard about this one they just put on sale,
and you know, and you know, Wes and other cast
members are thinking about maybe you know, hopping on board
(14:56):
for another one, and they're telling me when they're gonna
do it. I mean, the idea of doing one in January,
just two months after one in November sounded honestly silly, right.
It sounded like a bad time to do one, Like
you would probably want to schedule it so that if
everyone went on the November one and they had a
great time, they'd be able to book the January one, right,
It just didn't It just already from the start seemed like, Okay,
(15:21):
this guy is putting as many of these on sale
as possible to get money to come in on the
front end. He clearly needs it, now, does he need
it for the cruises that are about to take place.
Does he need it for personal reasons? Who knows? As
we now see by him cutting and running. You know,
the possibilities are literally endless, and it sucks because at
the root of this, what you have is a lot
(15:42):
of people, whether they are passengers, lash customers, who really
wanted this to be so and really wanted this to
be a cool thing they get to attend, and then
cast members who really want to be a part of
something that sounds fun for those people where they get
a version of a vacation coupled with, you know, a
great experience for their followers, for their fans, for viewers
of the show. Show right, it sounds like a win win. Okay.
(16:02):
Sometimes in life, when things sound too good to be true,
they are and this is unfortunately one of those situations. Look,
there's a lot of cast members that were and are
supposed to go on this one on Thursday. I could
tell you a lot of them are still trying to
maybe even make good on it and go and obviously
not even make a dollar off of it. Maybe you
have to pay their own WiFi, pay their own alcohol package,
(16:25):
lose money on it just because they feel that bad
about having let you guys down on a few days notice.
If they were given word even a second earlier, they
would have put out a statement earlier. They would have
you know, put the kibosh on this. They would have
canceled this earlier. I've been following it from Afar because
the one that I was booked for is in a
couple months. So obviously those of us who were booked
(16:46):
for that one, myself, Wes Jordan, Rachel Tina, these are
obviously people who care deeply about you guys as well.
We kind of have the quote unquote luxury and always
knew we would have this of seeing how this November
one played out, and the worst case scenario, okay, the
people for the January one are going to at least
have a two months heads up. Well, you know, as
(17:09):
is made clear by everything this week, you know everyone involved.
And when it's everyone involved, I just want to say,
it's I think it's just this guy, and maybe is what?
And again I guess I have to say allegedly, I
don't even know, because but the people that he's brought
in to facilitate and help in the quote unquote agents
who have maybe helped you along the way on the
phone and stuff. These are people who I think work
(17:31):
on a commission basis. I don't know how much they
know about this stuff, and I believe they were probably
late led astray as well. There was a group of
them that apparently after the Big Brother one, were either
like let go or not paid or whatever. Some of
these people would come to our shows and at first
we're like, you know, you know, trying to get people
to sign up, and then they came to a show
afterwards and they were like, oh no, we no longer
(17:51):
associate with the guy, We no longer work for or
with the guy again. Another red flag, and you know,
it's sucks. Obviously a lot of these red flags along
the way, but these are not even just red flags
that myself or cast members started to kind of sniff out.
Many of you guys sniff this stuff out as well.
I've been getting emails all year sort of things experiences
(18:15):
you guys were having. Hey, it's really shady that you know,
they don't answer my calls and they have to call
me back the next day, or you know, it's really
shady that they're you know, marking this up to this
extent or that I called the cruise line to book
an excursion. They don't even have a reservation under my name.
And yeah, you guys who who if this smelled funny
to you guys early on, you guys were right and
you're being proven right now. And for those of you
(18:37):
guys who decided to bow out and not do it,
you know, more power to you and you should be
glad you did so. For those of you guys who
didn't and who chose, you know what, I'm going to
hope for the best and wish for the best. It
sucks that you are now being punished, but hopefully if
you are not, and even if you are supposed to
go on the one this week, hopefully you're able to
get as much money back as possible. Hopefully you can
(18:57):
turn those flights into credits that you can use down
the line, things like that. But if you are signed
up for any of these, you know, especially the one
in January, you know that when that flyer went out
earlier this year had my face on it and Wes's
face on it, and Devin and Mark and everyone you know, please,
you know, start to try to get your money back asap.
And if you do want to still go on that
(19:19):
cruise because you made the time and your in your
family schedule and things like that, get all your money
back and then just go and book it through the
cruise line and do it that way. Because this whole
third party way and with this company, this company is
going down in a myriad of ways, and I highly
recommend just cutting and running as best possible. Yesterday, Mark
(19:40):
and Johnny put out this statement to our fans and
everyone who planned to attend Showroom Travel Cruise is with
our heavy hearts that Mark Long and I announced we
will not be attending this event. Despite our best efforts
to fulfill our commitment. The owners of this company have
become completely unresponsive and failed to uphold their obligations. Additionally,
it's been discovered that this event was sold under Feralt's pretenses,
and their action are potentially criminal in nature. To our
(20:02):
fans and anyone who purchased tickets based on our announced participation,
we sincerely apologize. We're making this statement now so you
have time to adjust or cancel your plans accordingly for
full transparency. No payment or compensation of any kind was
ever rendered to us for this event. We do not
take lightly when our names or likenesses are used for
fraudulent activity. As such, we will be pursuing all available
(20:23):
legal action to hold those responsible for this misrepresentation accountable.
So that's what they've put out. Shortly thereafter Casey put
out this statement, and I believe Josh Martinez and Torri
Dill and Michelle are kind of all sort of in
unison with this one. It breaks our heart to share this,
(20:43):
but due to circumstances completely out of our control, we
will not be attending the cruise organized by Showroom Travel,
led by Mike Gibson. It was our full intention to
fulfill our contracts, show up as talent, and create an
unforgettable experience for the fans who trusted this company. Unfortunately,
after discovering unpaid contracts, canceled hotel reservations, missing security details,
and a complete lack of itinerary or communication, it is
(21:03):
becoming possible for us to safely and responsibly move forward.
We are deeply sorry to everyone who spent their time
and money believing in this event. We know how disappointing
this is, and we hope you are able to recover
any funds you invested. We encourage everyone to seek their
own counsel on how to best proceed as each situation
may differ. We were genuinely looking forward to celebrating with
(21:24):
you all and we're heartbroken that it has come to this.
Thank you for understanding with all of the challengers. And
here's I got to say this also, So obviously there's
hundreds of people I don't know what the total is
who are directly affected by this one this week and
in general, people who bought in some capacity a cabin
(21:46):
put down a deposit again is directly affected. And then
I get that there are just thousands and thousands of
people watching with a bowl of popcorn online who are
going to comment on this, give their two cents. And
there's the shot and freud element of it. I've read
posts about like well that's what you get for wanting
to hang out with Tory and Casey on a boat
haha ha lol lol. First of all, a to be
(22:10):
rooting for anyone to go through this is you know,
psychotic and you're the worst kind of person around. B
this cruise sold very well based on these people's involvements. Okay,
it was obviously put on by somebody who should not
have been running a company like this and whose business
(22:32):
practice was just completely unethical and flawed in a myriad
of ways. To anyone who thinks that the Survivor one
or the Big Brother one, this summer taking place and
this one not taking place is a sign that those
shows are better, those people are better, et cetera. I
hate to break it to you, but what is likely
the case is that the funds that were brought in
(22:53):
from this one were used to pay those people to
make sure that those actually took place, so that the
jig was not up earlier. You know. And I don't
know that for a fact, but you know, I think
that that might be the case. You Know, what sucks
is is that the benefit of the doubt that you
(23:13):
want to give everybody in life, right, And you also, again,
the last thing you want to do is let people down, right,
And the last thing you want to do is be
the person who you know puts fear or uncertainty out
there too early. Right. And I can tell you, like
I said, these people, I was with them Sunday, We're
still gonna do whatever they could to be there Thursday
if it was possible. But the stuff that goes into this,
(23:36):
it's not as simple as just like you know, oh
this is a you know, get together at a bar
to watch the challenge or something like that. You know,
this is you know, you're asking these people, many of them,
to travel to Florida now on their own dime, you know,
get on a boat that presumably they have a cabin in,
but they don't know for sure. And again then be
on a boat with a bunch of people who you know,
(23:58):
paid to come see them, but without any of the
proper infrastructure, security, staffing, etc. That was promised to them
from the get go. And that stuff is necessary, you know,
and you know, people need to know what the boundaries are,
you know, what the time constraints are for the time
you would spend with these people. You know, I've been
on to Jericho Cruises and I can tell you that
there is a ton of staff in place to facilitate
(24:22):
the ongoing back and forth between the wrestlers and the
bands and the comedians and things like that and the
regular passengers. And again, this is doable because the entire boat,
the entire cruise itself, is functioning for that purpose. That's
not the case with this. So here's the guys statement.
This is Mike Gibson's statement. He's put this out yesterday, finally,
(24:44):
you know, three days before this thing on Thursday, he's
put this out. Now, I gotta say, this guy has
been unreachable to everyone. And again when I say this,
this is me speaking hearing everything kind of secondhand, because
again knowing that ours is in a couple months, you know,
we've sort of been letting this play out with this
one because look, this is the immediate issue, this is
(25:08):
the one on Thursday. But I've been being kept in
the loop and this guy's text have been coming up
green for weeks. Nobody's been able to get him on
the phone. And the only people who have been speaking
on his behalf are sort of no offense to them,
lower level employees that aren't really authorized to make any
decisions say anything with certainty. And we're kind of just
saying everything cast members needed to hear to push it
in another day, push it another day, push it another day.
(25:30):
When it was all bs, this statement finally goes out yesterday.
I believe he posted on Reddit. I believe he might
have posted it on his travel company group, etc. This
is what he writes statement. Sadly, I bit off more
than I can chew. I've used revenue from one cruise
and lapsed it into paying deposits for other postgame cruises
and action a lot of businesses do with mass cancelations
(25:52):
and failure to hit sales goals on future cruises. The
funds have not been made to pay for all talents
to participate in this cruise. This is the sole responsibility
of me, the sole owner of Showroom Travel, Mike Gibson.
Deposits made through Showroom Travel, which is all access funds
added to the wholesale cost of the cruise, are held
in a reserve account through our credit card processor. We
(26:14):
advise that you dispute all transactions made through Showroom Travel LLC.
Your disputes will be approved immediately as they are received,
and Stripe will reissue payment back to your original payment
method within five to seven business days. This was not
my intentions for any of these cruises. Your agents are
very limited on information and knew no different. They are
(26:36):
all amazing people simply trying to help people. I understand
this carries no way to any of you, but I
truly do apologize for this. The cruises are paid for
and reservation numbers are active. You will have no issue boarding,
even if you dispute the charges, because showroom travel is
separate from Royal Caribbean. Okay, so I guess it's only
Royal Caribbean. I don't know. I keep saying Carnival too,
(26:58):
so Royal Caribbean. Okay, fine, all right, So this is
this is his statement. First of all, it's littered with
spelling and grammar errors, which to me is a reason
why I suggest everyone, when you're putting out an important statement,
run it through chat, GPT or something, just to make
sure you don't have errors and stuff. And by the way,
I saw a couple of people running the Challengers statement through.
(27:19):
They like, was this written with AI? And it said
it was. Well, yeah, again, if I'm sending an important email,
putting out an important thing, run the draft through AI,
you know, because when you're putting out an important statement
like this, having it littered with errors only makes you
look worse. Not that this guy could look any worse
at this point, but it doesn't help. Look it's just sad.
(27:42):
It's as sad. It's an unfortunate thing. I can speak
personally because I am someone who I'm sure when earlier
this year, when it was announced that there was another
one of these. Maybe some of you guys couldn't have
attended the one for November schedule wise, maybe it has
sold out. You were excited to see that there was
gonna be another one two months down the line, that
Wes would be there, that Kyle would be there. Maybe
(28:03):
some people who book both of them because it was
relatively different group of cast members. You know, if you
saw my name and face on there and you thought,
oh cool, I'm going to get to see a fun
panel challenge many a panel on there, and that's why
you want tickets. Like, I'm truly and utterly sorry, and
I really hope that you can get your money back
for this. I just want everyone to know that the
(28:23):
cast members did not in any way want this to
happen or think that this would happen, and they ultimately
wanted to deliver you the experience that you were told
you were get you would get. Now, a lot of
other stuff is coming out about this guy, and I
don't even want to get into that because I'm sure
it'll come out and everything like that, as far as
(28:44):
other trouble that this guy has maybe allegedly gotten into
in his personal life or otherwise and things like that.
But when this operation was presented to any and all
cast members, you know, it sounded on the up and up.
The numbers and figures and the experience that was given
to them, and the paperwork that was given to them
sounded and looked professional. It seemed as if it was
(29:06):
a travel company that had had success, if not specifically
with doing reality cruises, at least was a travel company
that was on record as having delivered successful trips for
people in the past. And more than that, these are
cast members who wanted to bring you guys something cool.
When it was brought to them, yes, it felt cool
(29:26):
for them and in turn was supposed to be cool
for all of you guys. This is obviously going to
continue to you know, I think, take over the internet,
and people are going to be talking about it at length.
I'm surely here multiple cast members divulge their experience dealing
with the guy or not dealing with the guy. I've had.
I've actually never spoken to this guy, Mike Gibson directly.
(29:49):
I was operating through a mediator. I say that just
because you know all the cast members who and I've
been hearing again secondhand them how hard it's been to
get a hold of this guy. I did witness a
phone call with some of the cast members and the
guy over the summer after there were some concerns after
that Big Brother cruise. And I can tell you that
(30:12):
this guy always said, you know, you know, always had
the magic answer of this and that or whatever and whatnot.
And and you know, does your spider sense begin to
go off? Sure, but do you really just hope for
the best in that you the last thing you'd ever
want to do is let down hundreds of your fans,
of your followers who in good faith wanted to spend
(30:33):
time with you on a cruise. And I can tell
you just you know that that is the reason that
so many cast members a got involved, and so many
cast members were hoping for the best throughout this thing.
I now am just making it my goal for everyone
to know that, yes, this one is this week, and
(30:53):
this is the one where these people are getting super
screwed and are going to have the hardest time, you know,
fixing their travel plans and what not. But that if
you have booked any of these through Showroom Travel, And again,
I know that there are other companies who are doing
similar things so I want to stress that if you
are set to sail on any other cruise that is
not showroom travel related, that they were not the facilitator
(31:16):
of the reality talent, that you might still be good.
So I don't want everyone to go and run to whatever. Now, look,
this is going to reflect poorly on anyone who's doing
anything cruise related, water related, boat related, anything, right, you know,
you can have trouble, you know, I'm sure Sebastian is
going to have trouble getting people to go on as
fishing charters, you know, after this, because there's such a
(31:36):
stench and stink on it. But so that being said,
I just want to make sure if for whatever reason,
there's another cruise. I do know, Trishelle, I believe, went
on to one earlier this year that I think was
put on by another company, and she spoke very highly
of the experience and everything like that. So there are
other companies doing things. I don't want them to get
kind of caught in the back press of this, in
the in the in the wind tailwind of all this.
(31:58):
So make sure I'm talking about showroom travel here. But
if you booked for the reality Travel Extravaganza Cruz that
was set to be Martin Luther King weekend. Start getting
your money back. And you know, again, if you are
someone who is involved in this one this week and
(32:18):
you chose to, you choose to go on the cruise anyway,
and you know that there's probably not gonna be any
cast members there, and who knows, maybe a bump into one,
maybe one or two of these cast members, specifically the
ones who live in Florida, the ones who know, hey,
there is a cabin under my name. Maybe they are
so nice that they are going to go and they're
going to be on that boat and you bump into
them on the buffet line or what have you. I
know that not every single cast member has come out
(32:40):
and in detailed forms said what they're doing, so it
is possible that happens. So I do not want to
speak for them. I can I think I believe having
had independent conversations with some of these people, I believe
I can speak for Wes and for Tina and for
Rachel in saying that we will definitely not be taking
part in any way the one in January, and that
(33:02):
is effectively now just a regular Royal Caribbean cruise. Okay,
And if you booked a cabin through showroom travel. It
is possible you have a cabin on that cruise, but
that you will not be rubbing elbows with any of us.
We will not be on there. We are trying to
get the word out as quickly as possible so that
you guys, hopefully now have about two months to get
(33:22):
your ducks in a row, get your fraud claims in,
get your money back, get your deposits back, any travel
that is related to it. Hopefully you can at least
get credits. I know sometimes hotels can be you know,
sting you with that stuff, so just call them and
do what you can explain the situation. You know. I
know that airlines ever since COVID have been fairly flexible
when it comes to at least issuing credits for this stuff.
(33:45):
So that like, at the very least you might not
get your money back for the flight, but you might
be able to put it towards a different flight, And
if you're somebody who travels quite a bit, it should
still be fairly useful within the calendar year. So get
on that stuff like that. That's why I'm trying to,
you know, put this out there for those of you
guys who want to listen and look. More of this
stuff is going to come out. I'm sure it's going
(34:06):
to be a huge scandal. You're going to read a
lot about it, You're going to see a lot about it.
You're going to see a lot of people chirping and
this and that, and having fun at the expense of
the cast members involved, ha ha ha ha. That's what
you get for one to hang out with so and
so whatever, ha ha. And having fun essentially sadly at
the customer's expenses, who literally their expenses and their finances
are seriously affected by this. And that's before you even
(34:28):
include just like the mental health of it all, the
disappointment of it all. Hey, it sucks to have things
canceled taken from you, things like that, even in the
best of circumstances, and these, I would say are probably
the worst of circumstances. So, if there's someone out there
that's listening to this and you in any way are
having fun at just watching this play out, maybe it's
making you feel better about having not booked yourself, or
(34:50):
maybe you always had a feeling this is what it
was going to be. And for those of you guys
who that was the case. You know, more power to
you for snuffing it out, but you don't need to
rub it in everybody's face. I'll just say that if
anybody has any questions, I'm happy to help, try to
help in any way I can. I'll be honest. Like
(35:11):
I said, it's you know, my ability to even point
you in any direction is sort of limited because, like
I said, this this company and this guy, I don't
know that they're even going to be you know, directly
talking to people at this point. I'm like they have
ceased direct contact with the cast members on this next
one for the past few weeks and have only been
sort of you know, putting small little band aids on
(35:34):
it and whatnot and telling them what they want they
want to hear and need to hear, to kind of
push it one day further, one day further, one day further,
and now this is all just kind of you know,
going up in flames. So you know, again, sorry to
anyone who and and look this is coming from someone
who I and a lot of people have made the
(35:54):
connection here. If you guys remember about seven or eight
years ago, it was around the time we started doing
this podcast. It was a party operation, and the guy
ended up getting a little over his head with that
as well, using you know, the next events, then the
money that came in from that to pay the exorbitant
(36:15):
cast fees he was paying people for past events, and
when those didn't sell and these didn't sell, he eventually
cut and run and left a bunch of people needing
to submit for credit card refunds and things in that.
And those were for like parties again on land and
this and that, and people would be out a few
bucks here, a few hundred bucks here, and fine, but
that put a stench on this whole world for a
year at least, you know, and people have been, you know,
(36:37):
mentioning that guy's name and talking about how this feels
like that, and this is similar to that, but it's
worse because, you know, unlike a two hundred dollars party
ticket or whatever those were, these are two thousand dollars,
three thousand dollars cruise experiences people were buying with additional
travel expenses and things like that, and all that stuff
has now been taken from everybody. A lot of these
people had these plans on their calendars for years or
(36:58):
for a year at least, and now that's being taken away,
not to mention all the cast members who have been swindled,
whose faces and names and likeness have been used to
calm these people. And it really sucks. So and this
is coming from somebody who obviously works in a similar space.
And I put a lot of time and a lot
of heart and a lot of thought into the events
(37:18):
that we put on and the shows that we put on,
making sure that we deliver the experience that we try
very much so to advertise and uphold, and when we can't,
we try to make good on it. We try to
be you know, in the interests of interests of transparency,
any changes or alterations, we try to put them out
there to you. And we try more than anything to
just to not bite off more than we can chew.
(37:41):
And I'm now using his words. It's literally the first
sentence in his statements, sadly, I bid off more than
I can chew. And you know that's something that that's
step one, biting off more than you can choose step one,
you know, obviously being able to own up to that
(38:01):
now a little too little, too late. It's not just
about not biting off more than you can chew. When
you do bite off more than you can chew, it's
how you handle it. And unfortunately, the way that this
guy handled it was just pushing it further and further
down the road, robbing Peter to pay Paul, using one
cruise to pay for the other, announcing another cruise. And
this is what this guy was doing. I mean, if
(38:21):
you saw earlier this year, there was a cruise where
he announced CT for it before he had formally committed
to it, and then CT put out this video in
his car saying, oh I never signed up for this cruise,
and then okay, magically the next day or two, okay,
now he is on board. And that's because he basically
was able to say, oh, you got to pay me
this number, and the guy said sure, sure, whatever he
could to solve that problem, he said, you know, now
(38:44):
he's got and I'm sure maybe let's say fifty people
went and booked for that one in March. Guess what,
he's probably taking that money and immediately using it to
pay for whatever debt or whatever things he had on
the forefront. And that's kind of what this thing ended
up becoming and doing. And that's not just fighting off
more than you can chew. Okay, that's knowing not knowing
where or how to spit out the extra shit that
(39:06):
you bid off, you know, and not handling it well
and not knowing how to just swallow it and take
it on the chin. And instead of realizing because this
guy realized he bid off more than he could chew,
probably months ago, and instead he bid off more and
more and more and more. And so you know, one
of them he bid off is the one in January
that myself and Wes and Rachel and Tina and our
(39:27):
faces were on there and we feel terrible about that.
And then there are future ones. So if Shotroum Travels
name is on the cruise that you had interested in
going to or booked to go to, get out. Now,
this one, this week, sadly, is sort of patient zero
in that the most people are going to be directly
affected by this. It is so close to the time
(39:48):
that it was supposed to take place that, you know,
people's plans are almost it's almost impossible. And I'm sure
there's certainly people down there and things like that. But
the silver lining, and I mean this in I mean
this in the nicest way possible, is that now everyone
is looking to this talent, hopefully future customers as looking
at this as a and this is how you should
take it. I'm telling you right now as a as
(40:11):
a sign and as a in my opinion, as a fact,
that all showroom travel experiences are going to cease to
exist in the manner in which they were advertised to you.
And thus you should get out now while you can. So.
Once again, this is terrible, and I really feel for
(40:31):
everybody involved, cast members alike. They do not like letting
you guys down. I can tell you that they really don't,
and I certainly don't. If you know anything about me,
you know that I do not. So to anybody involved
in this, I'm sorry. It sounded like it would have
been really cool had the right person been at the
helm of it. But I imagine if if the right person
(40:54):
had been at the helm of it, it would have looked
a lot different, you know what I mean. Maybe not
as many faces on that flyer, because maybe you can't
afford that many names and faces. Maybe not as big
of names because maybe you can't even afford to give
those people what they want. Maybe not as many cruises
or all at once, because a smarter person, or a
more savvy person, or at least a more ethical person
(41:14):
would have planned them out and timed them out so
that they didn't you know, hemorrhage each other when it
came to interest level and things like that. But that's
not how this whole thing was run. And yeah, so
I honestly don't even know really what the ultimate goal
of recording this was. I just kind of wanted to
put as much information out there as possible, and you know,
(41:38):
hopefully this was meant to absolve all the you know,
the casts and talent or anyone, whether it's you know,
whether it's someone you you know, spoke to a friend
who talked you into wanting to be a part of
one of these or whatever, hoping to just absolve all
of them, because you know, this company and this guy
and everybody who was you know, deputy to speak on
(42:00):
his behalf were just telling people exactly what they needed
to hear. And when the proof of concept cruises arose
like everyone's sitting back, let's see how this big Brother
one goes. And look again, you can go and you
can watch those TikTok videos. It's not like those. There
wasn't a little bit of bad press that came out
of those, But it wasn't they happened, right, They happened
that people went, they set sail. The experience was similar,
(42:23):
similar to what was advertised, and the casts were paid
and things like that. Okay, now there's a Survivor one.
Michelle was even on the Survivor one when she got back.
How did it go? Yeah, there's stuff I would change,
but it happened. People seemed happy, everyone got paid, okay.
And that's the problem is that the band aids that
were put on those and those that those that happened
(42:44):
that could have been a sign earlier on for this
one in November, those were paid for and those were
only possible because this guy was using the funds for this.
And now there's no funds to fly in a casey,
or book a room for Josh, or make sure Carl
Marias plus one is on there, or staff up any
of the positions that are needed to even facilitate this experience.
And you know, I read that he was even up
(43:04):
charging people and upselling them on like VIP experiences that
the cast members didn't even know about, like oh, a
limo ride to the dock with the cast and you know,
Champagne toast and things like that that cast members were
never even told about this, let alone was there ever
any plan put in place to deliver on these promises.
And and I mean when you think about the fact
(43:25):
that he's up charging and upselling people in that capacity
and then doesn't even have the funds to book the
hotel rooms for the people involved, I mean, this is
just such a bit off. More than you can chew
is the understatement of the century. And again, biting off
more than you can chew is something that you know,
many people have done and will do again. But it's
how you handle it, and it's where you spit out
(43:48):
the food that you can't handle, how soon you do it,
and how you deliver that information. And this guy was
just you know, from the start, he was just not
the person to have done this. So anyway, sorry to
anybody involved. If there's any I don't know if there's
any other assistance I can provide or anything like that,
you know, email me Challenge Media Podcast at gmail dot com.
(44:09):
But as if it isn't certain already, just wanted to
reiterate the January one. There will not be any of
us or none of us are taking part in that,
So please get your money back as soon as you can.
And uh, yeah, I I uh, I hate, I hate
that this happened, but you know, let's let's all just
move forward and move past it. Uh. And if you
(44:31):
are listening to this again, I gotta say this, do
not have fun at do not do not let this
be a fun thing. The shot and freud, if you
know the term, do not just have fun watching this
play out? This is uh. You know, a lot of
a lot of good people were negatively affected by this.
And just because maybe some cast members that you're not
a fan of where we're involved, you know, you don't
(44:53):
need to joke about all it's because that's what you
get for wanting to do anything with these people. Because
these are even if they're not your favorite cast, remember,
these are good people too. They didn't want to let
anybody down. So but sadly, by proxy, there are a
lot of people that have been let down. So all right, everybody,
enjoy the rest of your day, and yeah, take care.
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