I have some experience with handling a case where no standby service was available for my pet. I know pets are not humans, but I think there is some insight worth sharing.
If you can source dry ice, you can use this as a substitute for liquid nitrogen for about 6 months without suffering too much degradation compared to liquid nitrogen. Generally, you will want to opt for this if you cannot arrange for transport to a storage facility within 24 hours of clinical death. About half of all cryonics cases are "straight freeze" with no cryoprotectant, so there is a good chance methods will be invested in to revive those who undergo a straight freeze.
My pet passed away suddenly two years ago after a failed emergency surgery. I had her immediately transferred into ice-water bath after we could not restart her heartbeat. About 19 hours later I arrived with a source of dry ice to straight freeze her until I could arrange transport to Switzerland for storage in Tomorrow Bio's facility. I held her in a dedicated freezer with dry ice (replenished every other day to every two days) for about a month before I could work out how to transport her to Switzerland.
From my conversations with Emil (CEO of Tomorrow Bio) this is very similar to their own procedure (as my pet was already under anesthesia from the surgery) minus the cryoprotectant. So if you can have someone act quickly to cool your body to close to freezing then get you in dry ice for extended pre-liquid nitrogen storage you won't be much worse off than the other straight frozen cases.
For disclosure, I am signed up with Tomorrow Bio and this is my plan if my imminent cryopreservation is needed. I live in a country with no standby service but figure this is better than nothing.
Sparks Brain Preservation is $45k for members ($150/yr for membership), and you should be able set up a payment so you would pay with your assets after death (payment doesn't need to be upfront). You can also apply to a hardship fund if that still remains infeasible for you. As far as I can tell it's the org with the best electron micrographs of human brain preservation. And there's nationwide coverage. Bonus: Signing up is easy; the form is pretty straightforward.
I'd be curious to know what you think about it.
(Note: I'm on the board. We're a non-profit.)
My personal assessment is that it's still worth it to sign up.
That said, standby is not that expensive relative to cryo (or at least it's not for me), and I think it came baked into my Alcor plan. I'm not sure how it works with CI, where the cost structure is different, but we should still be talking about a difference of maybe $10 or $20 a month if funded via life insurance.
If you can afford the basic cryonics fee but not any standby services and expect there to be quite a while between when you're declared legally dead and when you're put into liquid nitrogen (and therefore suffer a lot of damage from ischemia and so on), is it still worth it to sign up, or are you going to suffer information theoretic death before your mortician can ship your corpse hundreds of miles to the Cryonics Institute?