Canadian Travellers Support Group

[crystalk]

We booked in November 2014 for our Jan 2016 20th anniversary cruise. Then the price of oil crashed, people lost their jobs (not us thankfully) and the Canadian dollar took a skydive! Our cruise isn't entirely paid for yet!



We keep hoping the dollar will climb back up but it sinks further. I tell people we are paying "Canadian tax" on our vacation. 20-30% more than american prices. Good thing we have airmiles enough for 3 out of 4 of us to go to Orlando.

Anyone else need a little support?

 

[starvenger]

I'm still waiting for favourable prices to book a flight for our October cruise. But it's starting to look like we might take a road trip down instead.

 

[bfamily5]

1. Amen sista! We booked back then as well for Jan, 2016 and are not paid in full yet. It really bites and really its the excursions that we will scrimp on. I'll likely book a placeholder just in case. But if I have to pay these exchange rates, I might as well make my Ireland dreams come true!

 

[darwinsrule]

It isn't pretty right now but what are us poor slobs to do right? We have a cruise out of Miami in a couple of weeks. Still haven't bought any U.S. $ for it, but everything was paid off a few months ago. Our next trip isn't planned until August 2016 so here is hopping it bounces back before then.

Don't expect expect things to change over the next month or so however. Statistics Canada will release the GDP numbers for June at the end of August. At that point we will have all the information from the first 2 quarters of the year (and the only way we avoid the whole technical recession is by having some kind of ridiculous growth number which isn't in the cards based upon the other indicators). Then the talk is the U.S. FED wil raise their interest rates likely in Sept which will put more pressure on the $. And then there is the whole election thing going on.

 

[EastCoastCdn]

Watching our dollar right now is painful. My cruise isn't until August of next year, but I'm not optimistic the dollar will recover much by then.

 

[LemonNeko]

My parents are taking a cruise on a luxury cruise line this fall. They had to prepay it almost a year ago. At the time my mom thought that sucked. Now it's a good thing as she paid it off when the dollar was par.

I expect that it's going to get worse before it gets better.

 

[crystalk]

I'm still waiting for favourable prices to book a flight for our October cruise. But it's starting to look like we might take a road trip down instead.

Road trip sounds like fun! But you must be in the East, we will not be driving from Alberta. If I had the time though I'd love to. Maybe someday.

 

[daisygirl902]

It sucks for sure. Every little thing I have to pay for I do the awful calculations...I just booked a stroller rental and even for something as simple as that I think "crap, that $120 is actually $160". BUT once I'm there I'll forget all about it.

 

[crystalk]

1. Amen sista! We booked back then as well for Jan, 2016 and are not paid in full yet. It really bites and really its the excursions that we will scrimp on. I'll likely book a placeholder just in case. But if I have to pay these exchange rates, I might as well make my Ireland dreams come true!

Ireland sounds fantastic!! We were so close a few years ago, in Scotland. But even at that when you're travelling with family to see their family you don't get to be a tourist as much as you like. Not that we didn't see anything but really there was so much more we could have seen, like tons! Guess we'll have to go back one day

It isn't pretty right now but what are us poor slobs to do right? We have a cruise out of Miami in a couple of weeks. Still haven't bought any U.S. $ for it, but everything was paid off a few months ago. Our next trip isn't planned until August 2016 so here is hopping it bounces back before then.

Don't expect expect things to change over the next month or so however. Statistics Canada will release the GDP numbers for June at the end of August. At that point we will have all the information from the first 2 quarters of the year (and the only way we avoid the whole technical recession is by having some kind of ridiculous growth number which isn't in the cards based upon the other indicators). Then the talk is the U.S. FED wil raise their interest rates likely in Sept which will put more pressure on the $. And then there is the whole election thing going on.

What ARE we to do? I guess I will pay the "canadian tax" and get a lovely vacay from the cold.

Watching our dollar right now is painful. My cruise isn't until August of next year, but I'm not optimistic the dollar will recover much by then.

I know, right? c'est la vie.

My parents are taking a cruise on a luxury cruise line this fall. They had to prepay it almost a year ago. At the time my mom thought that sucked. Now it's a good thing as she paid it off when the dollar was par.

I expect that it's going to get worse before it gets better.

Don't say that!! its already horrible. How fortunate your parents are paid up though! I'm sure she's happy about it now!

 

[starvenger]

Road trip sounds like fun! But you must be in the East, we will not be driving from Alberta. If I had the time though I'd love to. Maybe someday.

I think you're even too far to drive the PCH down to DL!

But yes, I live in Toronto so it's a "short" drive down.

 

[crystalk]

It sucks for sure. Every little thing I have to pay for I do the awful calculations...I just booked a stroller rental and even for something as simple as that I think "crap, that $120 is actually $160". BUT once I'm there I'll forget all about it.

Stop doing the math! Math is evil and will scar you for life!

 

[Iamaplanner]

We wanted friends to join us for our cruise but with the dollar so bad, they just can't justify the cost. (They also waited too long to book so the price of the cruise is nearly $1000 more than it was on opening day).

Fortunately, my husband won an award at work and it was a travel voucher. (We obviously used it towards our cruise). It was such an awesome prize because it eases the pain of the exchange.

All that being said, I feel your pain fellow Canadians!

 

[chimo2u]

We are finally paid off for our 25 anniversary oct 31 Fantasy western Caribbean cruise! However it sure hurt paying the last $2,000 on my land portion of my trip! The $ is just nose diving with no end in sight! It definitely makes exchanging money not pleasant at the moment! Also I agree, flights from Alberta this year where horrible, both scheduling and pricing! Sure wish I lived in Toronto, where I could either drive or fly from Buffalo! Hopefully our $ will recover some as I don't know when a next trip would be doable if things don't improve!

 

[deanimal]

Joining the pity party here! We booked NCL for our March 2016 cruise last fall and I'm so glad we locked in the price at the old exchange rate. And I thought the DCL prices were outrageous when we were close to par. We have a placeholder booked for August 2016 but I'm on the fence about whether we'll go. I'm trying to remember, though, if you paid the deposit isn't the rest of the price locked in at the current exchange rate? I booked through a travel agent and I believe the balance we given to me in Canadian dollars. If this is the case, it shouldn't change even if the dollar goes down, right? I'll have to find the paperwork and confirm it. I know our NCL balance is listed in Cdn on the forms.

Anyway, we've got one more trip to the US booked for the end of the summer and after that we're going to start looking at other options. Probably Europe for summer 2016. Or maybe re-create what my parents did with us as kids and do an epic summer road trip from BC to Nfld. We could probably do a whole summer for less than two weeks on a Disney cruise!

 

[chimo2u]

I also have to remember travelling to Europe isn't cheap either -- I think buying the British pound or euros would probably hurt just as much as buying US currency!

 

[bcwife76]

The worst is when I see the exchange in pure black and white. Earlier this week I ordered the Romance for 2 package for our upcoming cruise. $125USD on the website. But then add tax and gratuity which made the total $140US. Just looked at my Amazon Chase Visa online - in the end it's costing us $185CDN. Ugh.
We paid our cruise in full at the end of March (eventhough it wasn't due til mid-July) because of the dollar. I mean, it wasn't great but I think we paid 83 cents?? Better than where it is now......

We were hoping to do Alaska next summer for our 40th birthdays, inside cabin for 4 is $6,000USD........exchange would be what, $7500CDN???? Even if we use the onboard booking bonuses it's still a hell of a lot of money for one week (thank god no airfare as we live in Vancouver). I just keep thinking I could go to my fave resort in Cancun for 2 weeks for that price......

 

[deanimal]

I also have to remember travelling to Europe isn't cheap either -- I think buying the British pound or euros would probably hurt just as much as buying US currency!

For me it's not the exchange rate that hurts as much as the sudden change in exchange rate. The pound and euro has always been strong against the Cdn dollar but we've gotten used to being close to par so the sudden drop in the past year feels awful. For example, on 1 Jan one Cdn dollar got you 0.86 US and 0.71 Euro. As of now a Canadian dollar gets you 0.70 Euro but only 0.75 US.

And it used to be that at least everything was a lot cheaper in the US ten years ago or so. You could buy brand name stuff for 30-40% cheaper, restaurants cost less, etc, which made the low exchange rate easier to tolerate. Now costs seem pretty much equivalent. If I'm only getting 70 or 75 cents on my dollar I might as well go to Europe. We're going there for two weeks this Christmas and I'm pleasantly surprised at the deals I'm getting, even in expensive countries like Germany and France.

 

[crystalk]

Yes the exchange rate and its sudden nose dive bit me in the behind. I held off making bigger payments when we first booked as at 85 cents to the american dollar I thought it could come up some more and we keep playing the waiting game for it to bounce back only to find it sinking further and further. OY VAY!
And then a friend of ours who who wants to join us on the cruise waited too long to book so besides the exchange theres also a higher price for the cruise.
its gotta go back up sometime, right? RIGHT?!?

 

[Cheerio]

We're waiting to make our final cruise payment, it's due in Nov so fingers crossed it makes some ground.

 

[brandyleeann]

I am so joining this club. We are pretty far down the road in paying for our trip - booked DVC points for pre-WDW stay when dollar was not awful, paid for flights and got a great price, but have the rest of the cruise to pay for. Our PIF date is in November, so like Cheerio, we are crossing our fingers. We are thinking we may pay half now in case it gets worse. If there is a spike, we will be paying the whole thing! Why didn't we do that when the dollar was $0.83? It sucks, but I try to remind people when they ask us how we can stomach the extra 25% that we were not anticipating the dollar would be at par. We were hoping it would be at $0.85, so we have lost 10%, not 25%, if that makes sense.