Any tips on getting a family of 4 to a Norway cruise this summer- airline tickets tips?

[coloradocutie]

We were not planning on going on a Norway or Norway/Iceland cruise this summer, but were planning to use miles to get us (4) there for a cruise next summer.... then the 2018 itineraries came out, and those dates don't work well with our school break-... AND the guarantee rates which just came out on this summer's cruises look really really really nice price-wise! I would so jump on booking a Norway cruise this summer but just cannot find any decent airfare rates out of Denver for either of those cruises. Looked to book with miles but no availability in any classes for one person... let alone 4. Any tips or ideas?!
TIA!

 

[IBelieveInTheMagic]

Have you tried looking at Norwegian Air and/or Iceland Air? For our Norway/Iceland/Scotland cruise in 2015 we used Iceland Air to get to Copenhagen and then returned from LHR using them too after the cruise and several days in London. If you do the Iceland Air/Norwegian Air, try cities close to you (if Denver doesn't work) and you can save a little more by putting in their currency of Norwegian Kroner instead of US dollars but of course price it out in US dollars first

I hope it works out
Heather

 

[dcassetta]

Sometimes there are discounted fares from East Coast cities like Boston. You might be able to get a better deal by booking Denver to Boston separately then by booking through tickets all the way from Denver to Copenhagen.

 

[msmama]

Lowest I've found for the Norway/Iceland Cruise (from Dover, so to London) is just over $700 (from NYC). For two people I'm using half miles and half $$'s. I've been tracking flights for a couple of months and now they seem to be going up steadily up rather than down so I finally bit the bullet the other day.

Oh, I'm also doing Disneyland Paris after so I'm flying to London, home from Paris and that seems to be slightly less than a roundtrip from London.

I've seen cheap flights for other times of the summer, but when I'm going (late June) there doesn't seem to be any discounts. Have you tried different airports? I've signed up for Scott's Cheap Flights (it's a daily email, I didn't do the premium version), but, like I said, there's very little discount for that time frame.

Good luck!!

 

[KDG]

We flew Icelandair from Denver last summer for the Baltic cruise. Very nice flights. I'd fly with them again.

 

[aggiedog]

Love Icelandair! Wow Air also has cheap prices.

 

[MUN]

We are flying Icelandair from Minneapolis to Copenhagen and the rates were very good. However, we booked quite awhile back. I would check with them. Doesn't Lufthansa serve Denver? That would be a good way to get to Copenhagen.

A quick check of the Lufthansa website shows you can get to Copenhagen for under $1000 per person. Not bad for a flight to Europe. I plugged in dates for the June 4th sailing, I'm not sure what cruise you are interested in.

 

[gilsan]

Check Condor Airlines, they are Lufthansa airlines discount branch. They have some ok prices right now for Denver to Copenhagen, but if you wait a month or two I think they will drop. I was watching them last year and they flights dropped from over $500/person each way to $299/ person each way. We flew on them and it was a great flight.

 

[coloradocutie]

Hugs to all of you!!! Thank you! Each and every post had information new to me...off to check all of these tips

 

[MickeyCruzin]

Try the website momondo. Lots of good deals through third party travel companies. Our family of 4 is flying to LA to London for $1800 this summer. Sadly, no cruise when we get there

 

[TrySomethingNew]

Just because you can, you can ask DCL To price out flights too. We did the 2015 11-night Iceland and used DCL, however we booked about 15 months out. Because we could cancel the flights (no penalty) up to PIF date, we also kept a constant eye on flight options and prices on our own. We did not have enough reward points to use for flights, so that never factored into our research. We could never find flights better priced than DCL, but similar or higher priced on our own (unless we did convoluted flights/legs/airports -some combos were cheaper than DCL). Also, we were connected with that fb group, and many were posting flights, prices, airlines which was additionally helpful. Since you are much closer to the trip dates, I'm not sure that DCL would provide the right price, but it's an easy call to make to them. They do indicate they will get assist with air problems, and provide transport if those problems resulted in missing the ship.

Good luck! Enjoy your cruise.

 

[Perdita&Pongo]

I hope it's okay to expand the discussion with these questions:

Can you still use DCL air if you want to arrive a few days early or stay a few days later?

Can you use DCL air for only one way, if say you have enough air miles for one way?

Can you use DCL air for business class?

 

[Snyders22000]

We booked our flights to Copenhagen in October (for July cruise). We got lucky with a British airways business class one day sale and got tickets for about $150 more than Coach (per person). It was worth every penny! The lounge access and lay flat seats were nice and made the long journey with kids actually pleasant!

 

[coloradocutie]

We booked our flights to Copenhagen in October (for July cruise). We got lucky with a British airways business class one day sale and got tickets for about $150 more than Coach (per person). It was worth every penny! The lounge access and lay flat seats were nice and made the long journey with kids actually pleasant!

That is so awesome for y'all!!! Yay! This would be an amazing solution.. I even signed up for AARP (and I am a mom of two young girls and so not retired ) just to qualify for a further discount if this BA sale occurs again soon! Hope y'all enjoy your flights and your cruise!

All of these suggestions are just awesome. Y'all are just awesome!!! Will continue to check them all out.... thank you, everyone! I had never thought to ask Disney for their air pricing... but will try it!

 

[laceltris3]

I started watching 16 routes as soon as flights opened up for our dates in June. It has averaged around $1200 per person in coach. I got an alert in November that the price had dropped to $750 pp and I took it, and got the additional AARP discount. What we paid $3500 for is now over $10K for the same flights.

 

[TrySomethingNew]

I hope it's okay to expand the discussion with these questions:

Can you still use DCL air if you want to arrive a few days early or stay a few days later?

Can you use DCL air for only one way, if say you have enough air miles for one way?

Can you use DCL air for business class?

Yes, you can fly in early/ leave later with DCLair. And I don't think you have to stay at the DCL hotel where they would have rooms, but since things may have changed, it's worth asking DCL. Using DCLair one way? Not sure, but makes sense to ask as it's possible to have miles for only part of a trip. Business class- I think they quote coach, and not sure if their contracts with the airlines would include more premium seating. I did see that in 2016 (maybe later 2015), they were allowing you to request certain flights (airlines/times), but don't know if that was limited time or limited to certain airlines, etc.

 

[flybone89]

Concur that Icelandair or Norwegian Airlines may be your best bet at this point (also try Air Canada as they show up as the lowest right now for us out of Cincinnati), as well as either a last minute fare that comes up on non-sold out flight segments (use a deal tracker app) or alternative lower cost airports. Unfortunately you may have missed the "lowest cost time to book" window for Europe as the fares will now start to go up and up! As a rule of thumb Europe airfares are at the lowest by Dec/Jan since most people plan European vacations in advance so as the plans fill up, the prices go up. That said, set up some alerts on some tracking tools like Kayak or Hopper (I like Hopper because it will show you the optimal windows of when to book using predictive algorithms). Similar to another poster we had almost the same thing happen to us. $1500 flights every day for a month or two - then one day a magic $800 fare came up and we grabbed it!