yeah....
Even though everyone has $ no one really throws it away wholesale... and when the the scale gets above a certain varying point folk compare and talk. My family of 4 in a window on
DCL in JULY 2007 would be 8800~12,300 depending on capacity when they got to taking my request. That's including the on-board rebooking discount I'd be transferring from my OCT 28th sailing! AND by comparison I could sail the
RCCL Voyager of the Seas (142,000 tons, 1999 launch and 42:1 space ratio) in a 211' window for 7 days on Oct 28th 2006 at $2479.39 including a $14 TA fee! Granted this is July 2007 on DCL versus OCT 2006 on RCCL... but the
per day difference is DCL at $880-1230 a day
versus $354... which is 59% to 71.2% less with RCCL. Shoot... I could even book a 506' "owners suit" with 64' veranda for $5479.40. On a per day basis that's $782 a day... still less than a DCL window for the 2nd highest catagory on RCCL. AND as another alternative... which I might add is a bit odd but features certain advantages... We could sail Holland America's flagship the Rotterdam IV(59,000 tons, an intimate <?!> 1300 passengers, launched 1997 with a spacious 47:1 ratio) for $5800 for 15 days from Lisbon to Rio De Janiero docking at 3 continents with 7 sea days and crossing the equator.... WOW.
That works out to $387 a day for the 4 of us in TWO 182' window cabins. If we had connecting cabins it would be like having a 364' double suite w/o veranda. They were not quoting triples or quads so the twin suites were the only comparable alternative. However, I could go cheaper by taking inside cabins thus saving about $380 per inside cabin taken... but 15 days without sunlight in the cabin is intolerable IMHO.
AND if we were to compare July 2007 DCL versus JULY 2006 it is difficult because just last week to today the fares have sold out for capacity in quads/triple AND doubles in some cases. The only doubles in July I could find were for Princess 12 nites inside for 2 cabins at 9,000 not counting taxes yet. So clearly, for 2007 a booking for July would have to be made early.
At any rate, July is a PEAK demand period... and my BIL prefers July. I'm gonna have to chat with him a little more on that. He's a medical school instructor (I don't recall precisely the term for what he does except he sees his "residents" and I think he's "attending"?).... so he has strict restrictions on when is convenient to travel at length. My retired MIL and FIL will go anytime of course. And we can more or less travel when-ever with modest restrictions. The other family members can match our calander if they can or want to. They're a bit more complicated (or rather they were extremely conplicated 2 years ago when we tried to plan this and we could not reach consensus quickly enough to book air land and cruise. There is a 330 day advance for use of frequent flyer miles and 12 of 15 in our party were using miles... and 8 of these 12 were comng from Hawaii with very limitied capacity for award seats to the main-land; let alone connecting through to Europe!). Needless to say it was complicated.
At any rate, I think we'll be making plans with the easiest 3 initially and see if the others will join or not this time around. We tried to make it easy for all 2 years ago and I am not as compliant this time.
Oh well... sorry to digress so much... I guess I was venting a bit at the "values" obtainable in the MED for different times on different lines and so on.
SO, anyone have anything fun planned this week? We're seeing our CPA tomorrow... oh boy what fun eh?
