Has anyone ever used a group booking with Southwest?

[ruadisneyfan2]

We have a group of 24 on our Oct. Disney cruise. While waiting on hold w/SWA for an unrelated question, the recording mentioned group rates/ressies for 10+ passengers.

From what I could read on their website, you put a deposit down and final payment is due at a later time. Everyone is on same ressie #.

So here are my questions:

1. What if some people have to cancel? Would that just change the amount of final payment due? (We have 1 family that's not certain due to sports schedule. They will know before final payment is due for cruise in Aug. but by then airfare may have gone up from March release date).

2. Can individual people still buy EBCI?

3. Can we still check in online?

4. Does 1 person print out all the boarding passes? We're not all arriving at PHL at same time so 1 of us would have to find a way to distribute all the BPs.

5. What if the price drops online? Obviously no more snagging credits like we could if we each bought online separately.

Thanks in advance for any feedback or expereinces you've had with this.

 

[Poohlovr]

I talked to them about it prior to a group cruise once. We didn't go with it, because it was so much more expensive than booking it on our own.

It has to be done over the phone, so you can't use the fares you see on-line. It can only be booked with the fares that the reservation agent has available to them. They may range from a little higher to a lot higher, plus, you can't do on-line check-in, when you book over the phone.

You can do rate drops, if the agent has a drop in their rate (but, how are you to know when they show a rate drop, unless you call several times a day, every day?).


You may find it works for your group, but it didn't for ours.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

I talked to them about it prior to a group cruise once. We didn't go with it, because it was so much more expensive than booking it on our own.

It has to be done over the phone, so you can't use the fares you see on-line. It can only be booked with the fares that the reservation agent has available to them. They may range from a little higher to a lot higher, plus, you can't do on-line check-in, when you book over the phone.

You can do rate drops, if the agent has a drop in their rate (but, how are you to know when they show a rate drop, unless you call several times a day, every day?).


You may find it works for your group, but it didn't for ours.

Thanks. This is exactly what I was looking for. I was especially concerned about the online check in. Do they expect everyone to show up and get C passes? That's crazy.

Do you recall the difference in price? We can usually fly PHL-MCO for around $99 each way + tax. (Gone are the $49-69 fares.) Would you guess it was $5 more pp or more like $20+?

A few in our group are not internet saavy and wouldn't likely know how to book a flight online. I already booked our return for almost everyone and just trying to make it easy on myself when they release the new dates.

 

[Poohlovr]

It was quite a bit more the day I called. Then, another time, I booked over the phone and it was only about a $10 difference pp. I guess there's just no way of knowing without calling for their cheapest rate and comparing it to the web only rate.

As far as checking in, I understand they hold a few "A" and "B" boarding passes back for airport check-in. I guess they just expect you get there early.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

I called tonight and asked for a quote for an Aug date just to compare to what's available on their website now. We could get a 1 way flight, Philly to MCO for $99 online, incl. taxes. Through the group process, it's $145.70.

Also if for some reason we have to cancel last minute, our tickets are only good for that flight, no credits to move to another date like we normally could.

As for not being able to check in online, she suggested visiting the airport 24 hrs before flight to print everyone's bps. That's not really practical since it's a 45 min drive to PHL plus a $4 bridge toll. and would be in rush hour traffic.


The only real benefit I can see is perhaps in cases like a HS senior trip to WDW where you have so many people possibly going and can't give an exact head count 6 months out.

Thanks for your help anyway. Your advice was right on!

 

[Poohlovr]

No problem. I'm sorry it didn't work out for you.