How do you switch reservations?

[Zitofamily]

Many of you on this board talk about switching reservations when you find better prices. How does one go about doing this? We are scheduled for our first Disney cruise in October of this year and went through a regular travel agent. We didn't get any special deals and had not done any shopping around. We have already put down a large deposit. Can we switch to another travel agency or AAA or Costco at this point? How difficult is this to do? Would we lose our cabin assignment? Is there a fee to switch to someone else?

I'm all for saving money and since I hear so many of you talking about switching reservations I am wondering if I should shop around at this point to see if I can get a better deal than what we already have.

Thank you in advance to anyone that can help educate me on this subject!!

 

[Lloyd Dobler]

Switching reservations most often involves transferring a reservation made directly with the cruise line to a travel agent. At that point, the agent then "owns" the reservation and services it.

I don't think that you can transfer a reservation from one agent to another. I don't think agent A would want to lose their commission or agent B wouldn't want to "steal" someone else's business.

If you find a better price from another source, you would probably have to cancel your first reservation, and then re-book with the second agent. If you've already put a deposit down, you'd have to see what the current agent's cancellation policy is, on top of that of the cruise line (full refund prior to 60 days).

 

[Auntie Bon]

If you booked directly with Disney you can switch. I switched my reservation from DCL to Dreams Unlimited and got $50 back. If you booked with a travel agent you are out of luck.

 

[Tony M]

When we re-booked onboard, the cruise specialist onboard pulled up our travel agents info on her computer on the ship at sea. We were very upfront with her and asked her what would happen if we found a better price. She said that the travel agent would simply make the updates with no effect on our room or dining assignments. She did say that there is probably no way to beat onboard re-booking rates with the included room credits($150 for 4-day Wonder, $200 for 7-day Magic). I am locked in at the rates published at the time and now only two weeks later we have watched the rates go up over a thousand dollars for the same dates on disneycruise.com!!! The current rate increase may due to shopping during the peak cruise season but still our rates will be locked in no matter their increase. If rates go down, our travel agent will inform us and make the change. Realistically, the only better rate that we will be able to beat our ressie with we probably be if they offer the "Florida Resident" special during our cruise dates. If that occurs, that rate usually trumps all but we would lose our $150 room credit. However, we would be able to keep the room # we reserved along with the Dining assignment we also reserved.
The other key date is the "60 days prior to cruise date" deadline. You can cancel any ressie beyond this time period without penalty. So any switch or change that you make to your ressie (my example: DCL Onboard rate including Room Credit vs. Florida Resident Special Rate) must be made beyond that 60 day time period (61 days or longer).