Here is a question for my fellow cruisers...
If I book a return cruise on my trip for the future, at a certain price..... and then Fl resident rates or some other kind of special comes out reducing the price, will I get my money back, or will I have to cancel and then re-book? And if I have to do the latter, are there penalties or problems with that?
Right now we are considering a cruise for Sept. to celebrate my MIL 70th birthday, but the prices are quite a bit higher than our May 30th cruise, even though the kids are in school at that time (I would think it would be cheaper b/c of it??).
I know many of you started this process with a gty 12, b/c of rates. But when I went to the Disney site, the lowest category was 11. How did y'all get the gty 12? How many of you have stayed in a category 11 or 12 in the past, and how was it?
I'm just trying to figure things out and get all my ducks in a row before getting on the ship. What incentives does Disney offer for booking while on board?
Thanks.
Let's see if I can answer atleast some of the questions. hehe
I'm not positive but I've heard that if you already booked something and then change it to the same date to get some sort of discount (FL resident, military, kids free promos, etc.) that you do have to rebook. (even when we tried to change our TA to rebook it without the fuel charge since others who booked it after us didn't get the fuel charge on there- we were told we'd have to CANCEL AND REBOOK- and the price now is not the same as it was on the first morning when we booked it the day the dates became available! So then it would cost us more! So ofcourse we didn't rebook it LOL)
I'm not sure if you can atleast still keep your OBC from rebooking onboard or not. HOWEVER, if I am right about that (having to cancel and rebook to get the better rate) and that is really the case- you could always rebook onboard, consider the date you book (which is when you really want to go) as your "dummy booking"- But in your case you'd really plan to go on that date and if a better deal shows up and they say you have to redo an entire reservation for that date- make a new reservation on the special discount price- but KEEP the booking you did onboard and simply move the date to one far far off- you can constantly change that date to the furthest off date (indefinitely at this point- so far they've made no rule on that). Yes they'd still keep your deposit but you'd have that "dummy booking" waiting for the NEXT time you decide to go, move that dummy date to the date you want to go and still get the rebooking onboard discount and OBC for that cruise.
KWIM?
And if you do this and decide later you never want to cruise
DCL again- yes, you'd have your dummy date so far ahead that you could cancel and be fully refunded on your dummy date.
That is what I'd do. if I saw a better deal for a date I'd already booked onboard for the discount and OBC- I'd book it on the deal and MOVE the previous booking to a later date (the one you booked onboard for the discount and OBC) and hold it for a future cruise. That way you get the good deal on that cruise that a bargain came along and still have your "dummy date" booked that can be changed in the future with the discount and OBC. KWIM? Let me know if I didn't explain that well. LOL
May 30th is still considered during the school year and not only that- it's THE biggest weekend for graduations. And not only that- but this was one of those freak things that used to NEVER happen with DCL where a few select dates had incredible discounts- presumably because those were the ones where the ship was the emptiest so they wanted to fill it up. There is no date- in school dates or not- that can compare to those few dates this year- including May 30th.
The cat 12 gty has been there off and on. They were there for awhile, then not, then kept showing up randomly I assume once people decided not to pay the deposit on the cruise once they booked it and/or cancelled. At this point they probably won't show up again since they booked SO many cat 12 gtys that they've already upgraded quite a few people- they have few cat 12's on the ship to begin with. They might show up again last minute to fill up the ship- but that remains to be seen if they need to do that or not.
I haven't stayed in a cat 12 or 11 myself- but the last cruise we had a ct 6 across from a cat 11 that the kids stayed in. I don't think there is a difference between cat 12 and 11 besides what deck they are on and ofcourse price difference.
The incentive Disney offers for booking onboard:
the normal rate is 10% discount (although for some cruises like for next summer in the Med- they are offering and even higher % off!)
and generally $200 OBC per room- atleast that's what we got both times we rebooked onboard.
Here's more tips:
1- you can book however many rooms you want up to the amount of people in your party. We didn't learn this until our 2nd cruise! OUr first cruise we had 2 rooms- so we thought we could only rebook onboard 2 rooms. 2nd cruise we had 2 rooms and found out from our TA (confirmed onboard obviously) that we could book FIVE rooms if we wanted- since we had 5 people in our 2 rooms on that cruise. Each room has to have an adult- but we just booked 5 rooms like this: DH/1 kid, me/2 kids, DH/1kid, me/2kids, me/DH.
This came in handy because then we could move those dates to ones we really wanted to cruise later and do that with more than one cruise! For instance we rebooked onboard those 5 rooms all for a dummy date (latest available at the time) of 12/09. Then we moved 2 of those rooms to the baltic for next summer when those dates came out, 2 of the rooms to the TA next summer when those dates came out. That left us with one "dummy date" room. Then we changed the baltic cruise to THIS cruise since it was so incredibly cheaper. So now we're doing this cruise (2 rooms), the TA (2 rooms) and have one room on a dummy date still. On THIS cruise we'll only rebook onboard one more room so we'll have 2 rooms total left on dummy dates that we can keep moving forward to later dummy dates we don't intend to use to "save" them for future use and/or move both to a later date we intend to use. This way we can always be ahead and just move the dates when things open up and we know when we want to go.
This not only helps to still get the onboard discount and OBC- but also allows us to get that PLUS move it to a date right when the dates are first available- which is generally usuallly the cheapest- USUALLY the prices go higher after they first open the dates available.... sometimes there are exceptions this year- like this cruise- but generally booking the day the dates come out gets you the cheapest price... and if you have dummy dates rebooked onboard ready and waiting- you get the cheapest price the day the dates come out PLUS the onboard discount AND the OBC. Win/win situation IMO! LOL
(for instance in the past we had to book a year to a year and a half ahead in order to book on the day the dates became available to get the best rate. Then we'd cruise- which we did on our first cruise and on THAT cruise we rebooked onboard. But again to get the cheapest rate we had to book the day the dates came out, by moving our onboard booking "dummy date"- which meant we had to rebook onboard then go book the day the dates came out for another cruise we wanted to do in the future. So essentially what happened is we booked and went end of May 2006, rebooked onboard, then later moved that date to the cruise in Aug/Sept 2008. We coud have moved the dates we booked onboard to the summer 2007 BUT those dates had already been out awhile and the price had gone up already. KWIM? Then we'd have to crusie 2008, rebook onboard, and AGAIN wait till the dates came out for a future cruise. Basically making it where we had to wait 2yrs in between cruises to get the best price plus onboard discount plus OBC. Being able to book 5 rooms instead of 2... allowed us to have "more" rooms on dummy dates to move to other dates when they became available- and that is why we were able to book the TA in 2010 BUT ALSO move our dummy dates to this May 30th cruise also... with one room to spare still on dummy date. KWIM? Oh and btw- when you move a dummy date from rebooking onboard to cat 12 gty- you lose the 10% discount because it's already rock bottom price. So we did lose that on THIS cruise- because we did change it to this cruise cat 12 instead of what we had rebooked onboard for the dummy date- which was cat 6 and cat 11 like last cruise. But we kept the $200 OBC per room!
plus OBC from our TA.
And as I've said before- you can move your dates. Even if you don't know when you're cruising yet- if you have say like we do- a dummy date for 12/09 stlll left... not moved to a date we actually intend on cruising- before we get to the penalty phase we'll move it to a later date and we can keep doing that until we move it to a date we actually intend to cruise. So because of this, we really recommend rebooking onboard even if you have NO IDEA when you'll cruise again.. you lose nothing. You can keep moving the date further until you actually use it- or you can cancel it later and get your deposit back. Only if you let it go until you're within the penalty phase would you lose any money.
I just hope that things go back to normal by the time we cruise!
... and the news go on... there are about 80 000 people living there and he said there are about 70 tours, 200 jewerly stores and 500 craft stores that depend on cruises.. so the governement has started giving out groceries to the people there because there is no way to get an income without ships.....
any chance of future upgrades at this point. A veranda would be nice but a porthole and split bath was a great surprise
