POLL -- How many cancelled out?

[RedSox68]

Now that the dust has settled and people have recuperated from the shock, just curious what everyone's decisions ended up being.

We got quotes, but let the holds expire -- I don't want to have to take a second mortgage for one trip!

We are looking at other lines.

 

[Jess_S]

I booked anyway, but I think I may be in a somewhat unique situation because I booked the 6 night Magic Repo from San Juan. The fare we're paying is substantially cheaper than what others say they are paying for other similar length cruises. I think pretty much any other itinerary would have been too expensive for us.

 

[RedSox68]

I booked anyway, but I think I may be in a somewhat unique situation because I booked the 6 night Magic Repo from San Juan. The fare we're paying is substantially cheaper than what others say they are paying for other similar length cruises. I think pretty much any other itinerary would have been too expensive for us.

Congrats -- sounds like a good deal. Hope you have a great time. We were considering that one, but want a longer cruise.

 

[Ofinn]

1

 

[lilroo442]

We booked. We've been saving for this cruise (Alaska) for a couple of years, it's a big family vacation. (And we are celebrating my moms 60th birthday and my dads retirement.) The prices were a little higher than we would have liked but not too crazy and it's the vacation we wanted.

 

[RedSox68]

We booked. We've been saving for this cruise (Alaska) for a couple of years, it's a big family vacation. (And we are celebrating my moms 60th birthday and my dads retirement.) The prices were a little higher than we would have liked but not too crazy and it's the vacation we wanted.

Congrats. All that matters is that you are happy with what you got -- and it's such a special occasion. Not a bad way at all to spend a 60th birthday I must say.

 

[Ofinn]

I booked the 5/28 Baltic cruise. Not really happy with that cruise. If I'm going to fly all the way to Europe I would really prefer a longer cruise. I laugh every time I look at the price of the 10 night Baltic cruise. It's higher than opening day prices were on the 12 night Iceland cruise the same week this year. As everyone know that cruise didn't sell. So it makes perfect sense for them to raise the prices..... I'll probably just hold out, and see if they offer discounts again. My second choice would be the WBTA so I'll probably move my OBB to that when it's released.

 

[Jess_S]

Congrats -- sounds like a good deal. Hope you have a great time. We were considering that one, but want a longer cruise.

I'm not sure I'd say "good deal," though I suppose good deal is in the eye of the beholder. I priced the trip against a stay at Beaches and DCL was substantially cheaper. Priced against a similar itinerary on another cruise line, the DCL fare is substantially more expensive. So I choose to use Beaches as my benchmark.

I agree 6 nights is too short. We were already booked on the April 30 Southern Caribbean itinerary and booked the May 7 as a B2B. (I'm hoping that 13 nights won't feel too long).

 

[dclpluto]

I booked because I have no kids in school. If I did there is no way I could do Disney when kids are out of school. Kid is grown up. Just the wife and I so go at off times to save $$$$.wanted the 11 night southern carribean cruise. Too much money for me. So going in May

 

[NancyIL]

I booked nothing, as I had no intention of cruising in the summer with Disney. I already booked b2b2b Hawaii and Alaska cruises on Royal Caribbean for May 2017.

I am somewhat interested in the fall 2017 Panama Canal cruise, especially if it starts in late October, as rumored. However, I won't have an onboard booking to apply to this cruise, so whether I book it depends on the price.

 

[brookmey]

We got a quote for a 7 night eastern Caribbean, but let the quote expire because it was way too much for a cruise stopping only at CC and the Virgin Islands. Not a good value at all.

But we really want to go on another cruise, so we looked at 7 night Alaska prices and one is about $1300 cheaper, same category, than the eastern Caribbean. So, we put a deposit on that one. It's still a lot, about $2000 more than what we paid for our 2014 Alaskan cruise, same category. But, we loved that trip, especially DH, so there is a little more value there. DH wants to go and is willing to pay the higher price, but I'm still on the fence. I love Disney, but that's still a lot to pay, especially when the cruise offers nothing new from our last one.

I've been looking at other cruise lines, but we had a couple of BAD experiences on Carnival and RCCL before we had kids, so we're both very leery about going away from Disney. Sailing on Disney is what changed our attitudes from hating cruising to loving it. For us it's a huge leap of faith to move away from Disney and right now we're just not ready to do it. Besides, I have my heart set on a spring break cruise with a Star Wars day at sea.

 

[Amw1064]

Prices are way to high for me. Could pay but why? I said a year ago that I would be 25 and done but going on a short 3 day and making it 26. Disney has just gotten to expensive.

 

[dvcdisney]

I booked when I called at opening day for Gold/Platinum. Even though I asked if the cruise can be held for 24hrs, she said no that I would have to pay the deposit at that point. Not sure if it was because it was a placeholder. Either way, it's a bit annoying that some are allowed to hold for 3 days and all I was asking for was 1 day.

Anyway, I found the price quite high but I booked it because it's our first cruise in Europe and we wanted to stay with DCL. Sadly, if the Norway was available during July or Aug, I would have taken that instead of the Med. I guess it was a good thing because we paid far less for the Med Cruise.

However, I have been looking at RC for some other European cruise and I'm very tempted. Since it's port intensive, it may be fine to be on a ship other than DCL.

 

[annacali]

We had quotes for a 7 night Eastern and the 11 night Southern. We didn't book either. We have an OBB set to expire 6/20/17 that we probably just won't use. The Eastern was over 12000 for the 2 cabins we need and the Southern was over 20000. We were looking to add on a few days for Harry Potter at Universal ahead of time. I just can't justify spending that much on a cruise when we have so many other things we also want to do. We are looking at a RCCL Eastern that will be about half of what Disney wanted for the same length. We are doing our first RCCL cruise to Alaska this summer so if we like it we will probably book RCCL for next summer. We loved our Disney experiences but my kids are tweens/teens now and Disney is less of a draw for them.

 

[clten]

I was a bit disappointed with the late spring/early summer offerings. We look for unique itineraries or places we haven't been yet. The last few years we've been doing the EBTA because the itineraries have been interesting and those cruises are usually a good value. Seemed this year that cruise was priced a bit higher but the itinerary wasn't that interesting to us. All of DCL's "special" itineraries were priced way more than we thought they were worth. So it took some looking to see if anything interested us.

We settled on b2b 5/28 Baltic and 6/4 Fjords cruises. We hadn't done either of these before because we kept delaying the Baltic because Disney was priced twice as much as other cruise lines and we didn't feel it was worth paying the Disney difference for such port intensive cruises. Well before booking, I did check out other cruise line's itineraries. Royal Caribbean did have almost identical itineraries a couple of weeks before and if we took a smaller cabin we could have saved money (about $1,000 per cruise). But if we were sailing Royal, to be comfortable we felt we'd need to upgrade so that did away with most of the savings so we stuck with Disney.

I will say in hunting around, if DCL doesn't have any interesting itineraries for the fall, I've got my eye on an interesting Transatlantic on Princess. So we aren't locked into Disney but so far we've found cruises that interest us and we don't find over-priced (helps to have OBBs to transfer) so we will keep sailing DCL. But we've sailed other cruise lines and are ready to jump over to another as soon as we don't find something that interests us.

 

[jillbean78]

We booked the 6 night repo cruise from San Juan. It was a really good price, otherwise I would not have booked a cruise at all on any of the summer itineraries. We would have probably done the 5 day western out of Miami the end of February.

 

[cgolf]

We do have a placeholder booked that we will probably use, just in the timeframe we did in the past. The reason I can't say for 100% that we will or won't is because we need to see how much we like or dislike RCCL. If the RCCL cruise is really good we will likely not use our placeholder, not so good we will use it. I will say that Celebrity is really looking like an option for us, and if there was a good last minute deal out there we might try them too because we have some airline credits to use before we would have to go on our DCL trip. Who knows, maybe prices will finally start to go down....

 

[RedSox68]

I booked nothing, as I had no intention of cruising in the summer with Disney. I already booked b2b2b Hawaii and Alaska cruises on Royal Caribbean for May 2017.

I am somewhat interested in the fall 2017 Panama Canal cruise, especially if it starts in late October, as rumored. However, I won't have an onboard booking to apply to this cruise, so whether I book it depends on the price.

Nancy, can you tell me what sailings you booked the b2b? that's a great idea. Have you cruised RCCL before?

 

[DisneyWishes14]

Didn't book. I was interested in the longer Caribbean cruises but the prices were insane. It would cost much less to simply go to a 5-star resort in the Caribbean than to go on the cruise. We will be looking at Celebrity for Europe and the Paul Gauguin for Polynesia. We have one last DCL cruise in December (which I would cancel but we are staying concierge and don't want to lose our deposit) and then we are done.

 

[NancyIL]

Nancy, can you tell me what sailings you booked the b2b? that's a great idea. Have you cruised RCCL before?

I'll be on Radiance of the Seas: May 5-17 Honolulu to Vancouver, May 17-26 Vancouver to Seward, May 26-June 2 Seward to Vancouver. I have been on 12 Royal Caribbean cruises.