Those early booking discounts

[DISNEYFAMILYOFFOUR]

I just wanted to confirm with everyone those early booking discounts.

We booked last May for December 2004. It was 19 months out. If I had to book today, the rate would of increased over $1,000. I could not believe it! That is alot of money.

 

[jrabbit]

You needed to be watching the 2005 repositioning cruises and requoting every 6 hours or so from Wednsday May 5 through Saturday May 8 to Sunday May 9 when there were no more rooms available. That would have given you a "real time" experience in the early booking discount. It's based on the number of rooms sold. The more that are sold, the higher the price.

Our "quote" started at for about $5000 (info from other cruises, same cat same # of people). We got in Wed pm for 5500 and watched the price jump $400 to $700 every 12 hours. Saw it get to a high of nearly $8,000 before the ship sold out. Looks like the price has settled at about $7500.

 

[ohiominnie]

I heard the repositioning cruises were sold out, but for fun I went to disneycruise.com yesterday and tried to book it. Nearly every category of room was available for booking, both west and eastbound. How do they figure "sold out?"

 

[Hygiene99]

I guess when all the dust settled there was room for more...

 

[PRaffen]

Just told my DH the other day about how much money I had saved him - our cruise is up almost $700 since I booked 17 long months ago

 

[Muushka]

All of that repo hype was a gold mine for Disney. So many people booking 'possible' cruises artifically drove the price up. So other people who were on the fence have to pay the much higher price. I may be all wet with my logic, but it seemed to work out great for DCL. Too bad really.....

 

[Otisp]

I'm not sure you can blame DCL. To date, I've seen no advertising about the repos. Yet, on a daily basis the availability for certain cats come and go, and every cabin is only available on a gty basis. Sounds like they're still pretty close to a sell-out more than 450 days out. Call it "guerilla marketing" or something, it obviously worked! (BTW, the cabin we booked for the CA-FL repo is now $3000 higher than what we paid).

 

[Muushka]

No, I really don't blame anyone. And as far as my statement of 'repo hype' even that was not DCL. It was more of what I read here on the boards, and the excitement of booking early (which is DCL policy) to get a good rate.

I don't blame us on the boards for locking in while rates were low. It is just that someone who thought they might like to go will pay a lot more than normal, due to DCL policy of the price automatically going up as the sales go up. Even if they just waited a day.

And now that the people who booked are deciding not to go, DCL will not release those rooms for what the original person booked it for. Quite a profit, and a goldmine for DCL.

 

[jrabbit]

And as far as my statement of 'repo hype' even that was not DCL. It was more of what I read here on the boards, and the excitement of booking early

Reading peoples posts here on the DIS, people were book 3, 4 or 5 rooms at a time, then deciding which 1-ONE room they wanted. That drove the price up. THere were also many people "thinking" about doing the repo cruise that called and got courtesy holds on rooms that they then never sent in the deposits and these room now are available for purchase. Once again, this activity drove up the cost of the rooms.

My guess is that the ship has most of its rooms sold out once again by the people who were waitlisted after the ship was sold out on sunday.