Selbourne

I think there’s always been the risk of people selling their shares once the OBC has been applied, but prior to the cruise. I’ve not tested it personally, as my shares have appreciated in value by 50% since I bought them and, on top of that, I’ve had about 150% of the outlay back in OBC in less than a year, but given how poor the IT systems are that Carnival use I have no doubt that this would be possible.

It’s extremely rare though and I don’t think that the OP needs to worry about that with Iona. Oriana left P&O 5 years ago!

Have a great cruise Andy. Are you doing Club dining this time?

To be clear, normal disembarkation doesn’t always start as soon as self disembarkation has finished. There can be a pause, for safety reasons, whilst the porters are moving large pallets of luggage around the luggage pick up hall. During this time, nobody is allowed off the ship. If you want to self disembark (which given your train time you will) then you cannot wander off at your leisure. You have to leave within the designated time slot (it’s at least a 30 minute window, but always early). The good news is that you don’t have to register for self disembarkation, so you could wait to see what disembarkation time you are allocated and then take a view, but if you wish to use normal disembarkation then you have to put your luggage outside your cabin as you go to bed the last night. If you are travelling light and will be time limited, I would just self disembark as you are guaranteed not to have any delays in getting off the ship, trying to find luggage, getting through customs etc. We went on Iona in the August school holidays with 5,750 others and whilst the ship felt crowded, disembarkation was very good. One of our daughters decided to self disembark and was off the ship, collected her car and on the road by 7.30am. She was very impressed with it.

They always get back on time, so you needn’t worry about that! The ships are usually docked by around 6am. We’ve never done self disembarkation, so others can confirm the precise timings, but I think it’s usually between around 7.15 and 8am. If you intend to stay in your cabin until 8am and then go for a quick breakfast you will be too late for self disembarkation and will have to wait for regular disembarkation. Your best bet is to grab a very early breakfast in the buffet and self disembark. It’s quite a walk to the station, especially with luggage, but you will be fine with a 9.30am train if you self disembark.

If booking within the 3 months prior to the cruise (after balance due date - when the bargains can sometimes occur) isn’t an option for you (which I quite understand), booking at launch will usually be the best option. The general pattern tends to be that once the launch period has ended, prices go up. Thereafter, until the balance due date, prices will usually be higher than at launch, and sometimes by a very large amount (double the launch price isn’t at all uncommon). The best you can then hope for is an extra OBC offer that effectively takes the net price down towards launch price territory. It’s important to re-state that the two bargain fares that I secured were both after balance due date (so 3 months prior to departure). Booking a 2026 cruise in 2025 is almost certainly going to cost you a lot more than booking it now. Hope that all makes sense.

Yes I completely understand that. Neither did I until retirement, hence why we always used to book at launch. Obviously booking at launch gives the satisfaction of having secured your first choice and being able to look forward to it over a prolonged period. Usually it also has the added benefit of being the best time to book, price wise, which was another reason why we always did it. It was a pleasant, but unexpected, surprise that we managed to nab two cruises at short notice at bargain prices. No idea if we will be as lucky again, but booking over 2 years out is no longer sensible for us given my wife’s health, so it’s a chance we’ll take. In the end, we all have to do what’s best for our circumstances. As we often say, there’s no right or wrong answer.

Exactly. No lottery at all in our case. On both occasions that we booked after balance due date we were told the cabin numbers prior to paying, and they were cabins that we would have chosen had we booked on launch day at a much greater cost!

We were definitely lucky Dai. On both cruises where this happened, I had enquired on a couple of previous occasions for each, and there was no availability of accessible balcony cabins, yet on the third time of asking (after balance due date) we managed to get one (in fact we had a choice of 2 on Britannia). As we know, a lot can happen in the two years between launch and balance due date that may affect people’s desire to go on the cruise. Obviously I have no idea why those 3 bookings were cancelled, but logic would suggest that those requiring accessible cabins may be more likely to have to pull out due to health related issues? Naturally I have no way of knowing if this will happen again as it’s supply and demand. This is now the second launch in a row where we haven’t been wowed enough by any itineraries to book so far out, and the few that have slightly appealed have been more than we’d be prepared to pay. However, I’ve kept a note of the launch prices and will monitor up to sail date. If the price becomes more attractive I might enquire, but I’m fully aware that luck would need to be on our side.

I didn’t even look at Arvia and Iona as we aren’t interested in them. It’s possible to get within that price on Britannia and Ventura, and I found a few but, as mentioned we aren’t interested in booking that far out. I strongly suspect that more will become available within our target price if we book after balance due date, as we managed successfully with 2 cruises last year. As mentioned, launch prices aren’t always the cheapest nowadays.

Pre-Covid we always used to book at launch because we have to have an accessible balcony cabin. It was a double win, because we secured one of these cabins and the launch prices were never bettered. Last year we booked cruises on both Britannia and Aurora after balance due date, paid less than the launch prices and still secure accessible balcony cabins. That experience has made us completely re-think our approach, especially as I’ve never been entirely comfortable having to book over 2 years in advance.

I meant to add that exact point in my response. OBC is a marketing ploy to make people feel that they are getting a bargain when, in reality, they might not be. Periods of high OBC are usually accompanied by higher cruise prices. Clearly an on board offer of double or treble OBC makes it a better deal than booking at the same time ashore but, as evidenced by the recent example given in my post, it may well still end up being a poor move. People on board our recent cruise were chuffed at getting £1,200 OBC (treble OBC offer) on next years Grand Voyage, only to find that the cruise price dropped £2,000 afterwards, so that ‘offer’ cost them £800! Like you, in order to see through these marketing tactics, I simply work on a price cap, in my case £100 pppn for a balcony cabin. I calculate the cruise price as the quoted price minus OBC. So a 2 week cruise in a balcony cabin at £2,700 for the two of us, with no OBC, would get my interest. However, an on board offer of £500 OBC at a time when the cruise price was £3,400 wouldn’t! Then, of course, there’s the further complication that you don’t get loyalty discount off on-board spend when you have OBC, and on our 65 nighter people were ‘using up’ large sums of OBC on daft things just to get rid of it. Our total on board spend for the whole cruise was less than half the amount of OBC that some people had, we got 10% loyalty discount and, above all, we’d paid less than half the price for the cruise that those who’d got the ‘free’ OBC had paid 🤔

As Phil says, there are usually offers but fluid pricing can often trump them. On our recent 65 night Grand Tour, lots of people booked next years Grand Tour whilst on board. There were some perceived very good deals like triple OBC. However, during the last week of our cruise, the price of that cruise dropped by about £2k, which suddenly made all those bookings extremely poor value!

They do exist but are few and far between. We had the full questionnaire after our 65 nighter. I diligently filled it all in, but in all honesty I don’t think there’s a shred of evidence to suggest that they take a blind bit of notice of them, which I guess is why they’ve cut right back on them!

Technically no, it’s meant to be after the balance has been paid, but I’ve applied for a November Cunard cruise and the OBC has been added!