itonlyrains

Haha, I do the same (i.e. checking prices after we book) 🙂 

I agree it's been driven by demand, but if compared to initial price at the time of release (18m+ in advance) you'll be able to get it cheaper at some point for sure (even if by by £300 with codes that they release for everything...) The less popular "delux" categories (for both inside and outside, not necessarily balcony ones) seem to have more chance of getting a discount after lower categories completely sold out...

13 hours ago, insidecabin said:

MSC do port intensive from Barbados.

Some have flight options.

 

There was a deal this week  for MSC £999 14n balcony with BA flights and transfers (not Easter)  Barbados.

 

Easter is early this year do Marella always wait before relocation back to Med

Late April next year when are the relocation?

 

Princess UK have package options with discount flights, you can check flight availability on line before booking.

 

Plenty of packager TA's in the UK.

 

Costa and MSC use other Caribbean bases, direct flight an issue.

 

I don't quite get how MSC works with flights - by the look of it they have last minute deals for January/February only with them. For example 2 weeks in February inside cabin (no outside) is almost the same price as Marella outside during Easter... Where can I see these kind of deals you mentioned (£999 with flights)?

Marella does relocations normally end of April. P&O this year: 9th,15th,16th,23rd of March. Marella - 14th and 18th of April. I don't understand why...

I'm guessing any TA will have the same problem with separate flights (high cost during school holidays and availability of direct flights). What is even more annoying - the deals on cruises are either for very early bookings (when no flights are released yet) or closer to the sail dates when flight prices are high. From my research cruise lines normally do not do sales on dates exactly one year in advance when flight tickets are released...

10 hours ago, suech1970 said:

We picked up a very good deal with NCL, on a flash sale for this April. However the flight and the overnite accommodation was more than the cruise🙄 but it was 9 nights no sea days!

They have a ship sailing out of Dom Rep for a couple of months. Not sure when you were looking at but they have 9 to 14 nights out of Miami, Tampa and their itineraries are pretty good. Their older ships get the better itineraries, which are probably about the same age as Marella’s.

May be worth a look😁

Thanks. Yes, I did look at Dom Rep ones for this year, but 12 days plus separate flights was exactly the same price as 14 days with Marella and moreover we will need overnight accomodation on top of that as there is no direct flight on that day, so really not worth it (I would consider only £1K+ savings compared to Marella to be viable alternative unless looking for a specific itinerary). But I will look into their offering from Miami and Tampa for 2025 again...

Maybe I'll start here first.

We did enjoy our first Marella cruise and soon going on second, but I do wonder about alternatives. It's not a secret that Marella cruises are on the expensive side but every time I tried to find an alternative it either doesn't exists or turns out more expensive than Marella. Here are the constraints we are working with:

• Long haul (from UK point of view i.e. Caribbean, Americas or Asia)
• School holiday time (we have kids) +- couple of days
• ~14 days cruise option (7+7 or just near 14 days)
• at least 4 ports per week (5 better) excluding departure/arrival port

So the above normally means that we are normally after a fly cruise that apart from Marella only P&O does from the UK. Otherwise a long haul flight during school holidays is going to cost us close to half (if not more) of the total holidays cost. P&O for some reason finishes Caribbean cruises well before easter break (and during Easter their ships are on relocation back to Europe). Leaves only Marella...

Maybe someone did some research and found cheap options for travel to cruise ports that we missed?

As for itineraries - this is also seems to be problematic. For example I searched a lot of Caribbean cruises and they seem to have 2 problems: first, a lot of them start from mainland America, so a lot more time spent travelling (and we like actually visiting places), so only 2-3 ports a week is actually a norm for them. Second, duration is all over the place with almost none of cruise lines offering stackable 7+7 options. I did find a few nice 15-16 days cruises, but because of these non-repeatable durations they only do them once every two months and chances of them being the dates we need are close to zero.

Am I missing something or this is the exact reason why Marella is doing so well and not under any pressure to provide more competitive prices? 

On 11/6/2023 at 5:37 PM, rickpo said:

You will have to fill in a Barbados immigration form which is done online from 72 hours before arrival.

This is actually not needed despite TUI suggesting so on the website. I was trying to do this online last year but their website was not working, so I googled and it seemed you can do paper version, so relaxed. But then you just go directly to a bus and then ship and no one asked for anything to be filled in!

Only during a day's stay between two 7 day cruises back to back from Barbados they asked for passports to be scanned by immigration authorities that came aboard the ship and that's it...

...And almost certainly to pay full extortionate price for it.. For this January they had good sale back in October and, especially if you are not looking for the cheapest cabin, you are guaranteed to grab a deal closer to the sail date...

Hi, 

Can anyone tell me please if the front white section on deck 9 plan is housekeeping area from where they start cabin cleaning? We'd like to avoid that, because we try to sleep in as late as possible 🙂 

Thanks.

Hi. I was wondering if these fun tubing activities are suitable for younger kids? It says 6+ on our cruise excursion, but I'm not sure if our skinny 7yo would sit comfortably in the ring all the way? Any experience is highly appreciated! Thanks.

Yes, you do need esta. And not, it's not transit. We had to put n/a into most address fields and mention cruise ship name and it was approved with no issues.

Thank you, everyone! We probably only pre-book must see trips to start with and see how much extra we want to do during the cruise. Good to know that outside options will always be there.

We are going on a cruise for the first time (ever) with Marella in April (Caribbeans) and have a few questions on excursions:

• Book online vs on-board? Since it's our first, we do not know how much time we can handle travelling each day (with a 7yo as well), so we can book first few days online, but then wanted to have more flexibility with our plans. Will excursions fill up quickly when on board and there is a risk we run out of options?
• Do they all start at the same time? The ship will be spending 8-10 hours in each port and excursion can be only 2-3 hours, so can we do multiple ones per day? The online booking system doesn't allow that...
• Are there any places on the way that are particularly good for getting excursions locally: i.e. you can step off the ship and get picked up right there and returned back to the ship, not ripped off and safe? Our islands are: Barbados, Puerto Rico, U.S Virgin Islands, Guadeloupe, St Vincent, Antigua, Dominica, Martinique, St Lucia, Grenada. 

Thank you!