pghflyer

Thanks. Honestly now that I am aware and looking at this booking again, it actually has me scrutinizing the math on always quickly booking the combined voyage. I am saving $576 (balcony rates) by booking the combined version....and Mariner Early Booking Bonus is a wash ($200 each or $400)....but AARP would get DOUBLE OBC ($200 each cruise instead of once), Healthcare industry would get DOUBLE OBC ($100 each cruise instead of once), and shareholder would get DOUBLE OBC ($250 each instead of once). So in this case, the extra OBC by booking separately completely equalizes the small discount by booking them combined. I wonder if sometimes you are better to book separately.

We just booked a 2026 sailing that is available as 14-day legs or a combined 28-day itinerary. When booking the 28-day version, I was surprised how few cabins were available this far out and even inquired with my agent to check on a few of the "better" cabins I was particularly interested in. None were available (I checked online at agent and HAL too). Being curious if one leg was the problem, imagine my surprise when I found TONS of better rooms (ex. Aft Balconies) all available on both of the 14-day legs.....but just not available for selection on the 28-day version. My agent says Holland is notorious for not allocating the best rooms to the longer sailings and normally won't allow passengers to choose rooms not explicitly on the longer sailings. He is looking into this, but I find this incredible. I am giving them more business and frankly, would get more OBC overall by booking the separate 14-day legs rather than combined 28-day itinerary (enough extra to overcome the small 4.8% discount on the 28-day versus booking the two 14-day). Anyone else run into this or am I the only lucky one?

AARP is per CABIN, as is the Healthcare. So it didn't really matter if my spouse had them. At this point for my 2026 sailing, I have confirmed and have on my booking as coming from HAL - Early Booking Bonus OBC, AARP OBC, and Healthcare OBC. I will hopefully be able to add shareholder at some point between now and sailing too. I think I last renewed AARP at $45 for 6 years, so getting a $200 OBC (10+ Day Balcony) for that investment is an incredible return.

They have a great web page with a nice PDF of benefits. I am considering it solely to go from my VH (veranda guarantee) to a better room of my choice, and then all the other benefits would just be bonus. Ours is 28-day sailing so sound like that would be $840 surcharge ($15 per person per day). Is that added to final payment or do you pay that fee when taking it?

I think the mass market destinations in the Mediterranean and Caribbean and Alaska may be impacted (price drops) by all this new inventory on large warehouse ships.....but I also think those are the most impacted by economic downturns as largely filled by casual vacationers and locals in popular big cities. For the rest of the world (where I am looking to travel and hit new places), it still doesn't feel to me like the itineraries and capacities have grown very much, and are mostly still served by the older and smaller ships.

I have done many that were more than one calendar year in advance - most recently for Noordam (sailing Jan 14 2023, but OBC approved and added to sailing on January 04, 2022).

All this talk about the shareholder OBC "authorization" by the board is news to me. I have often submitted my shareholder OBC years in advance with no problem on every cruise line with these programs. In fact, I was considering submitting for my 2026 cruise in the upcoming months - has anyone actually had their submissions denied because the program was waiting to be "re-authorized" at the next annual meeting?

I have always find the availability terrible online and pretty vast if you head to the restaurant/ specialty dining on embarkation day....but yes, book 6 if you need 5, no problem.

Thanks. I did ask my agent to confirm and send me an updated version of their booking confirmation, and they said it does indicate we got both AARP and Healthcare, despite of however it looks in our accounts. Now I just have to buy some stock to add the shareholder OBC on there too (worth $250 for our sailing)....hope all this stacking doesn't topple over! 🙂

That must be from a HAL PCC as I would expect every TA looks different (mine does). Regardless, good points. We verified our AARP first and waited our 3 business days per the email before booking, and it did appear when our agent booked our cruise. The discount also appeared on the Holland website in My Profile under Future Cruise Credits at the bottom in the Onboard Credits section. What is weird is we then verified our healthcare status which says to only wait 1 day before booking (we found it late). I contacted reservations_submit@hollandamerica.com to verify if it applied and they told me to wait 5 business days and then "contact your travel agent to have your booking updated." Now when I look in my profile (described above), my AARP discount indicator shows but not my Healthcare discount indicator. When I look in my wife's profile, her AARP discount indicator disappeared for a few days (after submitting the Healthcare), but now today her Healthcare indicator appeared (but AARP still gone). Not sure what any of that means ha ha.

I paid for everything with that card aside from some misc cash purchases (which I had receipts). The cruise wasn't a factor at all on my claims as it all dealt with flights.

I have purchased Travel Insured and was satisfied with it (they covered a trip delay very easily). The base plan is very cheap, but you can top up / add more coverage for each trip....these add ons are more costly. https://www.travelinsured.com/

I have a Chase Sapphire Reserve, and I have been reimbursed very easily and quickly for luggage delay and trip delay coverage (separate trips).

That policy looks exactly like mine from Travel Insured International. Good company and had a good experience with a claim processed for travel delay. The trip "upgrades" to cover cancellation and other important stuff (if you aren't getting elsewhere) are much more expensive than this base plan.

Some great points in this thread I hadn't considered. I also use the Chase Sapphire Reserve for insurance....and do think just $1 charge would opt your trip in to cover most things but having submitted for coverage multiple times in the past (which worked great and fast), I am a little worried that in the event of cancelled cruise coverage (never used that portion).......they might try to only reimburse the cruise fare for the amount charged to the credit card. I suppose it shouldn't be too hard to have Holland or your agent provide a paid in full invoice of some kind, but not sure how they will treat the multiple sources and if I want to be the first to test some rando CS agent's percentage picked out of thin air ha ha. Just curious how you guys are applying these payments to your final payment? I always use an agency so does that mean I need to get on the phone and read off 20 gift card numbers (example in the case of a $10K fare) over the phone and then they are manually entering that on their side? Yikes. Would like to think there is a way I can just enter into my Holland account myself but I don't see an obvious place.......

I did notice all of the non-AARP community OBC offers (educator, military, healthcare) say only good for select 2023/ 2024 cruises in their T&Cs.....so not sure if these are ongoing programs and if you would get any benefit for 2025/2026/+ sailings.........

Thank you @RuthC so if I wanted a 25 night cruise (for example, which would have been a $300 certificate), I would owe the additional $200 per person to book with my existing certificate?..... or do they give me some flat credit for my $100 certificate and I owe a different balance for the cruise I select?

We bought one $100 future cruise deposit (FCD) each last year.....does this mean I cannot apply it to a cruise more than 21 days long?

Anyone know of an automated way to monitor for availability of a particular cabin on a sailing? I know there are websites that can do this for airplane seats........

That is feasible in theory if they have openings on your selected tour & time, but on our sailing, the vast majority of excursions were sold-out prior to sailing and already had an established waitlist.......so the only safe way was to do it in person at the desk.

I just submitted (and instantly obtained) my AARP validation today and the response email says to wait 3-day before booking...you think that is really necessary for a 2026 booking? Hard to imagine they can't take care of that. Honestly the amount of promos are pretty impressive if they really do all stack / combine successfully. I am looking at a 28-day 2026 and I could end up with: $400 OBC Mariner's Early Booking Bonus $200 AARP OBC $250 Shareholder OBC $150 Future Cruise Deposit OBC (balcony level) $xxx Travel Agent OBC And then on top of that I can get 10% discount on my rate by paying with AARP Gift Cards....a little work to put it all together....but also a decent savings.

I was able to do the refund / apply OBC on the Noordam in Jan 2023, but they acted like it was a one-time exception and they were doing me a favor.

Been watching this one but right now wouldn't put any non-refundable money on anything going through that area before 2026 given the rate of cancellations and season modifications.

I appreciate the need to protest, but please don't misdirect your rage at the common working staff on the ship who had no say in what happened, and whom I am sure are having to deal with a lot of bad tempered passengers. Now, if they are giving you bad service, that is another discussion..........

Not really, no need to bring up a many-year-old (Feb 2020) bad experience if a totally different crew is there today. We basically had multiple "meet the crew" events and the captain and head engineer made fun of passengers and bald-face lied multiple times about information that had already been released publicly by NCL Corporate (i.e. confirmed Azipod problems) . They skipped going around the Cape at the last minute when we were 10 minutes out (which may have been necessary, I am no nautical expert and wasn't privy to the reasons). Just left a bad taste for many passengers.