elbodans

We just had a very serious conversation about the necessity of a balcony and I'm going to go with: it isn't necessary. We sailed Alaska for 14 days in an inside cabin and it was actually nice, since the sun didn't set but for 4 hours at certain points in the trip and it was nice being able to sleep (to poorly quote a Disney movie: if the sun is up then I am up.)

Sadly, my husband is a teacher so beginning or end of the season is out until he retires. And that's not for more than a decade. 😞 So yes, we have to travel in the most peak times. It is not ideal, but we are working with it.

This is VERY HELPFUL! Thank you! We will do that. We are currently really seriously considering one specific sailing and it is on HAL. We may do this and book an inside cabin and if things change and make an upgrade possible, great. If they don't, we are fine with the inside cabin and the current price. Thank you! This was very helpful.

I guess I was hoping the cruise rates would go down significantly. I can fly from any NYC-area airport--or Philly or Baltimore--so I can almost always find reasonable trans atlantic flight prices. Even in the summer, even pretty last minute. Like as in under $600pp/rt. The sailing we are looking at right now would be around $7K for the two of us (which is more than we've ever spent for a trip by double.) If that's going to drop by, say, half, the savings would be worth paying a few hundred dollars more for the flight. But it sounds like that's a vain hope. Oh well. Perhaps I'll just crush my husband's dream for now and we will do another Europe by train trip.

This is not my first time cruising--far from it--but it is my first time considering a sailing that is more than 90 away. In fact, it is my first time considering a sailing that is more than 30 days away. I'm a last minute cruise person. But my husband wants to do a Norway cruise next summer (July 2023) and the sailings we are looking at are between 14 and 21 days long, on either HAL or MSC. They are currently pretty expensive, as you'd imagine. But we've done a 14 day sailing to Alaska on HAL and we booked less than a month in advance and got a FABULOUS deal. Of course this was pre 2020 (it was 2018) so that changes things as well. I also sailed MSC out of Miami in February 2020 (right before ships stopped sailing, but no one knew that was coming at the time) and I paid nearly nothing for that, having booked 28 days in advance. I just want to know--for those of you who cruise for longer periods of time, do you find deals closer to the sailing date? Or do those longer sailings usually sell out? I can't imagine they do--who can go on a three week cruise, right? I can wait longer to book this trip if that's a better choice. Or I can book now. Note that I do not care which specific cabin we get, but I'd like a balcony. We sailed in an inside cabin on our 14 day Alaska cruise and while we could make that work again, for Norway in the summer I'd like my own private outdoor space.