Hyundaigirl

Aside from the specialty restaurants my husband and I are looking forward to the flexibility in the MDR - if we get back to the ship after a day of touring and are ravenous then we can opt to eat early and not wait until a later set seating time. Or later if we want to just chill and linger over a pre-dinner cocktail!

Thanks everyone for the info!

Happy New Year everyone!

Question - I've looked and can't find the answer to this. Is it possible to book any specialty restaurant reservations prior to boarding ? I recall on our Holland America cruise you had the option to do so on the same site where you booked shore excursions.

Thanks :)

As I said before, ChoiceAir was not user friendly. The airfare that I wanted to buy was $25 per ticket higher than USAirways. ChoiceAir makes a bold statement of matching airfares if you book and find a lower fare within 24 hours. They say that you will get the difference in OBC. What they do not state boldly is that there is a fee for using Choice Air. It is buried in the very fine print. I paid $50 extra total for 2 tickets...and saved $1000 on my cruise fare. Without that incentive, I would not use ChoiceAir.

Friends of ours who wanted to fly first class found that ChoiceAir was extremely higher than the airline. They booked with the airline.

 

Everytime I travel, I explore many options for my air. Using Expedia, ChoiceAir, Orbitz, etc. may show you options that you might consider. Split tickets can be tricky. Multi-destination tickets are also a challenge. Taking the time to explore options can save you money.

Hi - for us it was also the savings on the cruise price. Otherwise I would also have booked my own flights.

I booked with choice air about a month ago. First time using them. I like to book directly with the airline. The air credit from Azamara was too much to pass up. I booked with choice air on line. I was uncomfortable using the choice air website. I tried to call them without success.i booked on line. After I got my confirmation from choiceair, I called the airline to select seats. I then found out that I had already been assigned seats. I changed them without a problem. Choiceair needs to improve their website. Since Choiceair is part of RCL, I am not surprised that the website is not great. Celebity, azamara, and Royal Caribbean also have website problems

Hi - you're like me. I want to be able to book my flights on-line directly with my choice of airline and select my seats at the same time. I don't even like using Expedia. I've been doing that for so long it makes me uncomfortable to pay for tickets and not have a seat assignment. Funny thing is that I called Choice Air twice. The first time when I realized I wasn't going to be able to make a seat selection - called to see if they could assign seats for me and they said they could not. In fact during that call the agent quoted me a fare that was over a $1000 more than the airlines current promotion. So I went ahead and booked on line - the website actually was showing the promotional fare, and then I called back to check again on seat selection. Thats when the 2nd agent told me the seat maps weren't out yet because it was too early. She claims to have called Air Canada but unless she had some special direct line number she would have been on hold forever on Saturday morning like I was. Its interesting that when I finally got through to Air Canada the agent there had no problem booking me a seat - in my case Choice Air had not assigned seats. And if I wanted to forego the cruise discount of $500 PP (not) I could also have just booked directly with AC and selected my seats on the spot.

Hi - I think its an Air Canada thing. Although it does look like they let you access a booking made through Kayak now.

Hi fellow Canadians - for anyone interested in flying premium economy to their Europe cruise port. As part of their 12 days of Christmas promotion, Air Canada has a sale on premium economy for travel between May 24th and October 31st.

Promotion ends at 11:59pm December 23rd - check out http://www.aircanada.com.

I just booked this morning to Rome and Choice Air reflected the same fares on line - with the additional $25 of course. Was able to fly premium economy for only $200 more than economy.

LOL so I can stop my whining now. I FINALLY got through to Air Canada after a 1 hour and 52 minute wait! NO kidding - it didn't help that they are predicting a major ice storm in our region and everyone must have been calling to change their flights. Anyway I finally got through and spoke to a very pleasant agent who booked my choice of seats and has emailed me my confirmation. Question - since we do pay Choice Air a fee, why can't they do that for you??

Reason I really wanted to get those seats selected today is that Air Canada is doing a 12 days of Christmas promotion and until tomorrow the promotion is a sale on premium economy. The premium economy cabin only has 18 seats and we definitely wanted to be able to get seats together. We do have to fly through Montreal from Toronto but the bottom line is we were able to book premium economy for only $200 more than the current price of an economy seat.

....and I am able to do somethings online with this reservation on the air canada site. I was able to add our passport info to the booking. They will also let me add travel insurance and a number of other add ons but they won't let me select a seat!!

At the end of my online Choice Air booking I did receive an actual Air Canada booking reference number and I can see my reservation on the Air Canada website but I'm not able to select my seats online because I didn't book my ticket on aircanada.com. Obviously if you can do that on other airlines then it must be an air canada quirk.

The AC site does say I can call the reservation line if I want to select seats - which is what I'm doing now. I've been on hold for so long I just can't hang up now ...I have too much time invested in this call! It just makes me crazy that I can't do this on-line.

I had called Choice Air back and they claim the reason the seat selection isn't available is that its too far ahead and the aircraft could change. I don't believe that for a minute. I've booked flights with Air Canada far in advance many times and selected seats that never changed. If I had booked directly with the airline I could have selected seats no problem. So far not super impressed with the choice air experience.

Hi - a question for those of you who have previously used Choice Air. I'm one of those people who prefers to do just about everything myself on-line. So I went to book our flights on Air Canada to Rome for next September and found the exact flights I was looking for, was able to enter my FF number but when I went to book the seats I got a blank window that said if the seat maps weren't available to call the carrier. Seemed odd since Air Canada has the seat maps so I called Choice Air to see if they had access to the seat maps - but no they don't . If they have the ability to book on-line plus have a "seat selection" button why wouldn't they have access to the same info on the Carriers website. Anyway I went ahead and booked and it generated an Air Canada booking reference number. I thought great - I can now go onto the AC site and book my seats - no luck. It recognizes I booked the ticket elsewhere and wouldn't let me. Aargh!

Now I'm on an endless wait to talk to Air Canada - been 35 minutes already.....when I think I should have been able to do this all simply on the choice air website.

Any one else have any issues like this? At what point does Choice Air get seat maps? Or be able to book your seats for you? I don't think its unusual to book flights 9 months ahead.

I booked ChoiceAir then when it was in my United page, I added the economy + seats for cash. Later the business class using money and miles opened up and I changed to that (wiped out my UA miles) and applied for a refund of the cost of econ +. Everything worked out, now if the flt times don't change, I'm set.

Ok good to know I might have the option. Thanks!

Hi all - I apologize if this has been asked previously but I read through all the posts on the Choice Air sticky and couldn't find anything.

My husband and I have some Air Canada gift cards we'd like to use and know that if we booked our flights directly on the Air Canada site we'd be able to use them to offset the price of our airfare. I know from playing around on the Choice Air site that you can enter your own airflight frequent flyer info but once you get to the payment page will there be an option to redeem an Air Canada gift card? Or if we wanted to upgrade to the extra cost bulkhead seats?

My husband and I are booked on the Sicily and Malta cruise on the Journey departing September 27, 2014 . I was quite surprised to check out the excursions for this cruise last night and already see the Azamazing Evening listed for the 1st evening in Sorrento.