Carnival Fly-Aweigh program. Y did the fly me into FLL instead of MIA and other issue

[prchoudh]

On Thursday I finally got my flight info. I was hoping for different accomodations and flight arrangements. I guess next time I will book my own transfers and air. Here is what they have for me. I cannot help but to get upset with the situation. Am I making this worse?

 

Flying into FLL the day before and staying at the Courtyard Marriott

 

Next day at noon a shuttle is supposed to pick me up at the hotel and take me to Port of Miami. This is a grey area. Some say the shuttle will pick me up and others say no. Online in one part is says I did not pay for any transfers. In another area it shows the transfer. Carnival staff at the 800 number cannot give me an answer because they are confused too.

 

Since I am VIP, one of the perks is getting on the cruise before everyone else. If the shuttle picks me up at noon I will miss that.

 

So my concerns are:

 

1. I will miss out on getting on the ship early. Instead I will get on the ship around 2.

 

2. I do not want be waiting in a hotel waiting for a shuttle to pick me up only to find out there is no shuttle coming.

 

The return flight heading back home involves a 4 hour layover in Minneapolis. When I look online, there were non-stop flgihts that still had space on them and they were priced competitively.

[DanJ]

It's common knowledge the cruiselines use whoever and take you wherever if you book regular air with them. If you do custom air, you can pick your flights. I've never booked air with the cruiseline for this reason. And their hotel packages usually seem to come in at a per person rate similar to what the room rate on the hotel website is so I book those independantly as well.

 

As for the transfers, I wonder if the confusion is that you might have transfers to the hotel but not the port. Seems unlikely as these type of packages usually include shuttles to the hotel as well as the pier. You definitely need to keep talking to someone at Carnival until you get this part figured out. Regarding the timing, you probably aren't the only people they have at that hotel and since the cruiselines always recommend people don't show up before 100pm or so, they aren't going to schedule a shuttle at 10am or whatever.

[ItsAllAboutTheSass]

On Thursday I finally got my flight info. I was hoping for different accomodations and flight arrangements. I guess next time I will book my own transfers and air. Here is what they have for me. I cannot help but to get upset with the situation. Am I making this worse?

 

Flying into FLL the day before and staying at the Courtyard Marriott

 

Next day at noon a shuttle is supposed to pick me up at the hotel and take me to Port of Miami. This is a grey area. Some say the shuttle will pick me up and others say no. Online in one part is says I did not pay for any transfers. In another area it shows the transfer. Carnival staff at the 800 number cannot give me an answer because they are confused too.

 

Since I am VIP, one of the perks is getting on the cruise before everyone else. If the shuttle picks me up at noon I will miss that.

 

So my concerns are:

 

1. I will miss out on getting on the ship early. Instead I will get on the ship around 2.

 

2. I do not want be waiting in a hotel waiting for a shuttle to pick me up only to find out there is no shuttle coming.

 

The return flight heading back home involves a 4 hour layover in Minneapolis. When I look online, there were non-stop flgihts that still had space on them and they were priced competitively.

 

This is from the carnival.com:

Transfer Services.

Guests have the option of purchasing airport/pier one-way or round-trip transfers for the day of embarkation and debarkation or are responsible for all transportation to and from the pier. Please allow adequate time for transfers between the airport and the pier, Customs inspections and airport security check. This transfer service is available only during normal operation hours. Advance reservations are required 5 days prior to sailing.

 

If you haven't paid for your transfers to the pier SAS (http://www.ridesas.com) is highly recommended on these boards.

 

Regarding your flight and hotel arrangements, when you let the airline handle your airfare, they are giving you what is cheapest for them, not what is most convenient for you. You can't look at the airline website and assume that is what the cruiseline is paying for those flights. They also have contracts at certain hotels for cruise passengers.

 

My suggestions are, 1) look at your invoice and see if you are paying for transfers. If not, arrange your own transportation to and from the pier to be convenient based on when you want to get to the pier. 2) There is nothing really to get upset about. You have airfare that comes in the day before so that headache is out of the way. 3) use this as a lesson learned and book your own transportation and accommodations next time. 4) enjoy your cruise.

[Marie51]

Is it possible to cancel all this and just book your own hotel and airfare? When you let the cruise line do it, they seem to always have the most inconvenient arrangements, and more expensive too. It would be much cheaper to book your own flights, hotel, and shuttle or just get a cab.

[prchoudh]

Thanks for the responses. For the past 15 years, I have always booked my own airfare and then pricelined the hotel. Prior to that I let the cruiseline do it all and for the most part, the air and hotel were pretty decent. Lesson definitely learned, that I will book all of this on my own next time.

 

I will try and go back to Carnival tomorrow to see if I can unwind all of this. Their airfare department is very uncooperative or at least that is what my experience has been for the last 3 weeks. I have been calling efveryday to see what the air arrrangements are and when they would be available to me. They refused to give me any information over the phone and refuse to post anytihng on mycarnival website until they got the lodging taken care of. I cannot believe it took them 3 weeks to get the lodging taken care of.

 

Now, we are stuck with all center seats on all the flights (all aisle and window seats are gone) and my wife and I are scattered around the plane. When i look at the non-stops last night there were at least 4 completely empty rows on each flight.

[ItsAllAboutTheSass]

The airline probably wouldn't sell the non-stops to Carnival because they know they can sell those. See if you can pay for an air deviation to get on the non-stop. You may however have to pay a higher cost if the airline charges Carnival more. It's funny (well, maybe ironic is a better word) you all got middle seats. We were on a flight in May and while we were waiting to deplane, I was talking to the flight attendant in the back of the plane. We got to talking about seat assignments and price buckets and such. She stated that the tickets bought thru 3rd party sites and consolidator tickets (which is probably what CCL has) were always the middle seats because they have the hardest time selling those individually. Now this was an Airtran flight so may be restrictive to Airtran alone, but it doesn't sound like it. I really hope that you can work things out to your liking. Here is a good post on how Cruise Air works with American, but I would think that this is more general to the airline industry.

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=530322

[prchoudh]

Just a quick update to the airfare issue. I spoke to Carnival's air department. What a friendly bunch of people they are. LOL. They told me that I can cancel the air if I choose but its a $150 per person penalty.

 

When they book the air, they do not promise anything. All they commit to is getting you to the airport in a reasonable amount of time to get you on the ship. The number of plane changes that you need to make and the amount of time per layover is not factored into it. This was per Carnival.

 

As far as getting to the port earlier, I can do this but, I need to do it on my own. Carnival contracts with the agencies to get me to the ship. They do not commit to the time of arrival. This was per Carnival as well. So, if I want to get to the port earlier, I would need to make other arrangements.

 

In other words, its my problem not theirs.

[ItsAllAboutTheSass]

Just a quick update to the airfare issue. I spoke to Carnival's air department. What a friendly bunch of people they are. LOL. They told me that I can cancel the air if I choose but its a $150 per person penalty.

 

When they book the air, they do not promise anything. All they commit to is getting you to the airport in a reasonable amount of time to get you on the ship. The number of plane changes that you need to make and the amount of time per layover is not factored into it. This was per Carnival.

 

As far as getting to the port earlier, I can do this but, I need to do it on my own. Carnival contracts with the agencies to get me to the ship. They do not commit to the time of arrival. This was per Carnival as well. So, if I want to get to the port earlier, I would need to make other arrangements.

 

In other words, its my problem not theirs.

 

Sounds about right. Some feel it is so much easier to let the cruise line handle the air and lodging than to take time to research and control their own travel (not pointing this toward you, since you have done this before you know the benefit). Hopefully next time you will go back to controlling your own travel.

[prchoudh]

Yes, you are right. When I priced out the airfare it was $450 for the non-stop flights with lots of seats to choose from. When I purchased the cruise, I asked them what the cost was and they were going to charge me $459. So, I figured for the $9 per person for a day prior which included the room and a non-stop flight, it was a deal that could not be passed up.

 

Many years ago, when I had Carnival do my air, the flights were all non-stop and the hotel was top notch. Next time I will do my own air and transportation for sure now that I know more about how they choose the air.

[Nasmas]

We used to book air thru the cruise lines until we got the crappest flights out and had to deal with Delta airlines on top of that. We had about 8 hours to wait for the flight and they wouldn't even let us wait in the airport. I'm not sure they're still doing this but we had to to the basement, where the cruise lines were checking people in. We had to stand outside in 100 degree weather for several hours. And the line hardly moved. We tried to turn in our ticket at the Delta counter and were rudely told that no we could not. "That's a cruise ticket and it's only worth $40. Anyway, we dont' have any more seats out today." My husband asked if there were any 1st class available. She told him that he'd have to pay for it. Then before she even looked, she said there were no seats. After waiting all that time and getting to Atlanta at mid-night, they tried to bump us. I raised all sorts of hell. They offered me Delta dollars. I told her in no uncertain terms that I wasn't interested in Delta dollars because they'd seen the last of me. She did get us on the flight but that whole ordain ruined an otherwise great cruise. So, we've booked our own since then and never had a problem.

[prchoudh]

@Nasmas - I can see how that scenario could happen to me. That FlyAwiegh department has no personality. They sat on the money I paid for the tickets for 3 weeks until they booked my air. On several occasions I tried to get information from them about flight numbers and such and they refused telling me it would be on the Carnvial website by Thursday morning. So, Thursday morning I was on the website checking and found nothing. While driving to work I called them and they told me that they forgot to update my site.

 

They still refused to give me any flight information. I told them I would not have computer access until the evening and they continued to refuse to give me any information.

 

When i got to work I managed to log on and was horrified to see the air schedule and where they assigned my hotel. The non-stop flight gets me home 5 hours earlier than what they scheduled.

 

Lesson learned. I will not have them book my air again.

[BlueHerons]

Now, we are stuck with all center seats on all the flights (all aisle and window seats are gone) and my wife and I are scattered around the plane. When i look at the non-stops last night there were at least 4 completely empty rows on each flight.

 

This actually isn't true. The airlines have booked plenty of people on those flights who also haven't received seat assignments. Those choice seat assignments go to whomever pays the most and it could possibly be for triple the price of your tickets.

 

The airlines NEVER EVER let anyone know exactly what seats are available because they; oversell the flight, they don't want you to know, and they do not want their competition knowing what they've sold.

 

Think of the airlines as sort of like the insurance business; you have to use them, you hate them, and no one really knows how they work.

 

I would just chalk this up to a learning experience and console yourself with the fact that you paid a lot less than a lot of other people for this flight. Don't stress and try and not let it ruin your excitement for your cruise.

 

By the time you get there, you won't care.

[DanJ]

 

Also, if a flight isn't selling out, they will change the aircraft and go with a much smaller plane.

 

That's a decision they usually make several months out, as they have to plan where the fleet is going to be and where it needs to go next. They can't just pull a 767 off a flight a few weeks from now as they need that 767 in the destination city for the next flight.

 

They might swap a 320 out for a 319 closer to day of flight, but likely only if the 319 route is selling well enough to be upgauged to a 320 (and if the followon flights can be managed as well), otherwise there isn't any point in making the switch. They don't typically downgauge a single flight, but rather look at the booking trends and decide to make a type change in the schedule over a given timeframe.

[bodybycoorslight]

I have a very similar situation. Only difference is we are flying into Miami and our cruise departs from Ft Lauderdale. Our PVP insisted that she would get us the first avaliable flight out of LAX and when we finally got our reservations, we were on a late morning flight to Miami AND we are booked into the Airport Hilton (not a big fan of the Hilton brand). Got the same "sure we can change the flight....for $150 per person" line from CCL rep. Lesson learned. This was my first and last time to give that portion of my vacation $'s to them to manage.