Fairly empty/underbooked ship: When to book?

[cruising cockroach]

I think part of it also depends upon where you are going, the air you want and how you are getting it. If you want to use FF miles of any sort (and heck if you are going to - why not grab business class if you are doing a TA) you pretty much need to book as soon as they open up (for the one I use around 355 days out).

 

That may have been true once but it seems (U.S.) airlines are hoarding seats and if they make them available early, they're often at the high end We're flying out in WBC product of the real Dutch (air)line. Availability wasn't bad at all in mid August for flights 2 months later, or right now for weeks later. Actually better than 2 months earlier before that. And just 1 price at that. Might be something about keeping all the riffraff (who are more of a cockroach than I am) from U.S. airlines out.

 

So, for some of us, we need to know where/what we are doing well in advance. I've been on numerous ships and I won't hop a line for the sake a few $$$. I like to save money as much as the next person but I am also looking for certain itineraries and certain features (as I suspect Sapper1) is as well.

 

There's where my wife and I are different: We are looking for routes and not itineraries as this cruise is an intercontinental trip for us. The rival to HAL for us would be a luxury line - which we're unlikely to spring for - or the freighters. We also figure places like Grenada and Seville deserve and are worth spending more time in than a cursory day visit from Malaga and Cadiz.

[kazu]

That may have been true once but it seems (U.S.) airlines are hoarding seats and if they make them available early, they're often at the high end We're flying out in WBC product of the real Dutch (air)line. Availability wasn't bad at all in mid August for flights 2 months later, or right now for weeks later. Actually better than 2 months earlier before that. And just 1 price at that. Might be something about keeping all the riffraff (who are more of a cockroach than I am) from U.S. airlines out.

 

 

 

There's where my wife and I are different: We are looking for routes and not itineraries as this cruise is an intercontinental trip for us. The rival to HAL for us would be a luxury line - which we're unlikely to spring for - or the freighters. We also figure places like Grenada and Seville deserve and are worth spending more time in than a cursory day visit from Malaga and Cadiz.

 

Never one to argue BUT remember we are in Canada. i can assure you that if I hadn't booked my flights out of Heathrow when I did to come home from our TA they wouldn't have been there. ;) I've been doing this for a while - yes, sometimes they will drop flights in, but not normally. For some reason on the international flights Aeroplan (Air Canada) loads two seats right away usually very late (4 a.m. our time last time).

 

I'm not a night owl - but I will happily stay up one night to get seats they charge nearly $12,000 for:)

 

As to the intinerary - we've done more than cursory visits and have done land visits as well - just an example though - this itinerary includes 2 overnights in key ports which gives you a fair amount of time to experience and enjoy:)

 

each to their own, no problem:) I hope you enjoy your TA:D

[cruising cockroach]

Never one to argue BUT remember we are in Canada.

 

I'm on the other end of the country from you. Just fortunately situated so that we have more TATL gateway (and *A partner airline) options than you do out of YSJ.

[cruising cockroach]

HAL must have a hard time filling the Nieuw Amsterdam TATL. VH GTY down to $629 less than 1 week after dropping down to $699. 4th drop in 2 months.

[arzz]

Finding frequent flier seats is a fine art. The best way to do it is right as the flights first open up -- approx ten months in advance as Kazu suggests.

 

If that is not possible (such as when we changed our April cruise to November in late July and had to give up our perfect flights for April to go searching for November flights) I have found you basically just have to be very persistent. I quickly booked what I could get (multiple stop overs, bad times of day, etc). We needed to get into Athens and out of Dubai.

 

I then started a routine of checking flight availability on line at least twice a day. I checked not only the full route from home, but also searched for availability on each leg of my preferred itinerary (e.g. Check for the flight from Dubai to Heathrow separately from the flight from Heathrow to our home). Little by little I was able to edit our original bookings down to the most direct routes at the best times.

 

Basically you have to be there when the seats open up. At 11:30 one night I found seats available on the perfect itinerary from Dubai to our home. In weeks of looking I had never seen availability on these flights before. They had not been available a few hours earlier. I immediately called the airline and changed our booking which required over an hour on hold in the middle of the night -- but I got our seats -- and immediately FF availability on those flights disappeared.

 

It is possible to snare those FF seats (we are doing business class) but it is a gamble (we could have been stuck with the original connections of many inconvenient flights) and an act of faith. For us the change from next April to this November only affected our cruise itinerary by the direction of travel, but saved us thousands of dollars in cruise fare.