How close to cruise can I still book?

[ottmar]

We have been on 14 cruises and are platinum with both Princess and Royal Caribbean. We live in Ohio and when the weather gets too bad for us we take our RV and head for Florida.

 

My question is, should the mood strike us, can we still book a week before the cruise or even closer than that?

 

......Ott

[biker@sea]

We have been on 14 cruises and are platinum with both Princess and Royal Caribbean. We live in Ohio and when the weather gets too bad for us we take our RV and head for Florida.

 

My question is, should the mood strike us, can we still book a week before the cruise or even closer than that?

 

......Ott

 

Yes . I booked the day before sailing on ncl .

[paul929207]

I think the cutoff is a day or two before sailing. Of course that depends on availability. Prices could be high or low depending on sales.

[Essiesmom]

You can call Carnival in the morning and sail in the afternoon. But you have to call, can't book online the same day. Others you can call the day before. The final manifest goes in the HOmeland Security 60 min before sailing, so if you book in the morning, or even the day before, you wouldn't be able to do online checkin, so would have to be checked in 90 min before sailing. That's not arriving 90 min before, but having completed checkin 90 min before. EM

[Gunner22aa]

From what I have seen online cruises seem to disapear for booking 3 days out so a week is lots of time

[okgirl]

Cruises disappear from most online booking sites about 3-4 days prior to departure, but you can still call the cruise line directly up to the morning of embarkation.

[JimAOk1945]

This is good information. We have never waited that long to book a cruise but have thought about it from time to time.

 

I think one disadvantage to waiting would be that I may not get the type of stateroom I want in the location where I prefer. But if the itinerary was something we really want to do, and the price was too good to pass up, I would go for it.

[YubaSutter]

When I lived 5 minutes from port, I would book a Carnival 3 and 4 day cruise at 10:00 am and was onboard by 2 pm.

[marco]

Assuming there's still space. Friends of ours procrastinated WAY too long, and 3 weeks before sailing they were put on a "wait list". They never did get on.

[ottmar]

Well, depending how the weather is to drive to Florida with an RV from Ohio, I don't want to commit myself of having to be at Ft. Lauderdale, Miami or Tampa at any particular date. And there is so much choice of ships leaving from there with all the different cruise lines, a week before I will just start calling around, I'm sure I'll find something. Despite being platinum with Princess and RCL I looked and found that the NCL Epic is the best price for a balcony, even within NCL.