Price drops , last minute deals?

[hockey1963]

Hi, we are presently booked on a spring sailing and I have seen that the ship is half full not selling fast on Cruise Fish, so my question is we are almost due to pay it in full now should we cancel and hope for last minute deals and wait or will they honour price drops after final payment and what will they do if its dropped by a few hundred? Cabin does not matter to us so this is our first Princess cruise and with other lines we have cruised with we tend to book last minute deals and get excellent prices.

[Cruise Junky]

what's your Plan B if prices don't fall? Do you have your air already? are there other ships sailing same day that you could switch to if they drop and Princess doesn't?

 

We did something similar a couple of years ago and it worked out very well for us...$1,199 for a mid ship balcony on a grand med. cruise with a lot of OBC on Ruby.

[hllwdcruiser]

Once you pass that final payment date, Princess will not usually give you the reduced last minute deal fares. Imagine the revenue they would lose if they did - everyone in the know would jump on that bandwagon!

 

I can give you the benefit of our own experience. We always try to cruise over our Birthdays and Anniversary in February. In the past we have snagged some amazing last minute (Drop and Go) deals, for example we once cruised a 5 day on the Ruby for $375 pp in a mini suite.

 

The following year, I decided to be greedy and wait it out and see if I could get another rock bottom fare.

Yeah, no. There were some really good fares that I didn't jump on, playing chicken, and then the ship sold really well and the prices went up and up and up.

 

We ended up staying home that year. :(

 

The moral of the story? This year I booked a good fare and not a drop and go. The ship is pretty empty still but I'm not ever going to risk it again. And we live in SoFL so we don't even have to contend with travel and airfare costs.

[moki'smommy]

Cruise Fish does not tell you how full the ship is, it only indicates what categories are still for sale. If the ship has one cabin in a given category available or if it is still selling that category as a gty status, cruise fish will show it as available. If it has 50 cabins available in that category, it gets the same cruise fish indication. So yes, it gives you an idea, but I'm not aware of any program or site other than the private info of the cruise line that really tells you how full the ship is.

 

The question becomes whether you want to gamble or not. Yes, you can probably save some money by waiting. The question is how much and how much the stress is worth. At what point do you ring the bell? Air fares typically increase close to the fly date if the plane is filling, but many sites will indicate "only 3 seats remaining at this fare."

 

I've done it once and saved over $1000 while cruising in a nicer cabin than I'd originally purchased. But I had not purchased air and I was OK with missing that cruise if the prices didn't meet my desires. Be realistic about your end point, and don't wait till the last minute if you see a price you like.

[paul929207]

In last weeks earnings report to shareholder, Carnival Corp. (parent company for Princess and others) announced that bookings for the next 9 months are well ahead of a year ago. THis does not bode well for those hoping for a sale.

[iancal]

We have always done well booking inside the final payment window. We have also cancelled a cruise prior to final payment and rebooked inside the final payment window at a considerable discount. Air is an issue for us but so far so good. We often do a land trip and then keep our eye out for attractive cruise pricing. We keep our schedule very flexible. We have done this is Florida, Europe, and Australia. We are at the point that if the fare is not discounted we will not bother with it.

 

The trick is to be flexible. We will typically keep our eye on three ships with similar departure dates. We set a buy price and if our price hits we book immediately. We do not try to get the lowest price because often the prices drop and then go up again. Always a balcony, sometimes a gty.

 

Princess certainly does have last minute booking offers. You can go on the Princess web site and sign up for these based upon where you would like to cruise. We have had several notices mailed to us over the past month. Celebrity and RCI also do one day 'specials' every Tuesday. You can view these on the weekend before.

Edited December 21, 2015 by iancal

[hockey1963]

So if we pay at final payment date and the price drops what does Princess do? Do they offer any OBC or refund? I know other lines do that we've cruised with have given us extra OBC.

Edited December 21, 2015 by hockey1963

[Pam in CA]

So if we pay at final payment date and the price drops what does Princess do? Do they offer any OBC or refund? I know other lines do that we've cruised with have given us extra OBC.

You can cancel, take the penalty, and re-book.

 

Unlike other lines, Princess allows TAs to discount fares. Not all do but if you have one who does, you can save 10-20%, depending on the cruise. And get OBC, etc. Often, the lowest rates are when bookings open for a cruise and using a TA.

[iancal]

Other lines may not allow discounts. But they cannot control TA provided OBC's.

 

We have enjoyed discounts in the form of OBC's on every cruise that we have booked with our on line TA...Celebrity, RCI, HAL, Princess, Carnival, and NCL.

 

They are essentially a rebate of TA commissions.

 

Pricing is very, very fluid. Our last 2 Med cruise were booked about 45 days out. We were watching three almost identical itineraries on HAL, Princess, and Celebrity. We would have been happy with on any one of the three ships. On the days we booked the Celebrity cruises HAL was 30-35 percent more expensive, Princess was 50 percent more expensive. No idea what happened to prices after that. It could well be the other two dropped below Celebrity or even increased.

 

We book in the final payment window at a price we think is good. After that we stop looking...no point.

Edited December 21, 2015 by iancal

[Morgsmom]

So if we pay at final payment date and the price drops what does Princess do? Do they offer any OBC or refund? I know other lines do that we've cruised with have given us extra OBC.

 

In my experience, no. Last year we booked a Balcony Gty for our anniversary cruise which was a 5 nighter (since we didn't want to sail the day after the wedding until our kids were back at college safely). The price dropped by less than 1/2 after final payment. No OBC or refund and to make matters worse we didn't get an assignment until the day before the cruise and it was the (in my opinion) worst possible balcony assignment (literally the forward most balcony). It was a real bummer.

 

However it was one of those situations where it was the only date/sailing that would work and I saw that there was TONS of availability when I booked the GTY. Was hoping that they'd assign those cabins before doing a "fill the ship." Lesson learned.

[Colo Cruiser]

So if we pay at final payment date and the price drops what does Princess do? Do they offer any OBC or refund? I know other lines do that we've cruised with have given us extra OBC.

 

You will most likely be out of luck for a refund.

 

If you really want to cruise and don't want to take the chance of the ship being sold out I would keep your booking. Just sayin.

[cruiseintoheaven]

I think this like many topics has no one set answer that you can apply to all situations. After final pay on our last cruise out cabin category dropped - asked out TA to ask about a fare reduction -she was pretty sure answer would be no. Asked her to find out for sure / she did, and two days later we received a refund on our credit card from Princess for close to $200 - never hurts to ask [emoji4]