How many times has your fare been discounted before sailing?

[Desert Cruizers]

We have only had two, one just recently for our 2018 sailing on the Adventurer, the first was due to a Calif Residence drop for our April 2014 Hawaii to Vancouver sailing. Like Bob I book our cruises as soon as the dates open so even if a drop occurs it has never been as low as the initial booking price.

[Clarea]

Panda3 - you can only get the price drop if you haven't paid off the balance, and you do have to call to get it - it's not automatic....

Not quite accurate. You can get a price drop if you have paid off the cruise, as long as it is still before final payment date. They will give you a credit on your credit card if you get the price drop.

[Hoopster95]

Every time you take advantage of a price drop, you risk losing any perks that came with your original booking.

 

This is incredibly important when people are shopping, especially with the big box TAs

 

 

We now book most of our cruises when the itineraries first come out, and have had very few price drops lately.

 

I think all bets are off re the book early vs. last minute strategies for now....

• Pre 2014 - the very best time to book hands down by a long shot was after final payment "last minute"
  
• Spring 2014 new itineraries and 1st week of BOGOHO#1 in May - very best time to book was right away then it was nothing but price increases for the most part.
  
• Spring 2015 - trend continued, book right away, very few "deals" later and even the few price driops were not even close to original prices
  
• Today 2016 - Crazy high pricing when itineraries published. Those who booked early on a good percentage of the itineraries believing they get the best prices will likely get many price drops in my opinion as they were waaaay too high from the get go.
  

 

I scored a couple of better than introductory prices on a couple of sailings for 2016 when booked Nov 2015 (since had to cancel), most recently scored a great price on Explorer on the GGG sale (hadn't done GGG sale for maybe 5 yrs now but this one was just too good to pass up). Most recently seen interiors on explorer for Sept 2016 coastal for $399... was avail for 3 days now gone. RCL has changed their pricing and continue to play with strategies, too hard to tell what will happen. There is somewhat of a standard you can follow for interiors/balconies/etc like an average price window, but other than that difficult to predict these days.

[Shawninrye]

Wow well this is interesting.

I understand about losing the perks especially if they were part of the original sale.

The first sale I lost the prepaid gratuities as that was part of the original sale.

However, the no tax sale was a better deal so I Gave up the tips.

I don't think, like any company, that you can stack sales.

 

The first sale stated new booking only.

I am in a JS aft cabin and I am fearful of losing the "original" reservation as some cruisers have stated that has happened to them.

One lady posted on her reservation to not give her any sales due to being afraid she would lose a particular cabin.

So I put in writing when requesting the price change to not change res/cabin number.

$100.00 sale ends today. Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings!

[Cat54]

Never we always book when the itineraries first come out.

[nelly55]

Can't take advantage of price drops in UK but we do look at prices and have never seen a drop on any of our cruises. Our Sept cruise on Indy this year we booked on board Explorer last June and a month later price for a JS was £2,000 more than we paid for a GS. Hasn't come down in price since then and not been any full suites available for months.

[linkerbink]

We booked our upcoming Greek Island cruise last summer. Then Greece had all that turmoil with immigrants coming ashore, and the price dropped dramatically. We got a $2000 drop on a junior suite on the cruise! My theory is that people were cancelling their bookings right and left so the price dropped accordingly. Then they had a military discount and although we lost the balcony discount, we still came out ahead plus $100 OBC.

 

Just the other day I called and got a drop of $250 on our Alaska cruise next summer by applying the BOGO60 promotion. I'd say we've snagged a drop on about half of our bookings over the years.

Edited May 11, 2016 by linkerbink

[Nabalab]

Caught great price drops last June for upcoming cruises on Anthem (Sept) and Harmony (NYE). Both have gone up A LOT since then.

[Canadian Tyler]

Keep checking, it does pay off.

 

I usually book as soon as the bookings open, and have got price drops on every cruise since I started looking for drops years ago.

 

One booking I had four price drops. The largest drop was $447 and that was on an inside room!

[1josh777]

For our Mediterranean cruise three years ago we had three drops in price and an upgrade, saving us about $1000 total.

 

For our upcoming Alaska cruise there have been no drops, in fact the price has gone up ever since we booked it. Currently, the price is 2k more than what we paid.

[Goodtime Cruizin]

I realize that this is kind of a silly question as it depends on how much time there is between reserving a cruise and the date of the cruise.

 

But For me I reserved my cruise the first of April. Then the no tax sale came along and I saved $33.00. Then the $100.00 off coupon May 5th-11th.

So I wonder if this will continue or has my luck ran out?

 

Of course no one knows the future lol but historically for the veteran cruisers how many times has you fare been discounted after making a reservation on RCCL?

 

We book our cruises so far in advance that it doesn't matter. Just about all do have promos & also fare drops (after final Payment Due dates) But not a single fare has ever dropped below the price we booked at! While I understand that many can't plan a cruise w/ 18 to 22 months in advance, but if you can, you can get great pricing.

[jeditden]

Zilch. I've always booked either far enough in advance that the price is it's lowest, or within 3 weeks of sailing so it was mega discounted just to get bodies onboard. I guess that is a good thing???

[Bound4Bermuda]

Panda3 - you can only get the price drop if you haven't paid off the balance, and you do have to call to get it - it's not automatic.

 

 

You can get the price drop if you paid off the balance--just as long as it's before the final payment date. We paid off in full when booking and called for an adjustment during the free gratuities sale--got a refund of $509 back on the credit card.

 

To answer the OP, I only booked in December and the price dropped 3 times since then--though it's also gone up a few times, too. It has stayed lower than the original purchase price, but it jumps up and down about $300 depending on the sale of the week.

 

At first I was only checking when a new sale starts, but a member of my roll call pointed out that rooms dropped a lot mid-sale (i.e., that $509 refund also included an upgrade), so now I check every day. I even started a spreadsheet to track the differences in price per sale configuration (BOGO30/50/60 with or without OBC/taxes/gratuities) because I'm curious whether there's any rhyme or reason to cracking the sale pattern. So far, that's a big nope. ;-)

 

 

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[Shawninrye]

Yes I only check when there is a sale but I think I will start looking daily.

One thing I do, as to not get mixed up, is (on my IPad) take a screenshot of the sale info on RCCL site.

It has the date I took the picture.

Makes it easy to compare.