Help with silly question please

[2Oregonians]

Please don't jump on me for not searching for this answer before posting, because I did.  Thanks for your grace.

 

As a teacher (myself) and a school bus driver (hubby),  we have Summers off.  We live near Seattle, and would love to take a cruise to Alaska.

 

My question is, (probably not, but I'll ask anyway) do they still let you show up the day of departure and snap up an unsold cabin for cheap? 

 

If not, what is the cutoff for booking?  Can we get a cheap cabin by booking, say, 3 days before departure?   Call or online?

 

We can go any week from mid-June to late August.  Our "budget" is practically nothing LOL. 

 

Help?  Advice?  TIA

[Anita Latte]

Homeland security requires passenger manifests to be submitted 72 hours prior to departure. So that would be the cutoff for booking, I believe. The definition of "last minute" has changed since 9/11. There's no such thing as showing up at the port to see if there are any empty staterooms still available.

 

You are able to cruise at the most popular, busiest time in the Alaska cruise season. 

 

Many times, "deals" can start be seen beginning right after last payment due, which may be 60-90 days before sailing, depending on the cruise line. Making a deal after final payment will require full payment at time of booking so you will want to be confident that you have seen the lowest price before booking because there will be no refund in fare should the fare go down further.

 

Generally speaking, after having watched the fares for Alaska...the RT fares aren't so cheap, even with last minute deals. I've seen very inexpensive one ways...usually northbound more than southbound.

 

One of the more difficult aspects of cruising last minute and on a bare bones budget to Alaska will be on your expectations in each port. It is absolutely possible to have no planned excursions and enjoy the trip...but if you are hopeful of doing something more planned, many excursions are booked up to one year in advance, sell out, and are really expensive. My advice would be to get your expectations set appropriately...it is absolutely possible, so I'm not raining on the idea...just fulfilling the asked request for advice.

 

Meanwhile...get a budget set and be watching the fares. Figure out what ships are possibilities for your idea...who is sailing out of what on what itinerary...become knowledgable about the ports on those itineraries and begin to be familiar with the fares so that you can distinguish between "clever marketing" and real discounts.

[zqvol]

You can book a cruise on the day of sailing, but you can't do it by just showing up, it has to be done either through a TA or by calling the cruise line.  If you can get a cabin, and that is very unlikely, the cost is not going to be cheap. The days of doing what OP suggests are long gone. Not because the manifest is submitted 72 hours before sailing (it's not, it is submitted 60 minutes before sailing)  but because the cruise lines all work very hard to get the maximum number of berths filled, and most Alaskan cruises sail at over 100% capacity.

Edited February 18, 2020 by zqvol

[Northern Aurora]

I agree with zqvol -- the days of just walking up and paying for a really cheap cabin are long gone.  All cruise lines are experts at filling their ships by probing the market with their resident rates, limited sales (ie discounts for only a few hours on limited cabin categories) and so forth.  But what the OP can do is start doing some dummy bookings on various lines and tracking the prices.  They may stumble onto a price which feels comfortable for them, and if so, they need to pounce immediately.  

 

And it is also my understanding that the passenger manifest is submitted 60 minutes before sailing, which is why passengers are to be onboard 90 minutes before sailing at the embarkation port.  

[martincath]

Offhand I can recall a post or two from folks who booked (online or by phone) the day before cruising - and given you're in Oregon OP, so at least ~3 hours from either Seattle pier, booking the day before seems a pretty practical cutoff anyway so you can throw stuff in the car and figure out where to park it.

 

I too think that you simply will not find a berth for the old-school 'as long as we charge them enough to cover paying for food, laundering sheets and emptying trash we will make money on onboard spending' deals - it's like really cheap stuff in Vegas, that ship sailed years ago with these days more likely full price everything and discounts/freebies given to bigger gamblers instead of $5 lobster buffets for all! Demand is strong in AK - even compared to say 5 years ago, when I regularly saw $300 7 day cruises (but to be fair, even then those were one-ways, not RTs, and port taxes etc, added a proportionately huge chunk on top).

 

Sign up for short notice deals (e.g. Princess will let you specify on your profile that you are willing to jump on deals < 1 week out), make dummy bookings, and remember that cost is not the same as value - our cheapest ever cruise in terms of total daily spend was our last one, and that was on Azamara which was a major uptick in quality across the board, because we didn't have to pay for a single thing onboard (decent booze included, and no need for 'specialty dining' charges when the MDR was as good as fancy dining rooms on Princess/HAL/NCL).

 

This year just might be a really good one for bargain hunters though thanks to Covid-19! If people get e.g. freaked out about how many 'Chinese people' cruise out of Vancouver, you may see many cancellations even of Alaska cruises early summer... all depends how the infection continues, how the media inflates concerns for clicks & views, whether extra ships end up here because it 'should be safe' compared to cruising Asia, and of course how gullible Joe Q Public is... if we end up with ships running well below 100% capacity, that's when deals to get warm bodies on board do make sense to the cruiselines, but if they can get to 100% (which means all 'bottom berths' are filled, i.e. average 2 pax per cabin, so between kids and 3/4 adults in same room it's easy to get even a ship with some empty cabins to '104% capacity') why offer ridiculous bargains when it will only encourage more folks in future to try for insanely good deals instead of booking a merely good deal earlier?