Will the phone lines crash at 8.30?

[jeanlyon]

I have a cruise booked on Aurora next April.  When I log in I can only see type of cabin, not the number.  I think that's always the case?

[wowzz]

10 minutes ago, MX-Drew said:

Any news from @wozza, Did he get his suite?

Fingers crossed for him.🤞

Thanks for thinking about me!

I admit I was a bit worried when I read all the posts about cabins being allocated, and then I remembered that my cruise does not go on sale until tomorrow.

Being a realist (pessimist?) I'm sort of reconciled to not getting a suite,  given that we only want one on the stern,  so options are limited.

Still - live in hope! I'll update tomorrow. 

[jeanlyon]

2 minutes ago, jeanlyon said:

I have a cruise booked on Aurora next April.  When I log in I can only see type of cabin, not the number.  I think that's always the case?

I just logged in to my cruise.  Definitely no cabin number anywhere, just type of cabin and bed config.

[jaydee6969]

10 minutes ago, tring said:

 

Regards your comment on sitting back and planning - my plans are for a re-run tomorrow, when our March Azura cruise goes on sale 🙂

 

Wowzz has pre-regisitered for the March Azura cruise, so again a tomorrow job.

 

Will also be phoning tomorrow to try and book onto a March 2023 Azura cruise, leave space for me on the phone lines.  Not pre-registered just a deck plan and lots of cabin numbers to try my luck at.

[tring]

3 minutes ago, MX-Drew said:

Ah the same situation as me but different ship. Worth a try early as I got mine sorted almost on the dot of the phone lines opening but I had noticed I could not login and that seemed to be the trigger.

 

I was tracking the sales of both this and also Aurora and both the computer booking system and ability to loggin stopped working about 10.00am.  Then when we could loggin, it said cabin had been allocated.  So I assume that was when the cabins were allocated.  We pre registered pretty early, so wondering if that helped us get a fairly central cabin within the grade.

[mrsgoggins]

14 minutes ago, tring said:

 

We did need the booking reference to log into the actual booking, but presume you were doing that.

 

I think now our cabin number has been allocated, yours will have been too, so perhaps worth giving them another ring.  I got through almost straight away, but did decide I was still "wanting to make a booking" when asked to answer various questions.  Good luck.

 

It gets better!  I just phoned P&O again, and was told by a very nice, sympathetic young lady that the reason those of you who had pre-registered could access your booking even when the cabin number had not been allocated, was probably due to a 'glitch'.  So I, who gets a 'cannot validate' message am getting it right, while those of you who do see your bookings have 'a glitch'.  I am smiling as I write this by the way.  No more direct with P&O for me.

[jeanlyon]

Every time I have booked on launch with my TA, by 11 am he has emailed me my confirmation, cabin number that I wanted.  I personally would never pre-register, as it's just too difficult.  You choose your cabin grade and end up with something you don't want.  For instance according to P&O an inside cabin on A deck on Aurora is an upgrade from D deck.  Not for us it isn't.  It's the last deck I would want to be on.  They did that once when I was already booked, had asked for "no upgrade" and they moved us anyway.  TA had to get it put back.

Edited April 28, 2021 by jeanlyon

[wowzz]

6 minutes ago, jeanlyon said:

Every time I have booked on launch with my TA, by 11 am he has emailed me my confirmation, cabin number that I wanted.  I personally would never pre-register, as it's just too difficult.  You choose your cabin grade and end up with something you don't want.  For instance according to P&O an inside cabin on A deck on Aurora is an upgrade from D deck.  Not for us it isn't.  It's the last deck I would want to be on.  They did that once when I was already booked, had asked for "no upgrade" and they moved us anyway.  TA had to get it put back.

Jean, did you pre-register via your TA ?

I agree that pre-registering with P&O is a waste of time if you have specific cabin requirements,  but pre-registering via a TA, giving them specific cabin numbers, requires only a phone call, and is not at all difficult.  

I can't see the point of pre-registering with P&O if you then have to spend ages on the phone trying to change the cabin you have been allocated. That's what TAs are for! 

[jeanlyon]

5 minutes ago, wowzz said:

Jean, did you pre-register via your TA ?

I agree that pre-registering with P&O is a waste of time if you have specific cabin requirements,  but pre-registering via a TA, giving them specific cabin numbers, requires only a phone call, and is not at all difficult.  

I can't see the point of pre-registering with P&O if you then have to spend ages on the phone trying to change the cabin you have been allocated. That's what TAs are for! 

Yes that's what I normally do.  I have 2 cruises booked ror 2022, so didn't try to book this time.  But I have before.  My TA is always brilliant.

[MX-Drew]

36 minutes ago, wowzz said:

Thanks for thinking about me!

I admit I was a bit worried when I read all the posts about cabins being allocated, and then I remembered that my cruise does not go on sale until tomorrow.

Being a realist (pessimist?) I'm sort of reconciled to not getting a suite,  given that we only want one on the stern,  so options are limited.

Still - live in hope! I'll update tomorrow. 

Fingers crossed for you and you never know you just may have the golden TA, I just don't like all the ones I have used to date and I admit to being a little bit of a control freak.

 

It does kind of make me smile though, I'm with you on wanting certain locations then there are other who would not pay for anything more than an inside cabin as they won't spend much time in it. At the end of the day a cruise is what you make of it in my opinion, I just regret I did not cruise earlier in my life.

[MX-Drew]

12 minutes ago, wowzz said:

Jean, did you pre-register via your TA ?

I agree that pre-registering with P&O is a waste of time if you have specific cabin requirements,  but pre-registering via a TA, giving them specific cabin numbers, requires only a phone call, and is not at all difficult.  

I can't see the point of pre-registering with P&O if you then have to spend ages on the phone trying to change the cabin you have been allocated. That's what TAs are for! 

I do see your point re TAs but in both cases for whatever reason when I rang to move / check cabin I also got a reduction in price. I'm not saying a good TA would not pass that on to you but on the other hand how would you know?

You could say why decorate your own house as that is  what decorations are for. If you can do it yourself then why not?

[tring]

44 minutes ago, wowzz said:

Thanks for thinking about me!

I admit I was a bit worried when I read all the posts about cabins being allocated, and then I remembered that my cruise does not go on sale until tomorrow.

Being a realist (pessimist?) I'm sort of reconciled to not getting a suite,  given that we only want one on the stern,  so options are limited.

Still - live in hope! I'll update tomorrow. 

 

That would be the advantage of pre-registering with P&O, but hey, you may get it.

 

I did ask if we would be able to change cabin number if one came up subsequently, and I was assured we could.

[wowzz]

I think much depends on how particular someone is about their choice of cabin. There are only about 30 suite or deluxe balcony cabins that we would accept on the Azura cruise that we like, so pre-registration via a TA is a nescessity.

[tring]

30 minutes ago, jeanlyon said:

Every time I have booked on launch with my TA, by 11 am he has emailed me my confirmation, cabin number that I wanted.  I personally would never pre-register, as it's just too difficult.  You choose your cabin grade and end up with something you don't want.  For instance according to P&O an inside cabin on A deck on Aurora is an upgrade from D deck.  Not for us it isn't.  It's the last deck I would want to be on.  They did that once when I was already booked, had asked for "no upgrade" and they moved us anyway.  TA had to get it put back.

 

That is all very well when you have priority booking Jean, but not so for the rest of us.  I see the prices on the Aurora Nov '22 Caribbean have now gone up a good 15%.  Not looked at our Azura one, but that is also a popular cruise, so likely the same.

[wowzz]

4 minutes ago, tring said:

That would be the advantage of pre-registering with P&O, but hey, you may get it.

But as DaiB pointed out previously,  P&O release 50% of their cabins to TAs, so I have just as much chance by booking through a TA, especially as there are certain suites that I do not want.

[wowzz]

8 minutes ago, MX-Drew said:

You could say why decorate your own house as that is  what decorations are for. If you can do it yourself then why not?

Because life is too short !

Edited April 28, 2021 by wowzz

[Son of Anarchy]

4 minutes ago, MX-Drew said:

At the end of the day a cruise is what you make of it in my opinion, I just regret I did not cruise earlier in my life.

I cruised as a kid with my Mum & Dad, but didn't "return" to cruising for about 25 years.

 

On the one hand, I do regret not cruising in those intervening years.  On the other hand, I'm sure that if I had cruised in those intervening years, it is unlikely I would be in the financial position to retire early and cruise the way I am able to now (pandemics aside).  Trying to make for the non cruising years I suppose 🙂 

[MX-Drew]

4 minutes ago, wowzz said:

Because life is too short !

The number of times I have heard that and my response is what would you be doing instead?

The reply is usually something like erm I don't know🤣.

Edited April 28, 2021 by MX-Drew

[tring]

Just looked at the Azura 16 night relocation in October, which we have booked and ALL balcony cabins have now sold out, as well as suites.  Would love to know how many had sold out after the priority bookings took place on Monday - perhaps quite a number.  The booking system for that cruise was showing whole decks of balcony cabins sold out early this morning and I thought it was a fault with the system, but perhaps not.

 

[MX-Drew]

3 minutes ago, Son of Anarchy said:

I cruised as a kid with my Mum & Dad, but didn't "return" to cruising for about 25 years.

 

On the one hand, I do regret not cruising in those intervening years.  On the other hand, I'm sure that if I had cruised in those intervening years, it is unlikely I would be in the financial position to retire early and cruise the way I am able to now (pandemics aside).  Trying to make for the non cruising years I suppose 🙂 

That's the easy bit to overlook, we are pretty much in the same situation.

[Son of Anarchy]

1 minute ago, tring said:

Just looked at the Azura 16 night relocation in October, which we have booked and ALL balcony cabins have now sold out, as well as suites.  Would love to know how many had sold out after the priority bookings took place on Monday - perhaps quite a number.  The booking system for that cruise was showing whole decks of balcony cabins sold out early this morning and I thought it was a fault with the system, but perhaps not.

 

I looked at Azura's Christmas 2022 cruise this morning out of interest.  Same thing.

[tring]

5 minutes ago, tring said:

Just looked at the Azura 16 night relocation in October, which we have booked and ALL balcony cabins have now sold out, as well as suites.  Would love to know how many had sold out after the priority bookings took place on Monday - perhaps quite a number.  The booking system for that cruise was showing whole decks of balcony cabins sold out early this morning and I thought it was a fault with the system, but perhaps not.

 

 

Just gone to try a dummy book for insides and they are also showing sold out as well - so only outsides left.

 

They have made a massive mistake on pricing for that one and likley the same for the March cruises as well.

Edited April 28, 2021 by tring

[MX-Drew]

2 minutes ago, tring said:

Just looked at the Azura 16 night relocation in October, which we have booked and ALL balcony cabins have now sold out, as well as suites.  Would love to know how many had sold out after the priority bookings took place on Monday - perhaps quite a number.  The booking system for that cruise was showing whole decks of balcony cabins sold out early this morning and I thought it was a fault with the system, but perhaps not.

 

I haven't booked a P&O cruises at launch before so I don't know how unusual this is and I guess the pandemic plays a part but repositioning cruises with Celebrity don't seem to be so popular and I believe they are even better value than the P&O ones.   

[jeanlyon]

14 minutes ago, tring said:

 

That is all very well when you have priority booking Jean, but not so for the rest of us.  I see the prices on the Aurora Nov '22 Caribbean have now gone up a good 15%.  Not looked at our Azura one, but that is also a popular cruise, so likely the same.

Been with this TA for quite a few years, long before I had Priority booking.  Always been the same.

19 minutes ago, MX-Drew said:

I do see your point re TAs but in both cases for whatever reason when I rang to move / check cabin I also got a reduction in price. I'm not saying a good TA would not pass that on to you but on the other hand how would you know?

You could say why decorate your own house as that is  what decorations are for. If you can do it yourself then why not?

My TA always gives me a discount - every cruise.

[tring]

4 minutes ago, MX-Drew said:

I haven't booked a P&O cruises at launch before so I don't know how unusual this is and I guess the pandemic plays a part but repositioning cruises with Celebrity don't seem to be so popular and I believe they are even better value than the P&O ones.   

 

I agree there is a disadvantage for the trans Atlantics or similar, but the Azura cruises are just tootering out of the Med to the Canaries and back again in March so there are a lot of port days, very few sea days and the cruises start/finish at your local airport, so as far as the passenger is concerned there is no extra transport problems.