Another Flexible Booking Question

[ready2cruzagain]

Flexible booking states that we have to depart by March 31, 2023. There are no Caribbean cruises after mid November to book.  We always sail during the winter, basically only time we can. If I were to use Flexible Booking for our upcoming cruise I know I have to have a new cruise picked to switch to. 

 

My question is, lets say I switch to September cruise and then they open up Caribbean sailings for beyond Nov. 2022, can I then switch to another date?

 

European cruising is out of the question so my options are limited at this point. I could call and ask CS but they know less than I do.🤦‍♀️ 

 

 

[styles27]

It may be possible and I’ll tell you why I say that. 
We utilized the flexible booking change for our Jan 8th Seashore cruise. 
I phoned a couple of days ago and moved it to the 11/12/22 Seashore sailing.
I received our confirmation email with the new cruise paperwork and I notice it has a “cancellation without penalty” date of 8/14/22 (see below screen shot of my paperwork)

(The new cruise is more expensive and we have until 8/15/22 to make the final payment of the price difference.) 
 

It looks like we could cancel this without penalty until that August date but then again this is MSC we’re talking about and what’s in black and white isn’t always as it appears lol

[pghflyer]

Just to add with my experience. We were booked on 01/16 Divina so called to take advantage of the 48-hour Flexible Booking.  We already had a booking for September 2022 that we had only put a deposit on....but they could NOT just move the funds to that booking as their system process is to just transfer the "cancelled" booking to a new booking, for whatever reason.

 

• So, I cancelled my existing September booking and will receive my deposit refund back to my credit card "in 1-2 cycles". 
• We then "moved" my 01/16 booking to my same September 2022 date/ ship (luckily the price was still the same).  So now I basically just have a large deposit pre-paid on my September cruise and out of my 01/16 sailing with no incurred loss. Pretty incredible honestly.
• One tip - when "moving" my "cancelled" cruise to my selected "new" booking, the agent forgot to apply my Voyager discount so I had to have her redo that for me, so I would suggest you run the numbers and know what you paid, the current price, and what you think you should owe.

 

Sorry to miss my first MSC cruise at such a great rate and after so long without a trip....as a 3-boosted youngish person, I was willing to roll the dice on our direct flight and cruise with protocols.....but the availability of pre-board tests isn't great and seeing this morning that basically all the Divina ports were cancelled on the current sailing, I am just not willing to risk all the logistics for a 11-day solely at sea cruise with limited entertainment.

 

Good luck everyone!

Edited December 30, 2021 by pghflyer

[ready2cruzagain]

26 minutes ago, styles27 said:

It may be possible and I’ll tell you why I say that. 
We utilized the flexible booking change for our Jan 8th Seashore cruise. 
I phoned a couple of days ago and moved it to the 11/12/22 Seashore sailing.
I received our confirmation email with the new cruise paperwork and I notice it has a “cancellation without penalty” date of 8/14/22 (see below screen shot of my paperwork)

(The new cruise is more expensive and we have until 8/15/22 to make the final payment of the price difference.) 
 

It looks like we could cancel this without penalty until that August date but then again this is MSC we’re talking about and what’s in black and white isn’t always as it appears lol

To me that looks just like you could cancel it and get your money back.

[ready2cruzagain]

16 minutes ago, pghflyer said:

Just to add with my experience. We were booked on 01/16 Divina so called to take advantage of the 48-hour Flexible Booking.  We already had a booking for September 2022 that we had only put a deposit on....but they could NOT just move the funds to that booking as their system process is to just transfer the "cancelled" booking to a new booking, for whatever reason.

 

• So, I cancelled my existing September booking and will receive my deposit refund back to my credit card "in 1-2 cycles". 
• We then "moved" my 01/16 booking to my same September 2022 date/ ship (luckily the price was still the same).  So now I basically just have a large deposit pre-paid on my September cruise and out of my 01/16 sailing with no incurred loss. Pretty incredible honestly.
• One tip - when "moving" my "cancelled" cruise to my selected "new" booking, the agent forgot to apply my Voyager discount so I had to have her redo that for me, so I would suggest you run the numbers and know what you paid, the current price, and what you think you should owe.

 

Sorry to miss my first MSC cruise at such a great rate and after so long without a trip....as a 3-boosted youngish person, I was willing to roll the dice on our direct flight and cruise with protocols.....but the availability of pre-board tests isn't great and seeing this morning that basically all the Divina ports were cancelled on the current sailing, I am just not willing to risk all the logistics for a 11-day solely at sea cruise with limited entertainment.

 

Good luck everyone!

 

We are still debating on whether or not to cancel, cruise is end of Feb.  We are fully vaccinated and have booster shot. We have insurance in case we got to the port and tested positive.  My problem is with the ships right now not having entertainment. The ports we would just stay on the ship anyways.  I even read where NCL Pride has shut down the MDR for breakfast and lunch and only using it for dinner because of not enough staff.

 

I am just trying to find all of our options.  We already have a Princess cruise booked for Nov. so wishing that if we do have to cancel I could book Sept. then switch it to Feb. when Caribbean bookings open.

[Markanddonna]

3 hours ago, ready2cruzagain said:

 

We are still debating on whether or not to cancel, cruise is end of Feb.  We are fully vaccinated and have booster shot. We have insurance in case we got to the port and tested positive.  My problem is with the ships right now not having entertainment. The ports we would just stay on the ship anyways.  I even read where NCL Pride has shut down the MDR for breakfast and lunch and only using it for dinner because of not enough staff.

 

I am just trying to find all of our options.  We already have a Princess cruise booked for Nov. so wishing that if we do have to cancel I could book Sept. then switch it to Feb. when Caribbean bookings open.

I'm in your camp as far as how I view the current situation. I just called MSC and spoke to a very nice agent who did her best. It seems that MSC currently cannot guarantee me that we can move our cruise twice (once from Jan Divina to a Med cruise in Sept with the possible intent on going on winter 2023 MSC cruise. Problem is that MSC doesn't have the Caribbean bookings open, like you said. She said that we might incur a "move fee" for the second move but didn't know what that would be.

[styles27]

4 hours ago, pghflyer said:

Just to add with my experience. We were booked on 01/16 Divina so called to take advantage of the 48-hour Flexible Booking.  We already had a booking for September 2022 that we had only put a deposit on....but they could NOT just move the funds to that booking as their system process is to just transfer the "cancelled" booking to a new booking, for whatever reason.

 

• So, I cancelled my existing September booking and will receive my deposit refund back to my credit card "in 1-2 cycles". 
• We then "moved" my 01/16 booking to my same September 2022 date/ ship (luckily the price was still the same).  So now I basically just have a large deposit pre-paid on my September cruise and out of my 01/16 sailing with no incurred loss. Pretty incredible honestly.
• One tip - when "moving" my "cancelled" cruise to my selected "new" booking, the agent forgot to apply my Voyager discount so I had to have her redo that for me, so I would suggest you run the numbers and know what you paid, the current price, and what you think you should owe.

 

Sorry to miss my first MSC cruise at such a great rate and after so long without a trip....as a 3-boosted youngish person, I was willing to roll the dice on our direct flight and cruise with protocols.....but the availability of pre-board tests isn't great and seeing this morning that basically all the Divina ports were cancelled on the current sailing, I am just not willing to risk all the logistics for a 11-day solely at sea cruise with limited entertainment.

 

Good luck everyone!

I’m so glad to hear that they let you do that.
I had suggested that to someone on another thread so it’s good to know it does work and they allow it. 

[styles27]

4 hours ago, ready2cruzagain said:

 

We are still debating on whether or not to cancel, cruise is end of Feb.  We are fully vaccinated and have booster shot. We have insurance in case we got to the port and tested positive.  My problem is with the ships right now not having entertainment. The ports we would just stay on the ship anyways.  I even read where NCL Pride has shut down the MDR for breakfast and lunch and only using it for dinner because of not enough staff.

 

I am just trying to find all of our options.  We already have a Princess cruise booked for Nov. so wishing that if we do have to cancel I could book Sept. then switch it to Feb. when Caribbean bookings open.

If your cruise is at the end of February I personally would wait to see how things are around mid Feb and then decide. 

The only reason I switched ours was because it was just a little over a week away, and boy have things gone south fast the last week or so. 

But the way this pandemic keeps changing we could be in a much better position by mid to late February. 🤞🙏🏻

[DisneyDatknee]

I have a cruise in 63 days. Could I change the cruise to a date like at the end of 2022 and decide to cancel later and get my money back?