booking and upgrades

[parothead]

looking to book a cruise for August 2022. best to book with cruise directly? more likely to get upgrade offers when you do? 

[simplelife]

I always book through the Carnival site. Sometimes I get upgrade offers, and sometimes I don't. Abotu half the time the offers are worth it and I accept them.

[cruisinqt]

I used to always use a travel agent even though they can’t discount the fare because they always gave me freebies like bottles of wine, paid for excursions or had OBC. But I never got an upgrade offer over the course of many years and we are Platinum. I was told it was because Carnival doesn’t like to make upgrade offers to people with travel agents because they have to go through the travel agent and can’t talk directly to the cruiser. They prefer to make offers to people that made the booking online themselves because they can call them and speak to them directly without a middle man.

 

Since we’ve started booking our cruises ourselves online I’ve gotten numerous upgrade offers. The only downside to booking online yourself is that you have to take care of everything. If there’s a price drop you have you personally take care of it. If you want to change something like your dining time or have other issues it’s on you to take care of it. But overall I’m glad I made the change. I hate the back and forth with TA’s asking them to handle things. I’m a hands on person and prefer to do things myself.