Looking for help booking cruise flying from the U.K to SAN JUAN

[Broch]

I would like to take a Southern Caribbean Cruise departing from San Juan with RCI. but their flights seem very expensive and also they are not direct. I see thet you cannot get direct scheduled flights from the U.K. but in the Princess Brochure it looks like they offer charter flights. Can anyone confirm this. Also has anyone gone with RCI flights or what is the best way to fly if cruising with RCI because I like the ship Adventure of the Seas

[ukcrazycruisers]

hi ally

we did a cruise last year from uk to san juan,we liked it so much we are going again in january (giving us time to save up)

we didnt fly with Rci as this is far too expensive,and from what i can gather you are just put on a flight which is the cheapest they can find at the time.

with 5 of us inc 3 kids i like to book my seats knowing that we are all together.last year we went with american,and if you went into the web site you can manage your own seats just where you want them

we managed to get our flights for 310 gbp each which i thought was a bargain!!! we are just waiting for the january flights to go down:confused:

[Ms Jo UK]

Hi Ally

 

We did this in December just gone. I booked the cruise with a US on line agent and then set about finding flights. You can fly out of UK with Iberia with a short connection in Madrid.

 

Your other choice will be to go via the US with which ever carrier you choose. We chose BA as they had a seat sale on at the time and we got an open jaw flight into New York, and out of Miami it cost £238. We did a stopover in New York for 3 days, but could have flown straight down to San Juan, we flew to San Juan with Delta Song, and flew from San Juan to Miamiwith Spirit where we did another 3 day stopover both of these flights we booked directly on the airlines website.

 

I dont think you can get a non-stop flight but you do not have to do the stopovers which ever gateway city you choose in the US their will probably be flights down to San Juan. In total with all of the flights we paid £706 for the two of us making it £353 each for our airfare.

 

We chose New York as the gateway, due to least transatlantic flying time, and not too long a hop down to San Juan.

 

I loved by AOS cruise and would say it was well worth the hassle of sorting it out myself I had a great time and we managed to do the whole trip including the stopovers and hotels for 2 of us as the UKTAs were charging for 1 of us.

 

Good luck any questions just ask.

 

 

Jo

[Magicat]

Hello,

Here is a link to web site we use to help us find cheap flights.

 

http://matrix.itasoftware.com/cvg/dispatch/

 

You can't book your flight from here but it will give you a list of airlines and schedules so you can find one that suits your needs. We just did a sample flight out of Edinburgh to SJU on Sept 8 and returning Sept 17, it found a Continental flight for 538 pounds. Is that good? Anyway you can play with it and see what you find. Good luck!

[Broch]

Thanks all three of you for your informative replies. I can see that the way to go is book the cruise and the see about the flight later. You certainly have more options booking flight independently. What I plan to do is book the cruise on board the Explorer in 8 weeks time and don't need to worry about the flights till around Xmas time as I would be going on the sailing of April 29 and considering R.C.I. charges £1620 this year for the flight I think your prices are pretty good even allowing for the hotel and transfers.

[Ms Jo UK]

Ally

 

If you dont need to book the flights until xmas time then it is worth holiding on as all of the airlines start their seat sales between 27th Dec and 2nd Jan. I am sure you will pick up a bargain.

 

Is £1620 the flight for two people.

 

The total bill for us with and E1 balcony all our flights and our hotel and our transfers came to £2230 that was for both of us. I kept a spreadsheet to make sure I tried to keep within what a UK travel agent had offerred us for the cruise and flights no stopovers or anything and I got so much more for my money.

 

I am sure you can do better than RCCL on planning this one. Good Luck.

[Martin and Lindsey]

How did you manage to do this? We understood that UK citizens couldn't book the cruise portion only, through the American site. We thought that it was only available for US citizens.

[Broch]

Ms Jo UK

 

Yes for two. I just thought of that after I had clicked submit. I was thinking Xmas would be a good time to book my flights for April as there are still plenty flights available for this year and as you say there are plenty of gateways in U.S. You certainly have more flexibility when booking your own flights and hotels.

[Ms Jo UK]

It is easy to book the cruise portion for RCCL with the US on line TAs. There are loads of sites. Not just RCCL but other cruise lines too. However you can not book with RCCL US site you will always get directed to the UK site. If trying to book Princess on line it is a no go as it asks for a US state so you have to use a live TA for that.

 

Have a go its easy 3 RCCL cruises booked with on line US TAs and no problems encountered. I love the fact you can cancel up to the 90 day mark with no penalty and can keep moving your dates around. A luxury we dont get in the UK. However it is not always cheaper to do it this way, you just need to research those prices.

[Martin and Lindsey]

Thanks for this information. :) Unfortunately, we've booked our flights through RCCL, but we'll bear it in mind for the future. I wish we'd known about this site much earlier, while we were still researching our cruise. You can learn so much here :D

[Shak]

I have come to find out over the years that there is no 1 great site for finding bargain airfare so I constantly check multiple sites. The easiest way to do this is using the service of http://www.bookingbuddy.com/ . Once you have entered your airports and dates you can check over 40 sites (click the down arrow on search other sites) without reentering dates and airports each time. The hotel feature is also a good tool.

 

Shak