How do you know how many people are booked for your cruise?

[ItsJulesYo]

Hi y'all. We're very excited for the Scarlet Lady's Dominican Daze cruise in ONLY 12 DAYS !!!

 

Sometimes, I see people say "We only had 700 sailors" or "The ships will be more full" later on. How does one find this good info?

 

Just as an aside, I'm a total cruise newb but I'm the one who is the "points nerd" who booked us this free cruise. So I wound up booking all the reservations and I think I messed up because all of them are at 8pm...

 

Thanks for any help you can give! This post was

Edited October 2, 2022 by ItsJulesYo

[Fogcityca13]

The ticket agent when you check in could tell you, guest services on board could also let you know. With VV it’s a bit difficult to guess ahead of time, other cruise lines you could browse available cabins to get an idea how many available cabins there are. Travel agents might have some better visibility. 
 

You can call and see if you can move reservations or check with the restaurants as soon as you board. The 6-7 window for dinner is ideal if you’re looking to catch some of the evening events, it’s also the first time slots to book up.

[CineGraphic]

Last week I called to see if they could tell me the occupancy rate of our upcoming cruises, and the poor girl thought I wanted to know how many other people would be in my cabin.

Once she finally realized what I wanted, she checked with her supervisor and said they didn't have access to the info.

[CruisingWalter]

1 hour ago, ItsJulesYo said:

Hi y'all. We're very excited for the Scarlet Lady's Dominican Daze cruise in ONLY 12 DAYS !!!

 

Sometimes, I see people say "We only had 700 sailors" or "The ships will be more full" later on. How does one find this good info?

 

Just as an aside, I'm a total cruise newb but I'm the one who is the "points nerd" who booked us this free cruise. So I wound up booking all the reservations and I think I messed up because all of them are at 8pm...

 

Thanks for any help you can give! This post was

 

Ask the bartenders when you're onboard. They always know. That's how I always find out how many people are onboard a particular sailing. 🙂 

 

Depending on which shows you want to see some of those reservations might conflict. The most important thing to know about VV meals is that they run from 90 minutes to 2 hours+ depending on the venue except for Pink Agave. That's a 45 minute meal easily. There is no 'rush' at VV to get out of the restaurants. Test Kitchen was 2 1/2 hours, Gunbae was 2 hours, The Wake was 2+ hours, Extra Virgin would have been 90min - 2 hours except we told our servers we only had 70 minutes for dinner to get to Duel Reality. They turned the 4 course meal into 3 courses.

 

That's the most important thing about dining, if you are pressed for time, let the hosts and servers know as they are seating or certainly BEFORE you order anything. They can work with you but they have to know.

[_tacocat_]

when you check in, if you're nosy (me!), you can peep the number on the ipad as they're checking you in.  it'll have XXX checked in/XXX total in big numbers.  or you can just ask any of the pax-facing crew like bartenders/happenings cast members.

 

i think the best approach to dinners is to make reservations for relatively the same time each night.  that way you'll be able to catch either all early shows or all late shows and not have to worry about fitting every day around a different schedule.  we've been onboard with as many as 1800 pax, and we've never had an issue moving reservations around if needed.  prime dinner times like any of the slots between 7 & 8 may be full, but if you don't mind eating a little earlier or later, you probably won't have issues.

[cantgetin]

I've always gotten a rough estimate when I've called shoreside sailor services.  For example,  I called when the app wouldn't allow me to make dinner reservations, and asked.  The agent told me that the ship was about 50% sold out in terms of cabins but because of the "no single supplement" special, a lot of singles were in 2 person cabins, so it was only about 45% sold out in terms of number of sailors.  As noted, any of the bartenders, sailor services personnel, etc. can tell you how many are booked, as can the check in agent at the terminal.