Peninsula discount versus obc

[pennib]

I know this has come up before but I am still somewhat confused. DH and I are PC Caribbean so we get 10% discount on certain purchases. In previous years we have been able to book restaurants from home and have always got our 10% discounts at that point. We are on Britannia on 16 December but at the moment I am unable to book any restaurant on the ship except the Limelight Club (which we don’t want). All the others is “enquire on board” . So we will run around on our first day trying to book what we want. We pay a booking fee at that point. My understanding is that the booking fee will be taken out of our obc and not our pc discount. Am I right? So when will our pc discount click in? Our obc will be mostly used up on the booking fees. I do apologise if this is old hat but I need to get it sorted in my head.

[TigerB]

You are correct, when spending on board your dizzy doesn't kick in until all your OBC is depleted.

 

Have a great cruise🙂

[Megabear2]

1 hour ago, pennib said:

I know this has come up before but I am still somewhat confused. DH and I are PC Caribbean so we get 10% discount on certain purchases. In previous years we have been able to book restaurants from home and have always got our 10% discounts at that point. We are on Britannia on 16 December but at the moment I am unable to book any restaurant on the ship except the Limelight Club (which we don’t want). All the others is “enquire on board” . So we will run around on our first day trying to book what we want. We pay a booking fee at that point. My understanding is that the booking fee will be taken out of our obc and not our pc discount. Am I right? So when will our pc discount click in? Our obc will be mostly used up on the booking fees. I do apologise if this is old hat but I need to get it sorted in my head.

Yes you are right. As you know we are on that sailing too.  I was told no booking for the speciality restaurants until onboard.  Very disappointed as for first time in none Christmas trips unable to book the seasonal special Christmas/Boxing Day Epicurean dinner.  I'm told it is pot luck and first come first served.

 

 

[pennib]

OK so far but will we get our pc discount off the remaining on board account, for example if we have £500 obc and we spend £150 on restaurant booking fees leaving £350 obc. When that runs out do we get our pc discount on the remaining balance?

[tring]

1 hour ago, pennib said:

I know this has come up before but I am still somewhat confused. DH and I are PC Caribbean so we get 10% discount on certain purchases. In previous years we have been able to book restaurants from home and have always got our 10% discounts at that point. We are on Britannia on 16 December but at the moment I am unable to book any restaurant on the ship except the Limelight Club (which we don’t want). All the others is “enquire on board” . So we will run around on our first day trying to book what we want. We pay a booking fee at that point. My understanding is that the booking fee will be taken out of our obc and not our pc discount. Am I right? So when will our pc discount click in? Our obc will be mostly used up on the booking fees. I do apologise if this is old hat but I need to get it sorted in my head.

 

I do not understand what you mean by a "booking fee"?  We were on Azura in October and just left Aurora last Friday after a long cruise and no booking fees were taken when booking speciality restaurants at any time.  The daily sheet on Aurora did say that if you wish to cancel any booking, you should do so at least 24 hours prior to avoid cancellation charges and we did ask about that and the amount taken, mentioning that we would not want to go to Sindu if we hit bad seas and we were not being given any advance warning about weather at all on Aurora, even on the trans Atlantic crossings. We were told that they do not charge for cancellations at all, though would obviously appreciate an early cancellation if possible.

 

As others have confirmed, there is no peninsular discount when using onboard spend, but it does kick in after that (even if you only pay for part of a purchase with your own spends).  So really it does not matter which purchases are made with your OBS as in the overall bill, you will have a Peninsular discount applied for anything extra you spend, no matter what it is spent on.  With all the extra OBS being given out recently, I must admit our focus was to make sure we spent all the OBS, which is otherwise lost, so perusing the shops was needed on both of our cruises. 

 

Yes for both Azura and Aurora it was not possible to book speciality restaurants prior to the start of the cruises, even for a second B2B cruise which we did on Azura, even though we were already on the ship, which seemed particularly mean IMO.

  

[pennib]

Thank you for that. I feel more confident now. Happy Christmas 

[tring]

3 minutes ago, pennib said:

OK so far but will we get our pc discount off the remaining on board account, for example if we have £500 obc and we spend £150 on restaurant booking fees leaving £350 obc. When that runs out do we get our pc discount on the remaining balance?

 

All purchases over the OBS amount (or even part of a purchase if you do not have enough OBS to cover an entire purchase) will show a reduction according to your Peninsular discount level.  The account shows that immediately that the purchase is entered onto your account and can be viewed on the onboard app.  Sometimes we found purchases came off the account as soon as they are made (drinks or shop purchase for instance), whilst other times we found they did not get entered until a little later.  Obviously we did not check all our purchases straight away, but we did a number of times over the seven weeks in total that we were on those ships.  It is worth checking your account from time to time to check all is well anyway, though we made loads of purchases (most of £1,000 in total) and all went through correctly.

 

 

[tring]

5 minutes ago, pennib said:

Thank you for that. I feel more confident now. Happy Christmas 

 

Happy Christmas and enjoy your cruise.  Possibly on a Christmas cruise they will make some sort of cancellation charge if a restaurant is cancelled within the 24 hour limit, since the restaurants may be running to full capacity, though it was not mentioned at all on Azura and the restaurants were fully booked much of the time on her.

 

I had seen posts elsewhere (before our October cruise), that some people could book restaurants before embarking a ship and I think (from memory) that was for Iona, so perhaps they are more advanced in the tech for her.  It was a particular problem on Azura since cruises overlapped, hence for the first week of our cruise, much was showing booked when we embarked.  It transpired though that if we went to the restaurant concerned we could still get the option of some slots - seems not all slots were entered onto the app.  Also The Glass House was constantly showing fully booked, yet it was in fact not bookable on the app at all, so the only way we could book was with the restaurant manager when the restaurant was open.  On Aurora The Glasshouse was not open for meals at all during our four week cruise, sadly.