Cabin allocation on a late saver?

[CruisingSarah]

Been a while since I cruised P&O.  Recently booked a last minute cruise on Arvia on a late saver fare, when do they usually allocate your cabin? And after allocation ard they likely to change it? 
 

I keep looking daily and also keep looking at the cabins left available for new bookings so I suppose I have a good idea what we’re likely to get from what’s left! 
 

Can you book dining etc without a cabin number if it’s still not allocated when dining is released? 
 

Thank you 😊 

[FangedRose]

Cabin can be allocated at any time up to boarding.

 

When prebooking excursions you just access your booking via ths P&O website using your customer reference, no need for cabin number, I assume booking dining will be the same.

[yorkshirephil]

As FangedRose says cabin allocated any time up to boarding, however we usually book saver fares and have always had our cabin allocation 21 days before the cruise when the boarding pass and labels become available to download on cruise personaliser. Not sure about dining as we have never pre- booked

[thornegirl]

Arvia is all freedom dining, no set dining.  

 

[CruisingSarah]

1 hour ago, yorkshirephil said:

As FangedRose says cabin allocated any time up to boarding, however we usually book saver fares and have always had our cabin allocation 21 days before the cruise when the boarding pass and labels become available to download on cruise personaliser. Not sure about dining as we have never pre- booked

thank you, we’re 15 days out so hopefully soon! 

[CruisingSarah]

3 minutes ago, thornegirl said:

Arvia is all freedom dining, no set dining.  

 

Apparently you can (and need to)  book any of the paid extra speciality restaurants in advance.

[thornegirl]

1 hour ago, CruisingSarah said:

Apparently you can (and need to)  book any of the paid extra speciality restaurants in advance.

It’s a good idea to book Epicurean and the Limelight club before boarding as they get booked up pretty quick.  You can’t prebook the Keel and Cow or the Glasshouse you can join the virtual queue for those restaurants but we didn’t have a problem with the queue when we were in Arvia at Easter. 

[GSPG]

I was looking at a Baltic cruise in July, but for some reason kept ooming and aaring on booking the thing.

I saw there were a lot of balcony cabins still left which did not force me to rush, but to my very naive horror about 3 weeks before departure they had suddenly all gone.

 

It was from asking the question ‘what happened’ on here that it appears those on savers must have been allocated the rooms, and there must have been a fair few of them.

 

Three weeks isn’t a lot of time before a cruise, but I suppose it’s done so the company have every chance of capturing more people paying the select fare.

[FangedRose]

4 hours ago, thornegirl said:

Arvia is all freedom dining, no set dining.  

 

I assumed the reference was to speciality dining.

[CruisingSarah]

7 hours ago, FangedRose said:

I assumed the reference was to speciality dining.

Yes you’re right that was what I meant, should have said in the original post! 
Thank you for your info earlier! 

[CruisingSarah]

9 hours ago, GSPG said:

I was looking at a Baltic cruise in July, but for some reason kept ooming and aaring on booking the thing.

I saw there were a lot of balcony cabins still left which did not force me to rush, but to my very naive horror about 3 weeks before departure they had suddenly all gone.

 

It was from asking the question ‘what happened’ on here that it appears those on savers must have been allocated the rooms, and there must have been a fair few of them.

 

Three weeks isn’t a lot of time before a cruise, but I suppose it’s done so the company have every chance of capturing more people paying the select fare.

We booked just last weekend at three weeks before and we looked at the whole ship to see what cabins were showing as available, decided that we would be fine with any of those and so booked a saver.  So two weeks out now and no cabin allocation yet and the weird thing is that previously sold out cabin  types are now available and also cabins on decks which were unavailable are now available so either there have been cancellations or there’s a lot of moving around of people in saver fares as they start to allocate!  There must be a method to it!! 

[Megabear2]

36 minutes ago, CruisingSarah said:

We booked just last weekend at three weeks before and we looked at the whole ship to see what cabins were showing as available, decided that we would be fine with any of those and so booked a saver.  So two weeks out now and no cabin allocation yet and the weird thing is that previously sold out cabin  types are now available and also cabins on decks which were unavailable are now available so either there have been cancellations or there’s a lot of moving around of people in saver fares as they start to allocate!  There must be a method to it!! 

There's no guarantee that what you see online is representative as savers get allocated.  There's also the new bidding system for upgrades to take account of any type computers will be working on those too.

[GSPG]

The computer says!

[CruisingSarah]

1 hour ago, Megabear2 said:

There's no guarantee that what you see online is representative as savers get allocated.  There's also the new bidding system for upgrades to take account of any type computers will be working on those too.

We will just see what happens then I guess! 
We booked a standard balcony, there were lots left on deck 5, the covered balcony style, so I expect we will get one of those. 

[Megabear2]

6 hours ago, CruisingSarah said:

We will just see what happens then I guess! 
We booked a standard balcony, there were lots left on deck 5, the covered balcony style, so I expect we will get one of those. 

Strangely if you book select a lot of these cabins carry a higher premium than ones on higher decks, often £100 or more above entry price.  Better one of those than a deck 9 aft in my opinion - the deck 9 aft cabins have serious noise issues as I discovered to my cost after a big free "upgrade"!

[pete14]

11 hours ago, CruisingSarah said:

We booked just last weekend at three weeks before and we looked at the whole ship to see what cabins were showing as available, decided that we would be fine with any of those and so booked a saver.  So two weeks out now and no cabin allocation yet and the weird thing is that previously sold out cabin  types are now available and also cabins on decks which were unavailable are now available so either there have been cancellations or there’s a lot of moving around of people in saver fares as they start to allocate!  There must be a method to it!! 

Maybe the cabin availability changes are the result of P&O upgrading those booking cabins on a select fare to slightly better cabins leaving the perceived inferior ones for the allocations to those paying less on a saver fare.

[CruisingSarah]

6 hours ago, Megabear2 said:

Strangely if you book select a lot of these cabins carry a higher premium than ones on higher decks, often £100 or more above entry price.  Better one of those than a deck 9 aft in my opinion - the deck 9 aft cabins have serious noise issues as I discovered to my cost after a big free "upgrade"!

Yes you’re right, I thought the same. The covered balcony is a bit of a disadvantage but they’re all mid-ish ship and so I suppose that’s more of a premium location than higher decks forward or aft. 
Now I’m thinking we might also get this big upgrade to deck 9 aft!! 😂 As long as it’s not to promenade deck I don’t mind, and I don’t think they can as unless they upgrade us to a different cabin type then that location is a grade below what we have booked. 
All fun and guessing games! 

[CruisingSarah]

3 hours ago, pete14 said:

Maybe the cabin availability changes are the result of P&O upgrading those booking cabins on a select fare to slightly better cabins leaving the perceived inferior ones for the allocations to those paying less on a saver fare.

That would be fair and logical.

[CruisingSarah]

We still don’t have a cabin number at 10 days out, thought the status has changed and instead of ‘excited to reveal cabin nearer to sailing date’ it now says ‘GUAR deck GT’.  
 

Now I  assume that just to mean it’s a guarantee cabin. But the GT bit threw me as the travel agent grade says GF which is an actual cabin grade from the deck plans whereas GT is not. 
 

I suppose we will end up where we end up but I thought we’d know by now! 

[FangedRose]

I assume that gt also indicates "guarantee", there is only two spaces allocated for deck number, so it is abbreviated to two letters.

 

Also, cabins can be allocated at any time up to, and including, check in.

Edited September 22, 2023 by FangedRose

[July morning]

We had our cabin (pre c) allocated at check in.  That was a Caribbean cruise. 

[CruisingSarah]

Thanks both for the info, I've only very rarely booked a guarantee before and never had it this late. 

I'm checking several times a day 😂 

[July morning]

We have only booked the guaranteed cabin a couple of times and the one in the Caribbean that's all that was left as it was an unexpected cruise at short notice 

[CruisingSarah]

4 minutes ago, July morning said:

We have only booked the guaranteed cabin a couple of times and the one in the Caribbean that's all that was left as it was an unexpected cruise at short notice 

 

We wer a bit the same, it's been a last minute booking just a month or so before and we looked at what seemed ot be left, decided we were happy with any of the balcony cabins left and so booked the late saver, on the basis that we'd most likely get one of those that were left.  Since then there has been quite a bit of movement with previously sold out grades soming back on sale etc.  So now absolutely no clue what we are likey to get 😂

[yorkshirephil]

48 minutes ago, CruisingSarah said:

 

We wer a bit the same, it's been a last minute booking just a month or so before and we looked at what seemed ot be left, decided we were happy with any of the balcony cabins left and so booked the late saver, on the basis that we'd most likely get one of those that were left.  Since then there has been quite a bit of movement with previously sold out grades soming back on sale etc.  So now absolutely no clue what we are likey to get 😂

Hope for the best and plan for the worst.