2025

[FatBoy20]

No Greenland/USA & Canada/North Cape or Canaries & Cape Verde.

[LandC]

I wonder when Saga will start making the calls.

[nosapphire]

As arlowood says, no prices are given until the phone call. Which probably won't happen until all the link glitches jave been solved.

One of the reasons why it takes so long to work through the list, the operator has to look at your preferred cruise, your preferred cabin grade, and then tell you the price - then if you are interested, tell you which cabins are available at that price.

As they are still inviting people to pre-register, it may be some time before the cruises go on general sale. Get too many people pre-registering surely means that only those who were first in the queue are likely to get the maximum discount on any popular cruise- which rather defeats the reason for pre-registry.

I too am disappointed with the lack of USA/Canada offerings. The sole date this year was not possible for me, which makes the weekly "special reduction" emails even more annoying.

[Spike11]

3 minutes ago, FatBoy20 said:

No Greenland/USA & Canada/North Cape or Canaries & Cape Verde.

Yes, we are very disappointed and won’t be booking for summer 2025. There seems to be large step backwards in terms of offering a variety of itineraries - which I thought was a big part of Saga’s USP. I suspect that they are finding that there are few options left, in terms of port availability, by the time they get round to finalising their itineraries.

[Kohima]

The calls have already started this evening.

[Spence55]

I’ve read elsewhere that standard cabins on Deck E with full discount are around £250 pp per day. So a full (undiscounted) price of £770 per couple per day. That seems to be a bit of a price hike for some rather uninspiring itineraries. It looks like SAGA are picking over what’s left after the big players have booked their ports of call. 

[Cruise-Cat]

7 hours ago, Denarius said:

Interesting. I use Firefox as my browser of choice. After reading your post I opened the cruise schedule in Edge instead and both the missing links worked; but they still do not work in Firefox. Looks as though they work in some browsers (Chromium based ones?) but not others. It was much better when they sent you a pdf attachment which you could save and browse offline!

Try clearing your cache in Firefox 

[Windsurfboy]

Boring and expensive, going to give it a a miss. They don't seem to be taking advantage of the smaller ports that the bigger ships can't use.

[arlowood]

Seem to have found a workaround that allows me to see all the itineraries.

In the Saga email you can select to view online via your browser. 

 

Firstly I cleared cache and cookies from my Chrome browser and then selected the browser online option from the Saga email.

I can now see the full itineraries on some of those that were unavailable previously. Haven't checked them all but I don't need to as there are only a few that we won't be interested in.

[LandC]

10 hours ago, Kohima said:

The calls have already started this evening.

Saga are calling people who pre-registered in 2021 and earlier. We pre-registered in January 2022, so are hoping to get a call soon.

[janecambridge]

Goodness me. Ours was last March 2023! 

[Medeba]

17 minutes ago, janecambridge said:

Goodness me. Ours was last March 2023! 

Ditto!

[nosapphire]

June 2023 for me.

So probably most of the best discounts will have gone, so probably not worth booking now - wait for special offers.

Having said that, I recall once cruise when I pre-registered 4 years in advance - and still only got 25% discount on my selected cruise. Evidently it was very popular.

For those of you who have spotted a cruise they really want - good luck, and may the maximum discounts be with you.😊

[FatBoy20]

12 hours ago, Kohima said:

The calls have already started this evening.

Why didn't Saga issue the E-Brochure last Friday to give people to mull over the Cruises & then start ringing on Monday. With all the issues over the Brochure Launch & some not resolved until yesterday afternoon. Seems very rushed when a bit of sensible planning could be easily applied.

[Denarius]

10 hours ago, Cruise-Cat said:

Try clearing your cache in Firefox 

Have done and it worked. Thanks for the tip.

Edited March 5 by Denarius

[nosapphire]

Thanks - same tip worked for me.

Now I can see that there has been some cut-and-paste, but no proof reading.

The last Med cruise (on the Adventure) blurb refers to Israel and Cyprus, neither of which are on this itinerary.

All is revealed when reading that Alexandria is a new port of call for the Discovery...

Blocks of text taken from the Discovery cruise this year that was originally including Israel.

Mind you, no idea where the reference to Port Said came from...

 

[Janet-]

I've tried all the tricks suggested but still can't see the itineraries. Wish Saga would hurry up and sort it

[Denarius]

1 hour ago, nosapphire said:

Thanks - same tip worked for me.

Now I can see that there has been some cut-and-paste, but no proof reading.

The last Med cruise (on the Adventure) blurb refers to Israel and Cyprus, neither of which are on this itinerary.

All is revealed when reading that Alexandria is a new port of call for the Discovery...

Blocks of text taken from the Discovery cruise this year that was originally including Israel.

Mind you, no idea where the reference to Port Said came from...

 

The whole thing is a mess. More examples; Norway's Highlights is offered in May, but it is only when you click on the link that you find that the same cruise takes place in September. And for Coastal delights of France etc the map is at odds with the published itinerary. Must do better!!!!

[Windsurfboy]

What i can't understand is no prices on website. Could have prices per cabin type per deck at 35% off. We can then all work out 30% off etc ...

 

I can't believe they want to give you a price over the phone with a take it this minute or it may go up. A bit like a double glazing sales person. 

 

We like to think about things. 

 

We are in lucky position that suites don't sell out at 35% immediately so not going to bother any more with preregistering.  Just priced some Seabourn fly cruise, No more expensive than Saga,but much better choice of ports big ships don't go to. But that's got to be balanced we love ambience on Saga and fellow passengers. 

 

 

Edited March 5 by Windsurfboy

[Bloodaxe]

I did not realise that you had to decide there and then when you got the call.

I don't usually make snap decisions about anything it's nice to have time to consider things.

Now that I know I will never pre register, just take my chance on a good price or wait for any later offers, lot's of other options out there.

Edited March 5 by Bloodaxe

[LandC]

8 hours ago, LandC said:

Saga are calling people who pre-registered in 2021 and earlier. We pre-registered in January 2022, so are hoping to get a call soon.

We’ve just booked one of the Scandinavian cruises in July 2025.   A Standard cabin on D Deck worked out at £272 pppn with a 35% discount.  Prices seem to have gone up a fair bit!

[Denarius]

45 minutes ago, LandC said:

We’ve just booked one of the Scandinavian cruises in July 2025.   A Standard cabin on D Deck worked out at £272 pppn with a 35% discount.  Prices seem to have gone up a fair bit!

They certainly appear to have. I am looking at one of those cruises as well, as a single passenger. As a rough estimate of 50% effective single supplement that works out at about £5700 for a 14 night cruise even after a 35% discount. This summer I am going on a similar cruise to the Baltic - different ports - on SofA which cost me £4700 after a 35% discount. Thats works out at about a 20% increase.

Edited March 5 by Denarius

[Windsurfboy]

Saga will price itself out the market at this rate, certainly for deluxe and suites. The post covid we are going on holiday never mind cost is coming to rapid end

 

Intinerarys that aren't much different to big ships, Cunard P&O .

 

Prices that are up with for example Seabourn , Seabourn veranda suite similiar size and prices to what a Saga deluxe would now cost based on the pppn figures above. Similiar sized cabins, more varied intinerary with Seabourn. 

 

Only saving grace for Saga is it's best quality for UK no fly cruise. But that doesn't stop everyone waiting for guarantee cabins

[Kohima]

This whole situation is something of an omnishambles. 
A company purporting to offer a luxury ‘boutique’ product  has boosted its cash flow by taking in £90 twice yearly registrations at £360 pa per couple, with some people having multiple registrations for years ahead. When the summer 2025 cruise details are released (to those participants of the scheme who have internet access), there is a frenzied meltdown as the IT proves not fit for purpose. No prices are released so it is impossible to make considered choices of cruise, deck and cabin,  It is left to resourceful customers on social media to help others make sense of the offerings. Meanwhile those at the head of the queue are being called by Saga (what a lengthy call that must be) to make hasty choices without knowledge of the whole picture.

This system obviously works for the few earlybirds (especially solos) who gain access to the few 35% discounted cabins and are happy to book instantly based on the information given over the phone, but for the rest of the customer base it looks like a scheme to pressurize customers into early booking without proper information.

[nosapphire]

I agree, the advance registration system has bloated so much it is becoming unworkable.

(Saga bean counters may like to keep it as those advance £90s make the books look good).

However, do remember that for ocean cruises Saga booking conditions state that a contract comes into force 14 days after you receive the booking paperwork.

This means that there is a 14 day cooling off period, so if you book in haste and then realise it is not what you wanted, you can cancel without penalty (and yes, they do issue a full refund of the deposit back to whatever method you paid with).

++++

Just think - back in the "old days" there was no pre-brochure. Nobody knew what the cruises were until the telephone call, when the operator listed each and every cruise, dates and itineraries. If you were one of the last calls, you could hear the poor operator frantically sucking throat pastilles to keep their voice working.

Later they got round to issuing a piece of paper with dates and cruise titles - no itineraries, that still had to be read out over the phone (made it interesting when the title said Mediterranean and the itinerary was Canaries!).

So, one day in the distant future they may also include prices. Or stop pushing pre-registration.