Upcoming Promotions?

[dweidensaul]

Does anyone have any experience or insight as to what promotion to expect after the current 29 Feb expiration?  Looking at some Med cruise options next Spring (2025).  Curious if I'm risking too much by not being decisive enough right now.  

[LACruiser88]

FWIW, recent sales have not been anything to get excited about.  We have found that the best fares have been when the specific itinerary is released.

[Mud_Shark]

My recommendation is to make your booking now.  Some itineraries will go up in price (especially Sun and Star right now as they are a new class of ship), and some will go down as time goes on.  You can always re-fare if the price goes down, and if a new promotion is for "New bookings only", you can still cancel your booking and re-book.  Only thing is, you could lose your specific room, but not always.

 

Sales or promotions have been lame for about a year now (other than kids sail free promos - if that is something that appeals to you.) Prices fluctuate more based on demand than based upon promos.

Edited February 21 by Mud_Shark

[rodndonna]

2 hours ago, dweidensaul said:

Does anyone have any experience or insight as to what promotion to expect after the current 29 Feb expiration?  Looking at some Med cruise options next Spring (2025).  Curious if I'm risking too much by not being decisive enough right now.  

 

Something I do when trying to decide if I should book now or maybe wait, is look at the closest equivalent sailing (itinerary and ship class)  for Spring 2024, and see what happened with that pricing.

 

You can use a site like Cruiseplum.com for that (they are not a Travel agent, just a tracking site so we can name them). You don't have to be a member to do a search. When you select a cruise and the "More Info" on the right, at the bottom you then get a graph showing what happened with pricing over the last year for cabin categories for that cruise.

 

 

 

 

[AtlantaCruiser72]

Looks like the new national promo will be a "35 % off sale with free 3rd/4th guests" - nothing terribly exciting.  Runs March 1st to May 31st.  There may or may not be some additional limited time offers overlaid during the course of the sale (reduced deposits or onboard credits potentially)

 

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[Nina On The Sea]

Do prices go down at all once a new ship has been released? 

Since the Sun was finally released - will anything change now as the other ships are now no not the newest? 

 

[insidecabin]

There is Premium for Plus price in the UK.

A Captain's circle discount finished this week.

[jdacombe]

Yes,, the total package is free upgrade from Plus to Premium, up to 30% off certain cruises and £50pp deposit. Valid, I think for bookings made by 5th March 

Edited February 21 by jdacombe

[jdacombe]

https://www.princess.com/en-uk

 

[NavyVeteran]

8 hours ago, dweidensaul said:

Does anyone have any experience or insight as to what promotion to expect after the current 29 Feb expiration?  Looking at some Med cruise options next Spring (2025).  Curious if I'm risking too much by not being decisive enough right now.  

Your profile doesn't say where you live. If you live in the US or Canada, then book now with a refundable deposit. You have nothing to lose. If the fare goes down, you can either re-fare or cancel and rebook. I just re-fared an Alaska family cruise for five cabins when the price went down. We kept our same cabins, our flights, our excursions, and everything else on the booking except the fare.

If you live in other parts of the world, it's not so simple, since you may not have the option of fully refundable deposits.

[insidecabin]

10 hours ago, jdacombe said:

Yes,, the total package is free upgrade from Plus to Premium, up to 30% off certain cruises and £50pp deposit. Valid, I think for bookings made by 5th March 

The 30% is the DFS cruise sale.

 

All cruise lines have some kind of ongoing fake sale, prices get adjusted all the time whatever that figure says.

[RBAlbany]

I'm waiting for the Mother's Day gift card deal.  Do we know if that is still happening?

[startedwithamouse]

1 hour ago, RBAlbany said:

I'm waiting for the Mother's Day gift card deal.  Do we know if that is still happening?

What is that?

[Steelers36]

1 hour ago, RBAlbany said:

I'm waiting for the Mother's Day gift card deal.  Do we know if that is still happening?

They quit that at least in 2023 and I think 2022.  They had it during Covid at first, but stopped the bonuses as I mentioned.  Now everyone uses AARP Rewards to get a discount of 8%.

[Steelers36]

42 minutes ago, startedwithamouse said:

What is that?

At certain holiday times, Princess would give a free 5% (usually) or 10% (more rare, but always was one on M Day) when purchasing GCs.  I used to book a lot of them on MD if we had a future cruise to pay for. Long gone now, however.

[dweidensaul]

15 hours ago, NavyVeteran said:

Your profile doesn't say where you live. If you live in the US or Canada, then book now with a refundable deposit. You have nothing to lose. If the fare goes down, you can either re-fare or cancel and rebook. I just re-fared an Alaska family cruise for five cabins when the price went down. We kept our same cabins, our flights, our excursions, and everything else on the booking except the fare.

If you live in other parts of the world, it's not so simple, since you may not have the option of fully refundable deposits.

Thanks.  I live in US.  I, too, recently refared an Alaska cruise for this summer at significant savings.  That process seems to have become a bit more difficult than previous times, but I'm persistent.  We think we're going to pull the trigger on it during this timeframe.  Likely gonna choose our 80% solution on Majestic vice 100% solution on Sun.  Sun had a better itinerary and newer ship, but cost differential was just too great at the moment.  Not a fan of Majestic, personally, as there isn't a track for us runners to use.

[RBAlbany]

On 2/22/2024 at 10:13 AM, Steelers36 said:

At certain holiday times, Princess would give a free 5% (usually) or 10% (more rare, but always was one on M Day) when purchasing GCs.  I used to book a lot of them on MD if we had a future cruise to pay for. Long gone now, however.

Thanks for reply.

[HikaruTsuki]

I'm really hopeful a Canadian at Par deal comes available again. I just can't justify the current fares. 

[ajmac01]

On 2/22/2024 at 12:15 PM, dweidensaul said:

Thanks.  I live in US.  I, too, recently refared an Alaska cruise for this summer at significant savings.  That process seems to have become a bit more difficult than previous times, but I'm persistent.  We think we're going to pull the trigger on it during this timeframe.  Likely gonna choose our 80% solution on Majestic vice 100% solution on Sun.  Sun had a better itinerary and newer ship, but cost differential was just too great at the moment.  Not a fan of Majestic, personally, as there isn't a track for us runners to use.

Were you able to do that after the 72 hours?

[Steelers36]

1 hour ago, HikaruTsuki said:

I'm really hopeful a Canadian at Par deal comes available again. I just can't justify the current fares. 

That would be more of a general remark since all the lines are priced in USD operating out of N.A.  You can either book in USD and manage your own currency exchanging (like use a USD credit card for one part), or accept the cruise line's going conversion rate.  Princess has been at 1.35 for a very long time now and it has sometimes been better and sometimes worse than the market.  It isn't a bad thing right now.

IMO, the entire travel industry in this hemisphere is USD based, so you learn to accept that.  CAD at par is a "steal-of-a-deal" if it happens, but you can still book then in USD if desired and the USD amount charged is reduced by the exchange rate.

[HikaruTsuki]

13 hours ago, Steelers36 said:

That would be more of a general remark since all the lines are priced in USD operating out of N.A.  You can either book in USD and manage your own currency exchanging (like use a USD credit card for one part), or accept the cruise line's going conversion rate.  Princess has been at 1.35 for a very long time now and it has sometimes been better and sometimes worse than the market.  It isn't a bad thing right now.

IMO, the entire travel industry in this hemisphere is USD based, so you learn to accept that.  CAD at par is a "steal-of-a-deal" if it happens, but you can still book then in USD if desired and the USD amount charged is reduced by the exchange rate.

I don't disagree. It comes down to what we value--what we get vs what we're paying. For years we spent an average of $200 CDN per day for a cruise (all in). Last year we priced cruise options with Princess with Plus, and it came to $400 CDN per day, which felt comfortable and had a fantastic trip. Right now, comparable cruises are over to $600 CDN per day, a 50% increase. It just isn't justifiable for us at the moment. 

[dweidensaul]

On 2/23/2024 at 10:39 PM, ajmac01 said:

Were you able to do that after the 72 hours?

Yep.  I've done it on most every cruise.  Often multiple times before I sail.