Slightly Annoying....

....when you book a cruise and six months later the cruise company has a sale and effectively lowers the price. It does make one wonder why early bookings are beneficial. We are the exception, we don't mind inside cabins or where it is on the ship, it is, after all, only a room to sleep and shower in.

We booked our next cruise on Boudicca several months ago, and now find that it is available with drinks and tips included. As you say, it does make you wonder if it is worth booking early!

We do early bookings much of the time, but have been able to use a couple of 'book three offers' over the last couple of years and we have been happy with the deals - does tend to make you book more than you really want to though! If you do not use some sort of offer, I think the prices Fred have when cruises are first released are over the top for the quality of their cruises. I think we will be looking elsewhere to book holidays for the next couple of years though as we had bad experiences on both Balmoral and Black Watch this year. Braemar still has appeal to us though and our recent book three are all on her.

We do book late from time to time as well. What annoys me is not so much the price differences, but the people who always book late and have absolutely no other conversation than to go on about the various deals they have got - they must have nothing else in their lives! In fact we mainly got better deals on the book three offer, (booked on board for the extra discount and most early enough to have Oceans discount), than many last minute prices, especially when you consider the other advantages. It has been tempting to fill the verbose late bookers in with our booking details, but they are really not the sort of people I want to spend time with.