Guarantee Cabins

When booking a Guarantee cabin in a particular category do I have the option of choosing the deck wanted or will the guarantee cabin offered be on the deck Princess chooses and not necessarily the deck I wanted. Got that?:roll eyes:

Thanks, I'm fearful of spending 28 days in a lousy cabin.:eek:

all you pick is the category...not the deck.

When booking a guarantee cabin you have to pay attention to the minimum category your guarantee is for within the cabin type. The only way to tell when booking online is to match the color of the little square in the selection box to the color of the cabins on the deck plan.

Using Royal or Regal balcony cabins as example: the guarantee balcony category could be BY (a very light lavender square) which are obstructed view cabins on Emerald Deck. Or could be category BF (dark green square) which are unobstructed balconies but either directly above or below public areas on Emerald or Lido decks respectively.

In my experience you very rarely see guarantee bookings for the cabin categories on the preferred middle decks. You can certainly inquire as to making such a booking but it would undoubtedly be no less expensive than selecting your own cabin in that category.

If you went for a guarantee "Ocean View" on some ships you can only be allocated; Plaza, Emerald or Lido. The only way a different deck will be allocated is if you were assigned a Balcony Cabin or better. A guarantee "Inside" would be almost any deck. You can therefore sometimes eliminate outcomes which you might not want to end up with to a degree.

Regards John

The only thing guaranteed is a cabin in at least the category you booked. It could be anywhere on the ship. You leave it to Princess to select your cabin and location. Usually, people who choose a specific cabin book the most desirable ones. That said, once you are assigned a cabin, you can check to see what other cabins are available in your cabin's category (or lower) and ask to be changed to another location.

This is why you should never book a guarantee unless you will be happy with every cabin in the category you booked and every cabin in every higher category.

We will pay extra to be able to select our own cabin. Have not had good luck with Princess picking for us...

We'll also happily pay extra to select the cabin of our choice. :)

When you are assigned a cabin, if there is one you prefer that is available in the same category or lower, you can ask to be moved to it. We've had pretty good luck with guarantees and have always been assigned a cabin in a higher category. But our attitude when we book is that if we wind up in exactly the category we booked, that will be fine.

If you are worried about getting a bad cabin pick it yourself and don't do a gty.

When looking at available cabins to decide how full a ship is, is it true to say that there could be a pool of GTY bookings and so ship might be more sold out than it seems ? Idle curiosity.

We usually book guarantee cabins, as we don't mind where on the ship we are, the only thing we do is always book a category we would be happy with.

To-date we have usually been either category upgraded or full upgrade. Our best upgrade was from BA Balcony on the Crown to a full suite :D:D but don't panic if you only receive your cabin at check in, it all adds to the excitement

At the advice of our TA we booked a guaranteed balcony BF on our upcoming cruise next month, because it is our first time on Princess and we are not experienced cruisers. We really didn't know what we wanted or where we wanted to be, other than the balcony feature. We were pleasantly surprised to find that we had been assigned a B1 category room midship on the Caribe deck.

We used to book guarantees, never got a bad one.

For health reasons we are no longer prepared to take the risk.

I truly love hearing the "great upgrade" stories that people have. It's wonderful, exciting, and amazing that you can get upgraded, all the way to a suite sometimes, but there are also so many disappointed cruises who have hated their upgrades having cabins under a loud area, or somewhere they just do not like. I am just too chicken to take the risk.

I prefer to book a specific category/cabin and know where we are.

I think it takes an adventurous person to book a cabin guarantee and then be happy with whatever they get.

Years and years ago, when we were on Carnival we had booked a guarantee and gotten upgraded, and our cabin was next to an older couple who had booked a specific cabin. The 4 of us had the guarantee vs booking a specific cabin discussion and I think it was after that cruise that we started just picking what we wanted. :)

It's truly a preference of how much you are willing to gamble. I still will continue to be happy for those amazing guarantee cabin upgrades, but the risk is too high for me.

At the advice of our TA we booked a guaranteed balcony BF on our upcoming cruise next month, because it is our first time on Princess and we are not experienced cruisers. We really didn't know what we wanted or where we wanted to be, other than the balcony feature. We were pleasantly surprised to find that we had been assigned a B1 category room midship on the Caribe deck.

It is very common for Princess to upgrade 1st time Princess cruisers. Thus instilling the false hope that you will be upgraded each time. Probably won't happen again. Enjoy!

Our last guarantee cabin on the Regal 2 weeks ago was not assigned until 2 days b4 the cruise, so no option for changing cabins on a sold out cruise if not to our liking. BF catagory booked and received BD.

Leaving Monday. Booked a guarantee mini (MF), assigned a MB mid-forward on the Riviera deck:)