CoolCruiser17

28 minutes ago, richg35 said:

 

I have three young kids. Many vacations aren't as accommodating to five people as they are with four. When options are more limited (or increase significantly in price when you need more space), planning vacations early is important. Not everyone is in a situation where they can just wait until the last minute to find discounts on unused inventory.

Yeah can't relate on the kids and traveling with large numbers, but you and anybody shouldn't be punished by booking far out. Heck I booked around 75 days out so pretty close in and still saw this drop. Sounds like from my reading on prior posts and posts below as well as general reading NCL does this as standard practice. I am surprised it works and doesn't cause them uproar and pissed off people in the masses. I have some flexibility so if I ever travel NCL again I will most defiantly be like most others and book very last min otherwise I will likely just book other lines and not worry about it as I rarely see more than a $200-300 variance when booking 6 months out or less out on the other lines which is what I typical do.

1 hour ago, CruisingNole said:

 

Agreed, 1 week out or less sail away is the only thing I will book on NCL. Otherwise you're getting ripped. Royal and Carnival both typically get more (usually a LOT more) expensive as the sailing nears vs if you were to book 1 year in advance. 

1 hour ago, blcruising said:

NCL is the only line I know of with huge price drops last minute. With the other lines, if a sailing is selling slowly, you'll see the declines three months out or so. NCL will keep the price artificially inflated and then dump cabins for cheap one week before sailing. The end result is huge variations between what passengers pay for the same product. When I sail NCL, I book two to seven days prior to sailing, sailaway rate only. I am fortunate to be able to sail last minute. I would never book an NCL cruise prior to final payment either. 

Yeah lessoned learned from your posts and just general reading about this is if I book with NCL again in the future I need to just pick two separate cruise weeks (back to back weeks) and just book the best one out of the two somewhere in the 2-3 weeks out range and go with it. Clearly by this business practice of holding rates high just to dump them and reward last min bookings is what they are encouraging people to do so as they say, "if you can't beat em join em". haha In all likelihood I will just go back to what I know and book with my regular lines I have used without issues in the past. I booked NCL for this trip as I have seen lots of push recently for them with ads and figured I should at least try something new every once in a while.

4 minutes ago, Georgia_Peaches said:

As a newly retired educator, I find myself with the luxury of booking a cruise whenever I want instead of being tied to the school calendar.  So when you say you book last minute in the GTY category, do you then purchase a drink package once on board?  Or do you pay by the drink?   Same question about dining package?  Or did I misunderstand about the category selection?

Thanks!

I think they are talking about just booking a sailaway standard with no free at sea perks. With that said though I booked free at sea and am comparing the $1200 drop to booking the same free at sea package today. So same package and room just I would save $1200 by booking today.

11 hours ago, CruisingNole said:

What other cruise lines have these ridiculous price drops like NCL? None of the other “big 3” cruise lines fluctuate by thousands of dollars for a basic balcony cabin since booking. This seems to be NCL price model. Overcharge Mr. and Mrs. “we play it safe with our vacations” and expect them to be too naive to realize they could have saved a boat load of money.

I am glad I am not alone in thinking exactly this. In all my and my husband says in all of his many many years of cruising he has never seen any line drop by more than $500-600. He was scratching his head when it had gotten over $1,000 under what we paid ($500 per person) and now currently sitting at just shy under $1,200 less than what we paid. ($600 per person)... We booked around 75 days out so to drop $1200 in around 45 days since we book is just crazy.

We checked back on price as it was higher than we had ever dreamed of paying for a cruise in a balcony room and now we see why it was inflated by at least $1,200. haha Lesson learned if we ever cruise NCL again we need to book less than 30 days out to get the best deal. That isn't really a good thing for NCL that they are teaching people to book this late as I am sure that can't be easy for staff to plan for orders when a ship fills up super quick in the last min...

Yes just for the record the price in discussion is for same type cabin booked. We booked balcony with free at sea perks and currently comparing to a balcony with free at sea perks.

No upgrade offered as they said they don't have any to give so just a $100 OBC.

Booked a balcony room on a cruise about 75 days from sail date. I've been watching the price slowly drop over the past few weeks from $400, to $800, to $1000, to now noticing the price has dropped almost $1200 from booking. We are less than 30 days from cruise date and they offered us $100 OBC a few weeks ago when it was around a $400-$800 drop. That seemed a little small at the time, but now it seems just absurd given the larger difference. A $400 or under price fluctuation I would see as more normal perhaps, but $800-$1200 is shocking. I've compared to other lines that I originally looked at and the prices seem to be about the same (+/- $200 which is reasonable). Has anyone else have this happened to them, and if so, was there anything you could do?