Booking early- should I go with a guarantee?

[summersfunnc]

I am not a first time cruiser but this is the first cruise that I am buying 11 months in advance. We are doing this so that our children and a couple of friends can book as well and have it all paid off before cruise time.

Here is my question; I am booking a balcony room and can get a mid ship room at a good price right now. Should I book a room or would I be likely to do better if I go with a guarantee?

Also, we have always gone through a well known on line vacation cite to book and have always paid the entire trip on our charge card. In case the price goes down for our room would I do better to make monthly payments so that I can ask for discounts or upgrades later?

Thanks for any help. I did try to search for answers but.......

[paul929207]

Book a guarentee only if:

 

1. It is cheaper.

2. You would be happy with every cabin in the category you are booking and every higher cabin.

[gertz]

Here is what we do and have done for many years. Now we have only booked Princess so take everything through that filter.

We book with the cruise line using future cruise credits for the deposit. This allows us a deposit of only $100.00pp and gives us a ship board credit on the cruise depending on the length of $50 to $150 each. We book 12 to 24 months in advance and some times further out. Booking with Princess gives us complete control of the booking prior to final payment. At which time we may transfer the booking to a TA depending on the price and or credit. If the price goes down we just call and they lower it.

We know which cabin we want so we never do a guarantee or waite list. And most generally, not always, we mark are cabin "do not upgrade". Princess has the CC # to charge and we pay all at once on the day due never in instalments.

It works for us but we are also flexible.

[Springwater21]

if your group wants to be near each other, don't book guarantee! In the end, those cabins could be just about anywhere. We book the room we want, get the cabin number, then I watch the site very closely. I booked on June 30th 2010 for Feb 5 2011. Our cabin went down in price 3 times before final payment. In the end the cabin was 600.00 less each. I was just blown away! Final payment was Nov 22, it has not reduced since then. I had put a total of 500.00 down in June, then paid 2 installments before the final payment. I thought it was a great deal, we are on the NCL Star in a penthouse with balcony. Just do your homework first, and you wont be sorry. I booked thru the cruise line. It was easy to ask for each reduction, and got them I'm sure with a smile..Dona

[summersfunnc]

Thanks for all the help so far. I will keep watching.

[cherylandtk]

It would help to know which cruiseline this will be on; each handles their upgrades and GTY pricing a little differently. I agree with the specifics noted in each of the posts above.

 

As for prepayment; I think you are better off saving the money in your own account even if you have to open a new savings account at your bank to do so. Make final payment shortly (~2 weeks) before the actual due date using your credit card and then pay off the crdit card with the savings account. Doing it this way gives you leverage before final payment and credit rights after.

[BonitaCruiser]

We were told by a ships future bookings person not to book a guarantee cabin if you wanted to be in a specific area of the ship, i.e, lower or midship. I am prone to seasickness and wouldn't take the chance on a higher priced cabin as it could be on a higher deck or closer to the bow.

[firefly333]

I find that booking direct is easier if there are price drops and such later .. so I would skip the "well known cite" you said you use .. but thats me.

 

I personally love gtys .. if they are cheaper. Iv gotten a few decks free upgrades with them almost all the time.

[GTJ]

Similar to those with other thoughts, skip the guarantee stateroom if you're looking to spend a substantial amount of time within your stateroom and you want it meet your specific demands.

 

We travel by sea in order to see the various places (and, to a much lesser extent, the public spaces on board the vessel). Other than having reasonable comfort in travel, we don't really care about the stateroom. It is simply a place to sleep. If we wanted to spend all of our time together in a small private space we could stay at home and sit in our own bedroom. The money we save (and it can be quite substantial, with guarantee steerage selling for as little as $35 per person per night) is used to travel further, longer, and more often. We have always booked steerage as a guarantee, and have always been satisfied.

[Kitty Mama]

Hubby and I cruised on HAL Osterdam - Mexican Riveria - in Oct. and our TA suggested going with a guaranteed booking. Hoping to get a bump to the next room category, we agreed. We ended up with the same verandah cabin but on the Navigation Deck just a few doors from the Bridge. We wont' do that again. We felt every wave at night and it involved too much walking for hubby, who has back issues. Back to mid-ship for us.

[BeBe3254]

This is the first year that I have done the early booking for a river cruise on the danube in march 2011 and a land/cruise in sept 2011 and a cruise of the eastern med in march 2012. I was asked if I wanted a guaranteed room and I asked what that meant having no experience with it, and was told that it could be anywhere on the ship and any deck. Since I know we want mid ship I skipped that. We are flexable too but comfort also is important. I'm curious about the steerage cabins as previously mentioned. Where are they located? I would certainly be interested in saving money with this catagory. :confused:

[limed]

WE SPEND LITTLE TIME IN OUR STATEROOM-MOSTLY JUST TO SLEEP AND SHOWER. THEREFORE WE GO WITH GTY. WE DO NOT EXPERIENCE SEA SICKNESS SO LOCATION IS NOT CRITICAL. tHE FEW TIMES WE SPENT THE XTRA MONEY FOR NON GTY WE WONDERED WHY!

[bucky7680]

We booked our Panama Canal cruise 1 yr in advance. We chose our cabin and are next to our traveling companions. I do not believe in the Upgrade Fairy. We use an on line TA. We pay a deposit and put it on our credit card which is charged to the TA. Their commission comes out of the down payment. We were billed directly by Princess when final payment was due and they billed it to the original card. The price did take a dip this summer and we contacted the online TA and received the discounted price. We are on a sold out cruise and the price only went up after the price drop.

[Lifelong Sailor]

Been cruising since 1980, both planning early and catching deals after substantial reductions. For the past 2 decades, we've booked nothing less than a verandah/balcony, so nothing TOO bad can happen on GTY. We're sailors ourselves, so ship's motion's no issue. The trick's knowing your ship or studying the layout before choosing your GTY category; i.e. the small "R ships" (Oceania, Azamara, Princess) have a lowest balcony category with structure partially blocking your balcony....so you want a GTY on the second-level balcony category or above. Of course, best case is booking early, getting exactly what you want and watching for price reductions (our #1 choice is a protected stern balcony with a wider view, as my husband's VERY into photography and myself into sunsets, moonlight). But, if you're late to the game and don't see any special stateroom you want above all others, a GTY on the lowest category acceptable to you can reap big upgrades....and not always based on our rewards level with the particular line. We DO spend time in our stateroom, generally preferring our own verandah, a book and glass of wine to Cruise Director games....and have never been disappointed, except by a smoking neighbor on their verandah!

[firefly333]

Well, there you have it .. half for and half against. Im one who loves gtys. Its like a christmas present when you finally find out your cabin and have the hope, maybe its better than what you paid for.

 

Merry Christmas.

[Happy ks]

We've booked a couple gty's over the years and have always gotten what we booked, no upgrades. The locations have been....eh.

 

If you are going with friends, a gty is not the way to go. I've never noticed any really big savings with gty's, just a few $'s per person.

[CruiseLady17]

Merry Christmas! I've been sailing for 30 years and will do either gty or specific cabin. I think the destination of your cruise is very important in the location of the cabin. If I can get a very high level category within a type of stateroom (balcony, mini-suite, outside) and they have a room that looks really good to me (not over a theatre, not over or under a bar, disco, nightclub, anything that's noisy) then I will likely take a specific cabin. Location on a cruise ship is important, but if you're sailing in smoothe waters (Alaska, Mediterranean) I wouldn't care about the specific cabin. If you're doing a northern transatlantic in September, then you'd want mid-ship. I care more about not being near noisy places than I do about mid'ship or not. Except in expected rough waters, then mid-ship. As previously mentioned, mid-ship is also best for people with limitation to walking. Then, you would want either mid-ship, or if not available, get relatively close to an elevator. I've had my share of not great cabins and have learned what to try and avoid. You can't always manage everything, so you just have to decide what's most important to you.

 

Now, after all of that, I have to confess that I leave in 10 days for a 17 day cruise on Star Princess to Antarctica and we'll go thru the Drake Passage (roughest water passage in the world) twice -- 2 days each way -- and when I booked last February, the only type balcony that I could get was a guarantee. We wanted a balcony for the 4 days we'll be sailing thru the Antarctic Peninsula, so we took the chance. We still don't have a room assignment due to the overbooked nature of this cruise, so I can't tell you where we are, but the category was such that it should be OK. Since this is the last year for Antarctica, we were going regardless. So you see, it just depends.....

 

Happy Cruising.

 

Linda

[mgm61]

I booked early saver and got just where we wanted. We booked before all the rate hikes went into effect so we are about at $400 savings so far. ;)