Carnival PVP vs outside TA

[pbs14]

Hi everyone! We just booked through a Personal Vacation Planner within Carnival. He was awesome! Just wondering about transfering our reservation to a TA in order to get their OBC and such.

 

I've been reading about the "upgrade fairy" calling to offer upgrades (for a fee of course). Would we not be eligible for this if we give our res. to a TA?

 

Any thoughts on going the TA route? Is there a deadline that we have to follow in order to do this like within specific timeframe?

 

Thanks for any insights!!

[travelntreats]

30 day window after deposits made.....your call if it is worth it or not. Some people love their PVP's and will not deal with a TA, just so they are in control of their booking at all times, others prefer to work with their TA....it's about 6 one way or half a dozen the other !

 

If there are upsell calls, they seem to be only occurring when a pax books direct with the cruiseline.

[SandyW]

We book with a PVP. I don't know much about switching to a TA for whatever reasons afterwards so I can't say anything about that. What I can say is... Our PVP suggested that we check back every so often to see if the rates have come down on our cruise. We booked 200+ days ahead of time this time. I did that this week and was surprised when we went from Riviera deck to Empress deck. When I asked our PVP if that was probably the only "upgrade" we would receive, we are still 125+ days away, we were told always check. I'm curious whether or not it will change again...I'd be surprised since there's not much left on the inside...but time will tell.

[zqvol]

Hi everyone! We just booked through a Personal Vacation Planner within Carnival. He was awesome! Just wondering about transfering our reservation to a TA in order to get their OBC and such.

 

I've been reading about the "upgrade fairy" calling to offer upgrades (for a fee of course). Would we not be eligible for this if we give our res. to a TA?

 

Any thoughts on going the TA route? Is there a deadline that we have to follow in order to do this like within specific timeframe?

 

Thanks for any insights!!

 

Are you aware that TAs cannot give OBC worth more than $25 per cabin? I don't think that you are going to gain much by transferring your booking.

[vfb2girls]

Are you aware that TAs cannot give OBC worth more than $25 per cabin? I don't think that you are going to gain much by transferring your booking.

 

I also thought about switching over to a TA for our cruise this March but then I found out that she could not give us anything over $25 for OBC, to me this just wasn't worth the hassle. She also mentioned that there were a lot of TA's out there that were really disgusted with Carnival and were less then happy to deal with them.

[Tapi]

Think hard before transferring to a TA. You will lose control of your reservation and you won't be able call Carnival to assist you with your booking. Everything will have to be handled through the TA. The upsell fairy wont be able to call you directly...

[billnheather]

We booked our June cruise with a TA, I looked at both options and we decided to go with the TA for two reasons. 1) They gave me the same price as a PVP; they gave me a $50 obc ( not much but more than Carnival would be able to give me)

2) We are new to cruising, and it is nice to call the TA on his cell and ask a question

 

Since booking our price dropped $40, no form to fill out and fax, just one call and it was taken care of for me

 

Just my opinion but I will stick with a TA

[pbs14]

Thanks so much for all of the advice! The agent that I have gotten quotes from was offering $150 for our category 8C balcony room (4 people 2 adults, 2 small children). This was prior to me actually booking through Carnival so I'm not sure if it would change since we're already booked. I'll keep ya posted! Thanks so much!!