Will ship sail full?

[travelplus]

I have been checking prices on the Splendour Of The Seas from Santos Brazil-Barcelona and as of today 30 days before sailing all categories are available and the prices have stayed the same for the categories.

 

What are the chances of this cruise not sailing full due to the location of the departure point for the cruise.It would be next to impossible to find last minute airfares to such an exotic destination.

 

Also when do they start offering upgrades? Is there more of a chance to get an upgrade/upsell offer if the ship is not full vs if the ship is N/A all across the categories?

 

Thanks

[ehfl]

Ships sail at close to capacity. Prices can change up until the last day for purchase.

[cruzsnooze]

The air will not be bad if you use RCL's Choice air. It seems many ships have enticing deals after final payment to fill the vacant cabins.

[S.A.M.J.R.]

I have been checking prices on the Splendour Of The Seas from Santos Brazil-Barcelona and as of today 30 days before sailing all categories are available and the prices have stayed the same for the categories.

 

What are the chances of this cruise not sailing full due to the location of the departure point for the cruise.It would be next to impossible to find last minute airfares to such an exotic destination.

 

Also when do they start offering upgrades? Is there more of a chance to get an upgrade/upsell offer if the ship is not full vs if the ship is N/A all across the categories?

 

Thanks

If the ship is showing N/A across all categories, the chance of an upgrade would be 0.0%. There's no where to upgrade you to. So yes, there would be more of a chance of an upgrade if there are rooms available. That still doesn't mean it will happen though.

[FLACRUISER99]

If the ship is showing N/A across all categories, the chance of an upgrade would be 0.0%. There's no where to upgrade you to. So yes, there would be more of a chance of an upgrade if there are rooms available. That still doesn't mean it will happen though.

Not True, many D+ folks got upgraded on the 4/18 Rhapsody Hawaii to Vancouver in the last few weeks and it has been showing NA in all categories since final payment date.

[aubreyc1988]

The air will not be bad if you use RCL's Choice air. It seems many ships have enticing deals after final payment to fill the vacant cabins.

 

really? I always thought that choiceair would have ridiculous fare prices so close to sail date!

[PSCruiser]

Despite the myth that ships sail partially full, the cruise lines will pretty much do whatever it takes to put people in cabins.

As an example, the 14N TA on Brilliance next month is now base priced at $359 for an outside.

Last week insides were available at the same rate, with 3rd and 4th guest free. It worked out to $19.50 per person, per day, plus gratuities.

[robtulipe]

really? I always thought that choiceair would have ridiculous fare prices so close to sail date!

We booked our next month's Serenade TA late last month and got one way Barcelona to Buffalo United flight, K tickets, for $409 each using RC Choice Air. We had a credit due us on Southwest so used them to get down to our embarkation port, New Orleans for about $215 each minus our credit so our close to sailing flights cost was $624 each. Best price I could find with online search engines for flight back from Barcelona was just under one grand each and that was using flexibility of up to three after our cruise.;)

[robtulipe]

Despite the myth that ships sail partially full, the cruise lines will pretty much do whatever it takes to put people in cabins.

As an example, the 14N TA on Brilliance next month is now base priced at $359 for an outside.

Last week insides were available at the same rate, with 3rd and 4th guest free. It worked out to $19.50 per person, per day, plus gratuities.

Lots of TA go out partially full. Princess one we did two years ago was only 2/3 full so two decks were not used and those in those cabins, insides and most OV cabins, got upgraded. We got a great upgrade. Same has happened on our other TA cruises we've done in spite of extremely low price offerings.

We and our friends have great deals for our Serenade Ta next month. They have an Cat, G deck 4 OV for less than $20/day each and used a FCC so have $200 OBC from RCI. We splurged and have a deck 7 large balcony E1 for $35/day each and also have $200 OBC for doing an onboard booking. Last weekend the price for these on this cruise even went lower and even at that pricing there still is a fair amount of availability left.

Also OP's TA cruise leaves from Brazil so on top of North Americans having two long overseas flights aren't there VISA and vaccination, yellow fever, needs.

I know we were once considering a cruise to Brazil that went up the Amazon but the above stopped those plans quickly.

Edited March 26, 2014 by robtulipe

[PSCruiser]

Lots of TA go out partially full. Princess one we did two years ago was only 2/3 full so two decks were not used and those in those cabins, insides and most OV cabins, got upgraded. We got a great upgrade. Same has happened on our other TA cruises we've done in spite of extremely low price offerings.

We and our friends have great deals for our Serenade Ta next month. They have an Cat, G deck 4 OV for less than $20/day each and used a FCC so have $200 OBC from RCI. We splurged and have a deck 7 large balcony E1 for $35/day each and also have $200 OBC for doing an onboard booking. Last weekend the price for these on this cruise even went lower and even at that pricing there still is a fair amount of availability left.

Also OP's TA cruise leaves from Brazil so on top of North Americans having two long overseas flights aren't there VISA and vaccination, yellow fever, needs.

I know we were once considering a cruise to Brazil that went up the Amazon but the above stopped those plans quickly.

 

I don't have any first-hand knowledge of TAs leaving form Brazil, and also can't do fact checking on that Princess cruise, but we, and our frequent cruising partners have approx. 25 TAs among us and have yet to see the partially full cruise.

Your example of the Serenade TA supports my premise that price drops are used to fill the cabins.

A quick check of the (unnamed) website that shows all available cabins is showing about 40 empty cabins right now. This is out of 1055 cabins, so occupancy now is 96%, with several weeks remaining.

[impatientlywaiting]

The TA we're on (4/16/14, Legend, Ft. Lauderdale to Copenhagen) has been completely full for several weeks now. The run before that from San Diego thru the Panama Canal to Ft. Lauderdale is also completely full. I don't know why some itineraries sell out and others don't.

[aubreyc1988]

We booked our next month's Serenade TA late last month and got one way Barcelona to Buffalo United flight, K tickets, for $409 each using RC Choice Air. We had a credit due us on Southwest so used them to get down to our embarkation port, New Orleans for about $215 each minus our credit so our close to sailing flights cost was $624 each. Best price I could find with online search engines for flight back from Barcelona was just under one grand each and that was using flexibility of up to three after our cruise.;)

 

 

thats amazing, will have to look into that!!!

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[robtulipe]

I don't have any first-hand knowledge of TAs leaving form Brazil, and also can't do fact checking on that Princess cruise, but we, and our frequent cruising partners have approx. 25 TAs among us and have yet to see the partially full cruise.

Your example of the Serenade TA supports my premise that price drops are used to fill the cabins.

A quick check of the (unnamed) website that shows all available cabins is showing about 40 empty cabins right now. This is out of 1055 cabins, so occupancy now is 96%, with several weeks remaining.

Just like I can't check out those 25 TA you and your friends have done you'll have to accept that was the situation on the April 2012 Caribbean Princess TA we did. It was well discussed on our roll call how poorly this sailing was selling in spite of the great pricing being offered and how a few weeks prior all who had cabins on the Plaza deck 5 and Emerald deck 8 were upgraded to higher categories on other decks as those were the two decks that were not used on that crossing. We did the subsequent British Isles cruise and our new cabin, an OV on the Plaza deck 5 was available to us first thing embarkation morning for our second cruise because of this but we ended up being upgraded to an Caribe deck 10 balcony that day because of a flood in that OV.

In fact this TA went from San Juan to Southampton with the first port being NYC. Several months prior Princess changed the itinerary options and offered a SJ to NYC 4 nights and a NYC to Southampton 11 nights cruise option. We were told onboard that about two thousand got on in SJ, one thousand got off in NYC and another thousand got on there for the crossing to the UK. This was 2/3 of the ship's 3080 passenger capacity in spite of all Princess did to fill their ship.

We had done other repositioning cruises where the ships weren't anywhere near capacity. One that comes to mind is our Radiance 15 night cruise from Valparaiso, Chile to San Diego in April/May 2009 on which we got a D1 for $499 booked as an E1 gty. Insides were $100 less. It wasn't full even at these prices and this cruise offered a fantastic itinerary along the coasts of South, Central and North America with not many sea days.

I did state there was fair availability for our Serenade TA next month in spite of last weekend offer of a $409 per person fare with a $225 per cabin saving certificate for a select G OV, not a guarantee so the net fare was $297 for this 16 night cruise which, IMO, offers a nice itinerary with its southern route crossing from St, Maarten to Tenerife.

FYI currently there are 49 cabins currently showing available on that unnameable website for our next month Serenade cruise. IMO that's a fair number but your opinion may not agree with mine.:D

Edited March 27, 2014 by robtulipe

[hellsop]

Long trips are sometimes challenging to arrange for people that are still working for a living. It doesn't surprise me that things much longer than a week sell less briskly.