Rearranging cabin assignments at checkin?

[RGBFamily]

This is an easy fix. We often travel as a family of 8 (4 kids) in 2 or 3 rooms.  Check in as per normal.   Take the room key to whatever room your name is assigned to.  Once on board, put your belongings in the room you are sleeping in. 

 

At some point the first day go to the guest services and ask for spare cards to the rooms.  The people who have their name on the "wrong" rooms will now have two cards.  Use the one with your name to get off the ship and the other to get into your cabin.  Your room charges will be mixed up.  I know I just sort it out later as my in laws don't charge many things.

[AncientWanderer]

We booked our son and daughter in a stateroom together on a Princess cruise, and they decided they couldn't room together, so son moved in with us on the sleeper sofa.  Princess wouldn't give us an extra entry card for him.  It was a hassle.  We had to let him in and out of our stateroom all of the time.  Now I'm hearing that extra room entry cards can be issued, and I'm wondering if we should have been more forceful in our request.

 

I guess my point is, if one person tells you "No," try again with someone else.

[RMLincoln]

We had a good experience with HAL with this type of thing.  DH and I were booking 2 rooms, one for us and one for my brother and SIL.  The TA listed DH and brother in one room, myself and SIL in the other room to take advantage of past passenger rate which we were eligible for but not brother and SIL.  Once on board we ALL went to guest services TOGETHER; they sorted out our accounts to the rooms we were sleeping in and issued us all new cards.  They were very good about it and said it happens all the time, no worries.  But it was all even-steven with 2 couples, one couple per room.  We did not have any minors to be concerned about, and no splitting up 4 into a 3-some and a solo which would be fared very differently.  Hope it all works out for you.  m--

[Moriah]

On 5/21/2019 at 12:21 PM, Brewer2811 said:

My father-in-law booked a cruise for the whole family (10 of us) in three cabins (2 balcony cabins for his daughters' families and an oceanview for him and his wife). In order to take advantage of his and his wife's Mariner Club status and get a good price on the balcony cabins, he put himself in one balcony with three others, his wife in the other balcony with three others, and the last two of us in the oceanview. Obviously that means that the names on the cabins are not who is really going to stay in them. Is it going to be a problem if we ask at check-in to rearrange the cabin assignments so the families are together, or is there a better way to handle this?

 

Oh boy, you could be asking for some sticky complications.  Everyone, when leaving the ship, has to have their own card... and that's just one thing.  It's also complicated in case of emergency and lifeboat manning (sorry, probably won't happen, but my mind jumps to worst case)...

One thing I can offer is that instead of switching cards, you can ask the front desk for ADDITIONAL keys for each of the cabins, so that family members are free to enter "one another's" cabins. These cards are "key only" - they have no credit card info or anything else on them.  I did this when I was in a Neptune Suite and wanted my daughter and nephew to be able to get in and out of the suite when I was not there. The concierge gave them "key cards" as I described. That way everyone still carries their own actual key card to their assigned room, but has access to the other room.  Hope this helps.

[Brewer2811]

Post-Cruise Update:

 

Turns out the rearranging of cabins wasn't a problem at all. We went to guest services as soon as we got on the ship (which was quite busy, but not unbearable - we waited in line about 15 minutes). We told them who we wanted in which cabin and they took care of it, no questions asked.

 

The issue I hadn't thought of is that all of the excursion tickets were delivered to the originally assigned cabins and all of the post-cruise documents/boarding passes/room keys/etc (this was a cruisetour) were organized per the original cabin assignments. So every time we got our packets for the next leg of the trip we had to open everything and trade passes/room keys around. Not a big deal but still something to note.

[puppycanducruise]

Thanks for the update.

Glad it worked out for you.

[kazu]

1 hour ago, Brewer2811 said:

Post-Cruise Update:

 

Turns out the rearranging of cabins wasn't a problem at all. We went to guest services as soon as we got on the ship (which was quite busy, but not unbearable - we waited in line about 15 minutes). We told them who we wanted in which cabin and they took care of it, no questions asked.

 

The issue I hadn't thought of is that all of the excursion tickets were delivered to the originally assigned cabins and all of the post-cruise documents/boarding passes/room keys/etc (this was a cruisetour) were organized per the original cabin assignments. So every time we got our packets for the next leg of the trip we had to open everything and trade passes/room keys around. Not a big deal but still something to note.

 

Good to hear.  Glad it worked for you.