guarantee cabin question

[cleadon cruisers]

Hello to everyone, haven't been on this site for a number of years, but remembered how helpful everyone out there can be.

My DH and I have been trying to book Viking's "In The Wake Of The Vikings", but were told by Viking that it's a sell out. However, we have been offered a "guarantee" cabin DV 3. Not sure how that works, but we've been told we won't know which cabin until we're onboard. If none are available we'll be offered a free upgrade, and this is on a cruise that is apparently sold out! We've cruised for a number of years, on different cruise lines, including Viking, but have never come across this situation before. I'm very reluctant to book, not knowing where we'll end up on the ship. Has anyone out there been in this situation with Viking?. Any help at all will be greatly appreciated.

[ducklite]

If the ship is indeed sold out, they are taking the chance that there will be cancellations.  If there are none, you'll be denied boarding--and that might not happen until you show up at the pier.  Unless I was willing to do a land based trip that would work with my arrival and departure cities and fund that until my refund arrived, I'd pass on it. 

 

That said, there are some itineraries that I might roll the dice with--such as Athens to Athens or Rome (Civ) to Venice where it's really easy to just convert to a land based and reap the reward of a full discount and 100% FCC.  The one you are looking at is not one of those.

[CruiserBruce]

If you are talking the August 27th 2020 sailing, the Viking website doesn't list it as a sell out.

 

Guarantee bookings are a marketing tool used by most cruise lines, for a huge number of reasons. The most important thing is to book your guarantee at the minimum level you will be happy. There is no way to predict to otherwise determine what cabin level you will end up in...it all depends on sales for that sailing, and those can't be realistically compared to sales for any oher cruise, or that same route in the past. You could end up in the cabin level you book into...most likely in the cabin type (balcony, or inside, or outside, for example, or end up with a nice upgrade..

[cleadon cruisers]

Thank you for such quick replies. We know the website does indeed show a couple of cabins, DV3 and DV4 still available, but in a phone call to Viking today we were told that they don't have cabins available! Can't think of a worse scenario than being denied boarding,  so I think we're with you ducklite, it's too big a chance to take. There's a remote possibility it may work out and we get an upgrade but we'd spend between now and August worrying about it.

Thank you both, I knew we could rely on this site for advice.

[Squawkman]

6 hours ago, ducklite said:

If the ship is indeed sold out, they are taking the chance that there will be cancellations.  If there are none, you'll be denied boarding--and that might not happen until you show up at the pier.

I don’t know who told you that. A GTY is just that - guaranteed. I would check with Viking- don’t take my word for it. I had a GTY last year that wound up as an upgrade, and have one for this March. Still waiting for a cabin number, but I have faith it will be an upgrade. I always ask if GTY is available when I book.

[Rosethorn40]

5 hours ago, cleadon cruisers said:

Thank you for such quick replies. We know the website does indeed show a couple of cabins, DV3 and DV4 still available, but in a phone call to Viking today we were told that they don't have cabins available! Can't think of a worse scenario than being denied boarding,  so I think we're with you ducklite, it's too big a chance to take. There's a remote possibility it may work out and we get an upgrade but we'd spend between now and August worrying about it.

Thank you both, I knew we could rely on this site for advice.

You will NOT be denied boarding. There will be a cabin for you, but you may not know the cabin number until you board. They and all the other cruise lines have models that, for the most part, accurately predict how many cruisers will cancel before the sail date. If the model is wrong, and it's getting close to the sail date, they will offer Move Over Offers to booked passengers. It's voluntary, but people do take them because they can be very good.

 

We were supposed to go on the Iberian Explorer this past January. In December, we got an email telling us that the cruise was overbooked (we had booked a year in advance, and had our cabin), and asked if we would consider their move over offer. The offer was very good and we accepted it. Someone that had booked a GYT cabin got ours, and we sail in about 72 days.

 

[ducklite]

36 minutes ago, Squawkman said:

I don’t know who told you that. A GTY is just that - guaranteed. I would check with Viking- don’t take my word for it. I had a GTY last year that wound up as an upgrade, and have one for this March. Still waiting for a cabin number, but I have faith it will be an upgrade. I always ask if GTY is available when I book.

 

The problem isn't with the GTY, it's with the ship being sold out.  If in fact it is and they are overselling, the people without an assigned cabin will be the ones to be bumped.

[ducklite]

2 minutes ago, Rosethorn40 said:

You will NOT be denied boarding. There will be a cabin for you, but you may not know the cabin number until you board. They and all the other cruise lines have models that, for the most part, accurately predict how many cruisers will cancel before the sail date. If the model is wrong, and it's getting close to the sail date, they will offer Move Over Offers to booked passengers. It's voluntary, but people do take them because they can be very good.

 

We were supposed to go on the Iberian Explorer this past January. In December, we got an email telling us that the cruise was overbooked (we had booked a year in advance, and had our cabin), and asked if we would consider their move over offer. The offer was very good and we accepted it. Someone that had booked a GYT cabin got ours, and we sail in about 72 days.

 

And there have also been situations where the ship was oversold and people didn't want to take the offers.  Those with GTY cabins were the ones "bumped."  Is that a chance you want to take?  Maybe with a Caribbean cruise where you can just stay land based at a nice resort in Florida, but on a cruise that starts in Europe and ends in Canada I wouldn't take that chance.

[Rosethorn40]

3 minutes ago, ducklite said:

And there have also been situations where the ship was oversold and people didn't want to take the offers.  Those with GTY cabins were the ones "bumped."  Is that a chance you want to take?  Maybe with a Caribbean cruise where you can just stay land based at a nice resort in Florida, but on a cruise that starts in Europe and ends in Canada I wouldn't take that chance.

They keep making the offers better and better until someone takes them. I've had many a GTY cabin and have never been denied boarding, and I have received 3 move over offers; 2 from Princess (I turned them down) and one Viking (accepted, as it was very good). I have never heard of anyone getting to the pier and there was no cabin because the cruise was oversold. I have read of some mindblowing move over offers though. The cruise lines will accept some heavy losses to avoid the PR disaster of a customer standing forlornly on the pier, their luggage around then, and the ship sailing off without them because they were bumped.

 

If it ever happened, all the boards on Cruise Critic would light up and no one would ever booked a GYT cabin again. Guarantee means exactly that. You are guaranteed a cabin of at least a certain category. 

[Rosethorn40]

https://www.cruisecritic.com/articles.cfm?ID=340#the-ship-has-been-overbooked

 

I did find this article originally on Cruise Critic in 2018 about being "bumped"

 

Some common reasons are the ship booked by a charter (but usually in those cases you find out months in advance, not day if), redeployments of ships, or cancelled sailings for various reasons. And yes, over booked.

 

They had one story in which a lady received a call or email 2 days before she was to sail that she was being bumped due to the cruise being over sold. There is a link to the thread from 2018 that is a very interesting read. She was rightly angry when she wrote her Original Post, and 11 pages of posts later she was on the ship (This was with Azamara Cruises). Originally they were not offering her any compensation for what they put her through, later she stated she received $250 OBC, and later the CEO of Azamara wrote that she would receive a full refund, as well as the OBC.

 

There were some comments that apparently Royal Caribbean/Celebrity have done this a couple of times. 

 

However, at this time I don't think Viking would just bump someone against their will. To ensure they would have cabins on the Iberian Explorer the move over offer was:

 

We were going on an 8 day cruise in a deluxe Veranda 

We are now going on a 15 day cruise in a Penthouse Veranda

 

We got nearly 50% of our cruise fare back

 

We already had Viking Air, they took care of rebooking

 

We kept our 2 day pre cruise extension in Madrid.

But read the Cruise Critic story in full, and read the thread about the person that was almost bumped from an Azamara cruise. After that you will have some facts from experts, and not just opinions from people it's never happened to, and you can make an informed decision then.

 

 

 

[Peregrina651]

53 minutes ago, Rosethorn40 said:

There will be a cabin for you, but you may not know the cabin number until you board. They and all the other cruise lines have models that, for the most part, accurately predict how many cruisers will cancel before the sail date.

 

We were to have sailed with Rosethorn before they took Viking up on the offer to Move Over (we did not get their V cabin; we actually ended up in a DV4 as did one other on our roll call and a third ended up in a DV1). We received our cabin assignments before we left home.

 

I booked V GTY just 4 months before sailing and as I said we ended up in DV4 territory, which is actually my category of choice. I checked in every now and then to see if the ship was sold out and noted that in that 4 month period, it went from limited availability to sold out and then back to limited availability a couple of times before we sailed.  Wake of the Vikings isn't sailing until the fall and a lot is going to happen between now and then. There were be a flutter of cancellations as the 120 day mark (when cancellation penalties kick in). Then you have to consider that the Viking demographic is an older demographic and prone to last minute medical surprises.

 

This was the second time we have booked a GTY; the first time we booked a New Years Eve cruise less than 30 days before sailing. We ended up in a DV4 --and they were asking people to Move Over on this sailing as well.  This is not the last time I will book GTY.

 

GTY is a guaranteed cabin not a waiting list.

 

Personally to OP, if Viking is offering you a GTY for Wake of the Vikings, I say jump on it!  The odds are in your favor at this point. The only bad cabins on the ship are the few that are over the Star Theater, the few that are near the disco (all on Deck 3 and all V cabins except the two forward Explorer Suites) and some mixed reviews on some of the cabins on Deck 6 beneath the Aquavit Terrace (some people love them and others find them noisy). Booking this far in advance, it is possible that you will be assigned a cabin sooner rather than later --and once you have a cabin number, they are not going to take it back.

 

 

1 hour ago, Rosethorn40 said:

we sail in about 72 days.

 

Bon Voyage. We had a fabulous time and I hope you will, too. I did a live thread in January and posted some helpful tips for the ports we visited (as in don't make the mistakes we made). Live: Iberian Explorer Jan 3 - 10

 

 

1 hour ago, ducklite said:

but on a cruise that starts in Europe and ends in Canada I wouldn't take that chance.

 

OP is in the UK, so really not an issue.

 

 

[cleadon cruisers]

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to reply. It’s always extremely helpful to read of people who have had a “guarantee” booking. Since my original post, Viking has today changed their pricing site. It now just shows a a number to ring for more information. Gone are the cabin details and pricing, including those DV3 and DV4 cabins that weren’t available in the beginning. Perhaps someone at Viking has been following this this thread!.

As of now, we’ve decided to “ sleep on it” and give Viking another call tomorrow to see if the previous information we were given is still correct. So, again, many thanks for all your replies.

[ropomo]

We have only booked GTY cabins on Viking and have never had any issues.  50% of the time, we have been upgraded, although never above the basic category we booked (e.g. PV3 to PV1). Never disappointed and always knew our cabin number before leaving the house.

[photomom5]

We did a GTY and ended up with a pretty nice upgrade. The cruise ended up being sold out and others did receive move over offers. No one was left on the dock!