Why are only Guarantee staterooms showing availability so far away from sailing date

[lovedecruise]

Looking at booking a cruise Mar 2026.   Went to look at stateroom availability and price but they are only showing guarantee or "they choose" staterooms.  Why, this so far out, can one not choose their room number?  Any ideas?

[skynight]

All cabins or just a certain category.

[lovedecruise]

I tried several categories of Balcony, deluxe balcony and suite. All had the same outcome - guarantee or “ we choose”. Even tried going through a third party website but again, guarantee only. 

[Rick&Jeannie]

(Strictly my opinion...)

Princess seems to be "experimenting" with various marketing schemes in order to maximize bookings.  By limiting the number of "You Choose" cabins they have more flexibility as sailing date approaches to upgrade people into cabins that are more expensive (at a cost, of course) and therefore opening up more of their "bread and butter" cabins such as balconies and mini-suites.  Whether this proves to be successful in Princess' eyes remains to be seen.  (Again...just my opinion.)

[doodlefan]

3 hours ago, lovedecruise said:

I tried several categories of Balcony, deluxe balcony and suite. All had the same outcome - guarantee or “ we choose”. Even tried going through a third party website but again, guarantee only. 

I'm not sure if you are looking at March 13 2026 on the Island Princess but if you are this one is VERY popular, the first week it had tons of cabins gone.  I booked at the end of December and have to take a guarantee inside.  There were a few choices of Oceanviews and balconies left at that time I believe but never any inside rooms available to book.

 

If this is not the cruise you are looking at then I'm not sure.  I have found as the commenter above mentioned there are some weird marketing strategies at work with Princess.  No rhyme or reason why some categories are guarantee only so far out.

[SCX22]

To add, Princess seems to be staggering the release of cabins, rather than offering the real time availability as booking options.  There are some cruises that show sold months to a year in advance, but as the sailing date draws nearer, cabin suddenly become available (not just one cabin due to a cancellation but sections of cabins).

[AZaTaz]

I have found that if the cruise in question can be part of other cruises then sometimes different cabins are available on the parts. Example; I was looking at a 28 day Midnight Sun cruise in 2026 and found all aft balcony cabins guaranty only. I then looked at the two 14 day cruises that made up the 28 days and found I could select the aft balcony cabin I wanted. I found a true aft cabin on both 14 day cruises and grabbed it and booked b2b making it the 28 days I wanted. 

[Therese S.]

18 minutes ago, doodlefan said:

I'm not sure if you are looking at March 13 2026 on the Island Princess but if you are this one is VERY popular, the first week it had tons of cabins gone.  I booked at the end of December and have to take a guarantee inside.  There were a few choices of Oceanviews and balconies left at that time I believe but never any inside rooms available to book.

 

If this is not the cruise you are looking at then I'm not sure.  I have found as the commenter above mentioned there are some weird marketing strategies at work with Princess.  No rhyme or reason why some categories are guarantee only so far out.

We found the same!  Booked March 13, 2026 on the Island Princess the last week of December and there might have been maybe 3 or 4 inside cabins to choose from. I thought we made our booking soon after release of the itinerary so was surprised and disappointed at the choices available.  We also went with Guarantee Inside.  Today I counted up 11 inside cabins available, so they are releasing more.  My hopes is we are able to bid on a higher category as we get closer.   
 

I don’t like this new program of you chose your own cabin and pay  a little more.  
 

just in case a princess rep reads these posts “Bring Back the Coffee Card” 😃 

[richsea]

The limited availability of specific cabins has been prevalent on Princess pretty much since the restart. It’s very annoying!

[MJC]

8 hours ago, AZaTaz said:

I have found that if the cruise in question can be part of other cruises then sometimes different cabins are available on the parts. Example; I was looking at a 28 day Midnight Sun cruise in 2026 and found all aft balcony cabins guaranty only. I then looked at the two 14 day cruises that made up the 28 days and found I could select the aft balcony cabin I wanted. I found a true aft cabin on both 14 day cruises and grabbed it and booked b2b making it the 28 days I wanted. 

We had this same experience booking a Japan cruise and were able to get our preferred cabin only by booking it  as 2 cruises b2b.

[Rudy888]

On 6/7/2024 at 8:05 AM, skynight said:

All cabins or just a certain category.

 

On 6/7/2024 at 8:03 AM, lovedecruise said:

Looking at booking a cruise Mar 2026.   Went to look at stateroom availability and price but they are only showing guarantee or "they choose" staterooms.  Why, this so far out, can one not choose their room number?  Any ideas?

Because they can charge you to select the room you want.

[californiagirl]

We have found this as well for a Feb 2026 sailing.  What I did was do a mock booking for 3 people in the cabin.  (That way you get an idea how full the sailing actually is.)  I determine the cabin I would like, contact my PVP and ask him to book that specific cabin with no upgrade.  I have been successful so far using this technique.  
 

It seems silly that they are doing this.  If I’m willing to pay extra to choose my cabin then why not show the true availability for that category?  

[pkster]

On 6/7/2024 at 9:18 AM, SCX22 said:

To add, Princess seems to be staggering the release of cabins, rather than offering the real time availability as booking options.  There are some cruises that show sold months to a year in advance, but as the sailing date draws nearer, cabin suddenly become available (not just one cabin due to a cancellation but sections of cabins).

Yes, I've noticed the same.  It seems to me that Princess is trying to create the illusion of limited availability to motivate people to book earlier.  Admittedly this is a very limited sample size, but I've noticed with my sailings increases in availability and prices drops after the final payment dates.  This could just reflect cancellations leading up to final payment, but I think there's more to it than that.