Booking thru cruiseline or on our own? Logistics question, too

[nzdisneymom]

We're sailing with Disney in the Med. in July 2007, leaving from Barcelona. We have the option of doing the air / hotel pre-cruise through DCL including transfers. Our TA said if we book it through DCL, we could cancel the air and hotel portion up to 90 days out without penalty.

 

My question is this -- should we go ahead and do that and be set with something... and then shop around once flights are able to be booked for July 2007 (I saw that they only go out thru mid-March at this point).

 

We're a family of 4, not experienced with international travel, and we usually travel by car in the US... I want to save $ if I can book it myself but then I think about the whole getting from the airport to the hotel to the port thing (and back) without knowing anything about Barcelona - so my first thought is take the easier way and let the cruise line just take care of it all -- but we're already spending so much that I would hate to end up paying so much more for airfare, etc. than if we did it on our own.

 

So I guess I'm looking for opinions and experiences about doing it thru a cruise line vs. doing it on your own. I've been reading the various threads related to Barcelona but I'm so overwhelmed at this point....

 

Has anyone booked through their cruiseline and then cancelled? Was it a problem to do it? Did you have your air and hotel booked yourself before you cancelled?

 

Thanks in advance.

[nparmelee]

Check with the cruiseline, but most let you cancel the cruise air up until final payment for the cruise is due. We booked the cruise air with our cruise and didn't cancel it until we had our flights booked that we were happy with, which happened to be before final payment was due.

[cruisintwinsmom]

When we went to Barcelona in 2004, we chose to use the cruiseline (Celebrity) to book air and pre-hotel. There were also 4 of us, 2 adults and 2 teens. We dit it because it was our first international trip and didn't want to worry with extra details. It was nice that they had a van to pick us up at the airport to take us to the hotel and from the hotel to the ship. I couldn't find air any cheaper myself, however could have gotten the hotel for less. This summer I got the hotel myself, but used their airfare because the flights I wanted were cheaper through the cruiseline (not much). Will lose the transfer from plane to hotel, but the savings for the rooms was significant.

 

Happy Sailing!

[nzdisneymom]

Thanks for the replies. I think we'll go ahead and add the air and hotel and transfers now, and then that's taken care of for now, knowing that I can always change it later if I need to. I was pricing things out for this summer travel to Barcelona and it's about the same airfare-wise that DCL would charge.

 

When you book air thru the cruiseline, when do they give you your itinerary?

[cruisintwinsmom]

When you book air thru the cruiseline, when do they give you your itinerary?

 

The first time to BCN we didn't get our itinerary until we got our documents. This time we did custom air to AMS and asked for specific flights. They did confirm our flights and my TA has already assigned our seats. There was not a charge to do custom air since we were Captain Club members (previous cruisers); however, since the airlines charged more for the tickets we did have an upcharge of $44/ticket, which was worth it to me to have a non-stop flight.

 

Happy Sailing!

[nzdisneymom]

Thanks for the reply. Looks like if we go through the cruiseline (which we've set up to do at this point), we'll have a red-eye from Atlanta and arrive sometime in the morning on Tuesday before sailing on Wednesday.