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Cruise Planner: Your Habits??


CJS2766

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Curious to see what everyone's habits are when it comes to cruise planner purchases? Do you buy the 1st day it's available for your cruise regardless of the price or do you "hopefully" wait for the next holiday sale?? Of course I know that you can buy and cancel and re buy, but that at times seems annoying as you are potentially tying up funds on your credit card until that is all sorted out.

Anyway, what are your habits when cruise planner items go live for your upcoming cruise???

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10 minutes ago, CJS2766 said:

Curious to see what everyone's habits are when it comes to cruise planner purchases? Do you buy the 1st day it's available for your cruise regardless of the price or do you "hopefully" wait for the next holiday sale?? Of course I know that you can buy and cancel and re buy, but that at times seems annoying as you are potentially tying up funds on your credit card until that is all sorted out.

Anyway, what are your habits when cruise planner items go live for your upcoming cruise???

I am a planner and have cruises booked way out.  I typically book at the first sale that comes up after the cruise planner opens for bookings.  

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20 minutes ago, CJS2766 said:

Curious to see what everyone's habits are when it comes to cruise planner purchases? Do you buy the 1st day it's available for your cruise regardless of the price or do you "hopefully" wait for the next holiday sale?? Of course I know that you can buy and cancel and re buy, but that at times seems annoying as you are potentially tying up funds on your credit card until that is all sorted out.

Anyway, what are your habits when cruise planner items go live for your upcoming cruise???

I don't buy anything until my wife and I decide what we want to do.  For us, it is mostly excursions.  We don't get WIFI unless our son is traveling, and we use Diamond vouchers instead of a beverage package.  Now if I can talk my wife into an excursion and the price is reasonable (e.g, $50 for half day, $100 for full day), then I will book it.  I always keep in mind there may be a Black Friday Sale near Thanksgiving.   We have repriced excursions a couple of times when prices dropped, but seldom save more than $5-$10 per person.  The Coffee Card is usually a fixed price that never changes, so I will order that when I am ready.

So sometimes there is a reasonable pre-cruise discount when CP is first loaded, and we pull the trigger.  But only if we are clear on what we want to do.

Generally, by 6 months out we are locked into our desired purchases.

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If there's something we know we want, I book it as soon as I see a price I can live with.  Then I do check for repricing.  I booked a cabana on PDCC, and rebooked during Black Friday sale to save a ton.  Drink package, I booked when Matt tweeted an alert about a sale last year, and I've never seen it that low again. If it's something we might want, I often book that too, and just have it in the back of my mind to cancel if it doesn't fit the budget.  Never thought about it tying up funds.  Either we keep the thing we booked, which just means we spread out the spending, or we cancel, and it's like finding money in a jacket pocket.

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Like @fa-li, I book as soon as I see a price that is reasonable; if the price goes down, great.  If not, I'm already "in".  That is becoming harder and harder as the prices for the things I normally buy (DBP+Voom, UDP) are soaring.  The "sales" have little impact, truthfully as even those are just too much for me (lately).  I guess we'll see how things go.  I have not purchased a DBP for ANY of my 2023 sailings and only a couple of UDP.  

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1. My family and I decide ahead of time which plans we want.

2. Prior to "sales," we do some math and figure out the break even points for each package based upon real world prices.

3. We then research past cruisings and what other people bought.  Then we establish a base line price for the lowest we see.

4. Once a "sale" goes live, we prioritize an buy the big ticket items that are likely to sell out first (ie: shore excursions and unlimited dining plan).  I have NEVER seen the alcohol packages sell out, so that is nearly last on my list.

5. We only make purchases with cash so as to not tie up credit card funds with refunds and such.

6.  THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART....after all of the above....we just say "'F' IT" and just buy everything we can. 😁

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Really it depends on what I'm getting.

We only do the soda drink package and that pretty on bigger sales will dip down about $2 per day so we wait for that but know we're getting it.

For excursions, we kinda see what's what. If there's something we absolutely know we are going to want, book it as soon as we can so long as it's within our budget for that event. But ones we're just kinda looking at...we wait til it gets closer less because of potential sales and more because we don't want to have more things paid for than we'll actually use. So we'll scroll through, save things, keep an eye on costs and quantity and kinda go with the flow.

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If we want something (anything) we make the purchase the first time we consider the price "reasonable." Then we check the available prices frequently. If a price goes lower, we make the switch. If not, we were already comfortable with what we paid.

Some purchases remain at the original price. Others we have cancelled and repurchased as many as five times (the reduction in price has to be "worth the effort").

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Typically, we only buy the Refreshment Package in the cruise planner and book it shortly after we book the cruise and then reprice as needed.

 

  We've done limited excursions due to COVID restrictions in places and we did the WhitePass train in Alaska, but we are a "wander the port" type of cruiser and explore on our own.  We're also those "weird ones" that don't eat anything off the ship in most places and are normally back on the ship within about 4 hours of getting off and always back on the ship at least 2 hours before "time".  We like to get ready for dinner and then watch the "cruise runners" in some of the ports that tend to sell cheap libations 🙂 

 

When we cruise, our favorite things is not having cell service / internet so we can actually relax and people from home can't talk to us 🙂

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I get the DBP and check constantly for pricing. I have to call when getting it as my wife cannot drink so it makes it a bit more difficult to reprice. Just checked today for my Jan 2023 Odyssey cruise and the DBP is 98$ ouch. At that rate i'll have to consider using my diamond vouchers and going out of pocket for some extras. I'm hoping black Friday will be better.

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Other than my very first cruise, which was on Brand X, I really haven't had any excursion desires.  That's not to say that I haven't gone on excursions or won't, I do travel with other people that have their desires and I've, for the most part, enjoyed the excursions that I've gone on.  I really don't care if I get off of the ship, the ship is my experience.  My first cruise was a very pointed one, I wanted to see the Panama Canal.  My grandfather was a Canadian engineer on the building of the canal.  I just wanted to see some of his handywork.  No, I have no idea exactly what was is handywork.  So, I took an excursion that took us from the Colon side to the Panama City side and then took a tour boat through a couple of the locks.  It was great and at the same time, I got very emotional.  My grandfather had a hard time while there for several years.  But, that's a story for another time.  

If a port of call is in a country that I haven't been to before, I'll get off and walk the shopping plaza and get right back on.  

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We usually just get the refreshment package so we watch for the sales and reprice if it goes cheaper.  As far as excursions go, if we haven't been there then we will take an excursion (unless there is nothing that we like).  If we have been there before then most times we just walk around the port.  We did purchase the Key for the first time for our July and August cruises but we waited until it as on sale before so.  We don't do the UDP as we have always enjoyed the main dining (so far anyway). We did purchase the photo package for our July cruise so we can do family pictures but do not do it every time.  We have done one interior (our first cruise), then ocean view twice, after that we started booking balconies since.  Never have done Royal Up and not sure that we ever would.  I would rather use that money for other things (upgraded flights, excursions, or deposits on more cruises).

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1 hour ago, KevinJ said:

I get the DBP and check constantly for pricing. I have to call when getting it as my wife cannot drink so it makes it a bit more difficult to reprice. Just checked today for my Jan 2023 Odyssey cruise and the DBP is 98$ ouch. At that rate i'll have to consider using my diamond vouchers and going out of pocket for some extras. I'm hoping black Friday will be better.

Since your wife can't drink, you can use her vouchers as well. The specialty coffee and fresh-squeezed orange juice she would use them on are less expensive than the libations.

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I book things as they become available, then cancel and buy again if the lower in price.

As far as the Deluxe Drinks package goes, it hasn't gone to a point for me that doesn't make financial sense. I use it for everything I can, as much as I can. 20 years ago, and my wife still reminds me of the $800+ dollar bill we had when we didn't get a package.

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My habit is right in line with many of the above answers.  Whether it will be the drink or refreshment package…I will purchase sooner than later and continue to check for lower prices.  Not really big on excursions other than perhaps a cabana on Coco Cay and typically that pricing remains pretty steady, but still booking earlier is best.

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