Booked a Guarantee -- 2 weeks to sailing & no assignment yet

[CowPrincess]

The only other time I booked "Guarantee" we didn't get our assignment till we got to the ship. We got assigned a cabin that had been previously assigned to someone else. We spent the first several hours on ship getting everything for the cabin changed over to OUR names and preferences, including our dinner time. It was a pain.

I was SO hoping we'd have an assignment by now! Any words of reassurance would be appreciated :)

[bellebaby]

The only other time I booked "Guarantee" we didn't get our assignment till we got to the ship. We got assigned a cabin that had been previously assigned to someone else. We spent the first several hours on ship getting everything for the cabin changed over to OUR names and preferences, including our dinner time. It was a pain.

I was SO hoping we'd have an assignment by now! Any words of reassurance would be appreciated :)

Did you receive the cabin category you booked or an upgrade on your previous sailing?

B

[jtl513]

I was SO hoping we'd have an assignment by now! Any words of reassurance would be appreciated :)Well, MOSt assignments are made between 21 and 7 days out. Only once on our five guarantees did we have to wait until the last week, and then we got a nice upgrade.

[Carhut]

We booked a guarantee once and didn't get our room # until we boarded the ship. It was a good upgrade though, so was worth the wait. But it is a little nerve wracking wondering what kind of room you are going to end up with.

[slotl]

We did a back to back on the Rotterdam and our TA could only get us a "guarantee" room because the same room in our category was not available for both cruises.

We were assigned an FF room. It was the WORST room I have ever had. It was close to the elevators, and the housekeeping station was directly outside our door. The room stewards would congragate there, the dry cleaning racks were directly in front of our room, the room was in the corridor of the medical facilities........not bad enough yet?

Our room was DIRECTLY OVER the mechanical door for tender operations. Tender operations begin VERY EARLY in the morning. If we were at a tender port, the clacking of the chains to lift the door, the sound of the motor to lift the door, and the other activity was the "Killer".

For the second leg of our B2B, we demanded a different room. Any room...we didn't care (at that point whether it was an inside room or not) we just wanted a different room.

The day OF debarkation and embarkation we were assigned a different room further down the hallway (someone did not show up leaving the room available). HAL stewards moved all our belongings to the other room. Of course we had the same problems of tours tickets for the other folks, telephone changes, billing, etc.

If they didn't switch my room, we would have walked off the ship and canceled the second leg. That is how bad the FF room was.

So, bottom line, we no longer book guarantee rooms. You get the "leftovers" and the worst rooms available.

I hope you have better luck than we did.

[Copper10-8]

The longer the wait for a cabin assignment on a guarantee, the better the chance for an upgrade!

[CowPrincess]

We were assigned an FF room. It was the WORST room I have ever had.

OMG, I booked an "FF" Guarantee. Oy! I hope we get a better room than what you got. We're doing a budget conscious vacation, but DH is a bit claustrophobic, so I decided we needed an outside. So went FF without doing much research -- DH was yelling at me to book our vacation and pay for it so th e credit card points would count for 2007.... the credit card has an escalating scale of return, depending on how much it is used during the year. So I was a BIT pressured. Possibly not thinking clearly. OY!!!!

Did you receive the cabin category you booked or an upgrade on your previous sailing?


A slight upgrade (inside to "better" inside).

Only once on our five guarantees did we have to wait until the last week, and then we got a nice upgrade.


It was a good upgrade though

The longer the wait for a cabin assignment on a guarantee, the better the chance for an upgrade!


Thank you for those encouraging words. Here's hoping!! Though quite honestly, until I read Slotl's post, I was thrilled just to have an outside cabin. It was a case of booking the least we'd be happy with. Now I'm not so sure :(

[hammybee]

So, bottom line, we no longer book guarantee rooms. You get the "leftovers" and the worst rooms available.

I hope you have better luck than we did.

Thank you for saying this because too many people seem to book a guarantee in hopes of getting a substantially better cabin that they paid for. It's great when it happens, but often times such passengers get the cabin no one else wanted and it clearly puts a damper on their cruise experience.

[jtl513]

OMG, I booked an "FF" Guarantee. Oy! I hope we get a better room than what you got.We had an FF opposite the infirmary on the Veendam, and didn't think it was the disaster that Slotl had. The housekeeping room/office was a few doors down and around a corner, and we never had any noise/congregating problem with stewards. We did have a few loud metallic bangs below us in the night the first couple of nights, but either they stopped or we got used to them, and didn't hear them after a while! :) Our biggest complaint with the room was the constant bow-wake roar all night long. We never got used to that. :(

BTW, that was an upgrade from an HH guarantee ... and in the end we wished that we had gotten the HH. Still, it was better to have had that room than not gone on the cruise!! :D

[lorekauf]

I almost always book a guarentee and only once was I dissapointed. I got quite a good upgrade to across from the launderette. It was so noisy. While others say be prepared for the worst cabin I say that hasn't been a huge issue for me. I like to cruise and to able to afford it I book at the bottom of the ship. Of course I would like the buy the best room on the ship but that isn't in the cards for me.

To the OP I'm sure you will be happy with what you get. Let us know when you find out. I hope you find out sooner then I did on my Maasdam Apr.4/08 cruise. I found out 3 days before and I did get a pretty nice upgrade.

[Sea Island Lady]

The only other time I booked "Guarantee" we didn't get our assignment till we got to the ship. We got assigned a cabin that had been previously assigned to someone else. We spent the first several hours on ship getting everything for the cabin changed over to OUR names and preferences, including our dinner time. It was a pain.

I was SO hoping we'd have an assignment by now! Any words of reassurance would be appreciated :)
We once booked a Guarantee on RCCL, because it was last minute (2 weeks prior) and no other rooms were available, except an Inside and very expensive suites. About one week prior, we received an upgrade to an Oceanview. :)

When we arrived at our room, the room stewardess referred to us as other passengers. The beds were wrong, etc.., but we finally got it straight. I was surprised since we had been assigned a week earlier.

[world~citizen]

Actually twice we didn't, but were upgraded anyway.

What we do is book the lowest category we would be happy with, like an outside cabin with unobstructed view and leave it to the gods.

We have never been unhappy (so far). :)

We once waited until the day of the cruise for cabin assignment and as it happened, got a great one.

On balance, I doubt you have much to worry about.

[satchiesmom]

I wouldn't worry either. We are leaving day after tomorrow and haven't gotten our cabin assignment yet. I've never booked a guarantee before, and while it would be wonderful to get an upgrade, a guarantee in any category gets you just that - a cabin in that category. I just hope we don't have the same experience slotl did. We booked late in the game, and a guarantee was all they had. I'm looking forward to seeing where we'll be, most of the time I like surprises.:)

Susan

[CowPrincess]

I'm looking forward to seeing where we'll be, most of the time I like surprises.

I like your attitude :)

What we do is book the lowest category we would be happy with, like an outside cabin with unobstructed view and leave it to the gods.


That's what we did -- slotl's review is of the category that I booked, so I'm a bit worried. I thought I was goin' BIG-TIME getting an unobstructed oceanview, y'know? Ah well, we'll see how it goes!!!!