Good airfare rate + funny story booking the flight

My wife and I are taking a Princess Baltic cruise next summer to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. We booked the cruise before there were airfares available. On the advice of our travel agent, we booked Princess air. The idea was that would guarantee we had transportation, and we could look for a cheaper rate until our final payment was due about a month and a half before the cruise.

Anyway, we started looking lately. My wife said that she had checked Expedia and the rates were not that much less than we were paying Princess. I called Continental (one of the 2 airlines flying direct to Copenhagen from Newark) and got a price of just over $1000 including all taxes. That basically saved $300 between us. However, we would have to stay a day in Copenhagen because their ony flight was too early in the morning to safely catch after the cruise. OK, I got the price locked in for 72 hours, and was going to discuss this with my wife.

I then checked Continental's website, and they had a price of $628 plus taxes! I called back. I was told that they could not honor that over the phone, but I was advised to go back to the website and jump on that price.

So, that's what I did. Except it did not work! I kept getting an error message. It said to try again later or there was an 800 number for web technical support.

OK, I called that number. They had both our names. We were already on the plane through a reservation made by Princess! That is why the website would not book us; we were already booked. The customer service rep wanted to know if we had already paid Princess for the flight. I explained that we had paid a deposit on the cruise, and had until May to pay for or drop the flight. She unbooked us and then rebooked us at the much lower rate. It worked out to just over $700 each including all taxes. Our savings, less whatever it costs us in Copenhagen the extra day (and Copenhagen sounds like a good city to explore) was now up to about $900. (BTW, my wife said that the new lower fare was actually on Expedia the next day, yesterday. It had not been there last week.)

After getting the e-mail confirmation, I called our travel agent and cancelled the Princess air through him.

BTW, does anyone have any reasonably priced hotel recommendations for 1 day in Copenhagen?

We stayed at the Marriott, a 4 star hotel, and got it for around $125 through priceline. Great hotel. Taxi to port was about $35 for 4 of us.

That sounds like a reasonable airfare price.

I am on the Star Princess in Sept. 2007 and just booked the Copenhagen Marriott through Priceline for $100 U.S per night. This is the first time I have used Priceline so I hope all goes well.

J.