rockysquirrel

The price might go down, it might stay the same, or it might go up. And that is simple wisdom from one who has (and still does) often book last minute cruises (on multiple lines). An even bigger issue for many folks is the air fares which often go up (big time) for last minute flyers.

 

Hank

Hi Hank,

Thank you for the quick reply.

We agree that air goes up for last minute flyers but that is not an issue in our situation.

As you mentioned and is obvious, the cruise pricing could do one of three things, go down, go up or stay the same. From your experience booking HAL last minute, what have you experienced?

We are looking at booking the Amsterdam with a sail date of 11/17/2016 - 17 night Hawaii.

There is still be a good number of available cabins throughout all of the categories. Since we have always sailed the RCCL family of lines, originally RCI and most recently Celebrity and Azamara, we have no experience with HAL / CCL in general.

I think some factors that are affecting the sailing not being sold out are:

1. Longer duration (17 nights)

2. Being away over Thanksgiving

3. Scheduled to be in Oahu on Thanksgiving day so the Pearl Harbor historic sites will be CLOSED

Although nobody has a crystal ball, can anyone with experience with HAL let us know anything about what typically happens with pricing as we approach 30 days to sail?

Thanks in advance for you thoughts.

Well after looking at taking advantage of the Valentine's promotion I attempted to do an online courtesy hold only to find out that there is no such option anymore. You either ante up an $1100 deposit which of course is not fully refundable if we cancel or you have to call in to get a courtesy hold.

Then I hunt around for the login to My Azamara and finally trip across a way to log in but it does not retain my information and allow me to book with a courtesy hold still. So I give up on the thought of booking with Azamara.

I scoured CC and came across this thread about the hidden sign in to My Azamara and a post from Bonnie in December indicating that there is a problem. It is now the middle of February and the problem still exists. This is a simple fix that should have been resolved immediately.

So after all of this I am off to Oceania and Viking Oceans to see if they will allow me to log into my accounts there. Oh, yes every online cruise line welcomes me with the ability to login, except Azamara. I guess my Discover status with Azamara means nothing because they figure I am dumb enough to put up with their nonsense.

And why no ability to do a courtesy hold is beyond me.

This nonsense has gone on too long and as a loyal Azamara customer since its inception it is time to move on.

Received my initial email for the survey addressed to "Dear HARVEY" (who I am not), followed up with another email to "Please disregard the previous email. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused".

This is all so typical for Azamara these days...

I began the survey and went through the list of cruise lines that I recognized. The list did not even include Cunard! I proceeded with the survey until I got completely fed up with the poor email communication, and the way the survey was designed. At which point I thought to myself, if Azamara really cared what I had to say they would have responded to the guest surveys onboard, the phone calls to customer service and the common themes of the posts on the forum. I closed the survey without completing it and decided it is time to look at Viking Oceans, Regent, Crystal and Oceania.

If Azamara continues the way it has been going they will lose all of the people who started out with them at the beginning.