crown princess sailing month of feb. 10 days

[brand02]

Any suggestions:cool: on companies that give the best prices and perks. I hear of these fantastic upgrades and prices.33 cruises with Princess never given an upgrade or any type of perks. I do find them to be my favorite cruise company. brand02

[cherylandtk]

Welcome to Cruise Critic...their Terms and Conditions do not allow that sort of question or for us to answer it, email you, etc. Since you are a well-travelled cruiser, ask around on your next sailing if anyone uses a discount agent. You will undoubtedly get some leads.

[Essiesmom]

New member, best read the Guidelines up on the menu bar. EM

[brand02]

Sorry about that, thanks forth heads up. Do not want to ruffle feathers on any agency. brand02

[jb008]

Any suggestions:cool: on companies that give the best prices and perks. I hear of these fantastic upgrades and prices.33 cruises with Princess never given an upgrade or any type of perks. I do find them to be my favorite cruise company. brand02

 

Doing your homework and some legwork can go a long way in securing great pricing. The sales are often advertised in advance here on the forums, and keeping some spreadsheets on pricing over time can give you a better idea of what a "good"/"great" price is for a region and ship (there's also some online resources that will show pricing trends if you do a few google searches).

 

For example, I scored a great "upgrade" on Celebrity when I caught a suite guarantee sale one weekend and did a paid upgrade of ~$25pp to move up from a premium balcony to the suite gty - all my homework to find the sale and then called my TA to process the booking change (he even congratulated me on finding such an amazing deal). Followed by a post to the Roll Call on the forums to give my fellow CC'ers a heads up on the sale :) The hardest thing with sale pricing is that it is less money in the pocket of the TA, so working direct with the line can be easier since your gain is not the phone rep's loss.

 

Also reading the fine print to know what your cancellation penalties are can be valuable. I've canceled and eaten the penalty and still saved 10% when they ran a major sale after final payments were due. Different T&C on each booking and promo it was booked under, so reading YOUR contract's terms and conditions saved me a lot of money (and made sure I wasn't hit with a full payment penalty either!).

 

I've used a couple TA's and had good experiences with them, but I'm not yet convinced they're always the best deal (even with the kickbacks one offers) versus doing your own due diligence and being your own advocate. The cancel - rebook I mentioned above forfeited a sizable TA "gift" of OBC but the Princess sale still came out a major $$$ saver.

[brand02]

Looking at Princess in Feb. 2019.If sales pop up,please contact me.

[brand02]

Looking in Feb 2019 Princess, get back if anyone has information on upcoming sale events.Contact me, brand02

[Essiesmom]

Looking at Princess in Feb. 2019.If sales pop up,please contact me.

 

 

Much quicker if you go to the Princess website and sign up for email/snail mail specials. Don't make others do your homework. EM

[jb008]

If you narrow it down to a small number of sailings you like, it's easy to just save the pricing page (either direct through P or through a reputable travel agent's site) and just hit those links a couple times a week. That's how I score most of my deals.

 

For example, http://www.princess.com/find/cruiseDetails.do?voyageCode=3906 is the link you'd save if you wanted to directly hit the Princess site to check pricing on a representative voyage. Or find a price tracking website or travel agency's pricing site (probably faster that way since it'll show a range of cabin prices without having to do additional clicks). We're not allowed to link to 3rd party TA sites, I'll email though to ask if I can post the price tracking site I use (since they are just a price aggregator and the booking links are all direct links to the cruise line afaik).

[nonno25]

I originally found my TA many years ago by Googling (hope I can say that) the ship name and date. That brought up different agencies and offers. Don't know if that will still work.