Are cruises half full because of capacity control or lack of booking?

[Momma Rene]

Diamond Princess has lots of cabins.  I think folks are afraid that they will cancel the remaining cruises.  

[tonit964]

3 hours ago, latebloomer56 said:

Hi, if possible after your on board can you post how you make out boarding? Or at some point how the crowd flow appears to you.

Thanks and enjoy your trip the week before ours 😁

I sure will. When we board though, Sapphire will be down the road at Berth 46, so embarkation will be different for us. We will probably be checking in at the regular terminal and then get shuttled to the ship.

I'll let you know either way and I'll keep her in good shape for your trip to Hawaii. 🙂

[kywildcatfanone]

I would book every 1/2 full sailing I could find.

[Asquare]

We have been on three cruises since the start up and all have been half full or less…it’s been absolutely marvelous!  We are on Enchanted Princess in October and hoping our luck holds.

[Alcairns]

17 hours ago, NavyVeteran said:

How do you know there were plenty of rooms available immediately prior to the cruise becoming unavailable? You can't tell by looking at available cabins online, since you don't know how many guarantees they've sold.

If you chose select you own cabin you see how ma y non guarantee cabins are available. There were plenty in all classes except suites.

[caribill]

10 minutes ago, Alcairns said:

If you chose select you own cabin you see how ma y non guarantee cabins are available. There were plenty in all classes except suites.

 

What you see are the cabins still not assigned to anyone so they can be booked.

 

You cannot tell how many of them might eventually be used to fill guarantees.

 

 

Example: You see 25 cabins available in the type you are looking for. Assume Princess has 10 GTYs already for this type cabin. When 15 of the 25 are sold, Princess will say only GTYs are available since they need 10 for the already booked GTYs. They may still allow some additional GTYs to be sold as they have historical data they use as to number of expected cancellations.

[geoherb]

I'm currently on the Caribbean Princess with around 2,700 passengers. Here is the breakdown given to me by the loyalty and events manager:

351 Blue

395 Gold

276 Ruby

856 Platinum

836 Elite

[Honolulu Blue]

@geoherb:  Thanks for sharing. That's a very interesting distribution, surprisingly symmetrical.

 

Here's a funny loyalty program story I'll share here:  My first scheduled Princess cruise was canceled.  I must have gotten credit for it, because I walked on my first real Princess cruise as a Gold member.  I was also Gold for the second one.  I booked a third Princess cruise for next April and was pleasantly surprised to find that I was considered Platinum. 🤩

[Alcairns]

3 hours ago, caribill said:

 

What you see are the cabins still not assigned to anyone so they can be booked.

 

You cannot tell how many of them might eventually be used to fill guarantees.

 

 

Example: You see 25 cabins available in the type you are looking for. Assume Princess has 10 GTYs already for this type cabin. When 15 of the 25 are sold, Princess will say only GTYs are available since they need 10 for the already booked GTYs. They may still allow some additional GTYs to be sold as they have historical data they use as to number of expected cancellations.

And what would happen to the GTYs if I chose to book all 25 cabins for my extended family and friends? 

[capriccio]

12 hours ago, Asquare said:

We have been on three cruises since the start up and all have been half full or less…it’s been absolutely marvelous!  We are on Enchanted Princess in October and hoping our luck holds.

Enchanted Princess in mid-March doing a Caribbean itinerary was at about 66% capacity.

[NavyVeteran]

7 hours ago, caribill said:

 

What you see are the cabins still not assigned to anyone so they can be booked.

 

You cannot tell how many of them might eventually be used to fill guarantees.

 

Example: You see 25 cabins available in the type you are looking for. Assume Princess has 10 GTYs already for this type cabin. When 15 of the 25 are sold, Princess will say only GTYs are available since they need 10 for the already booked GTYs. They may still allow some additional GTYs to be sold as they have historical data they use as to number of expected cancellations.

 

4 hours ago, Alcairns said:

And what would happen to the GTYs if I chose to book all 25 cabins for my extended family and friends? 

In this case, you could not book all 25 cabins. As soon as you book 15 of them, the other 10 would no longer be available.

[suzyed]

15 hours ago, Honolulu Blue said:

@geoherb:  Thanks for sharing. That's a very interesting distribution, surprisingly symmetrical.

 

Here's a funny loyalty program story I'll share here:  My first scheduled Princess cruise was canceled.  I must have gotten credit for it, because I walked on my first real Princess cruise as a Gold member.  I was also Gold for the second one.  I booked a third Princess cruise for next April and was pleasantly surprised to find that I was considered Platinum. 🤩

That's kind of explains why my daughter was Gold on her second cruise....we had one cancelled prior to the first one and she got credit for it!

[suzyed]

It may be a little bit of both but I think mostly capacity control due to staffing shortages.  
With that said, when we were on the Crown last month we were probably 2/3 full,  but there seemed to ample staff to take care of us.  And they did a great job.

[Steve&Karen]

Just off Princess Discovery from Alaska and it was only short about 200 guests total  

[Longwood50]

On 8/27/2022 at 8:57 PM, PacnGoNow said:

o you know you posted on the Princess forum, not HAL?

Yes I did, because I am looking to book a Princess cruise and find they have several that are "full" which I find surprising giving the almost continual comment which coincides with my 2 recent experiences that the cruises are half full.   If the majority of ships are half filled, it just seems strange that any cruise would suddenly jump to completely filled unless it was over a specific set of dates like Christmas /new years