Is it usual to not be able to choose your cabin on Princess?

[mr walker]

I don't think that anyone could ever understand the Princess booking system. When onboard Majestic back in Feb, we made a booking for Grand Princess for Oct '25 with the onboard booking lady - she could only offer guarantee. Upon return called our PCP and she at first said the same thing & then suddenly she was able to book us a specific balcony in our preferred location at same fare - she knew what we wanted from past experience. ????

[OzKiwiJJ]

Just now, mr walker said:

I don't think that anyone could ever understand the Princess booking system. When onboard Majestic back in Feb, we made a booking for Grand Princess for Oct '25 with the onboard booking lady - she could only offer guarantee. Upon return called our PCP and she at first said the same thing & then suddenly she was able to book us a specific balcony in our preferred location at same fare - she knew what we wanted from past experience. ????

I'm not sure that even Princess understands its booking system!!!!

[colourbird]

We have a Princess cruise in February 2025. We weren't able to select a balcony cabin, however if we were doing a shorter leg of the cruise, we would have been able to select a cabin at the time of booking.

[Jean C]

10 hours ago, colourbird said:

We have a Princess cruise in February 2025. We weren't able to select a balcony cabin, however if we were doing a shorter leg of the cruise, we would have been able to select a cabin at the time of booking.

Princess need to rephrase the wording on their website. They say:

 

Most Popular / You Choose Your Room / Choose a Room Now

 

People reading those words are under the impression they can choose a room whereas in reality you frequently can only choose a type of cabin and location, with Princess assigning a room there or in a comparable location. It's hardly choosing your room.

[arxcards]

If you book early enough, you can book a specific cabin, although not in all grades. Once those allocated cabins are filled, they will default to guarantees so they can be more flexible in how they sell the remaining cabins. Even then, get your T/A or PCP to shake the tree for you.

 

No big deal. If you book late, all of the preferred cabins are already taken, so you may as well settle for pot luck anyway. Be wary though. Most T/As will pitch you their best price, and those will be on bookings with non-refundable deposits for guarantee cabins. There will often be specific cabins, but at a price.

 

[colourbird]

4 minutes ago, arxcards said:

If you book early enough, you can book a specific cabin, although not in all grades. Once those allocated cabins are filled, they will default to guarantees so they can be more flexible in how they sell the remaining cabins. Even then, get your T/A or PCP to shake the tree for you.

 

No big deal. If you book late, all of the preferred cabins are already taken, so you may as well settle for pot luck anyway. Be wary though. Most T/As will pitch you their best price, and those will be on bookings with non-refundable deposits for guarantee cabins. There will often be specific cabins, but at a price.

 

 

We booked two cabins when they went on sale, so by the time they are allocated we will probably end up with two reject cabins that are nowhere near each other.

[arxcards]

1 minute ago, colourbird said:

 

We booked two cabins when they went on sale, so by the time they are allocated we will probably end up with two reject cabins that are nowhere near each other.

We are on the same cruise. I booked later than you, but booked a specific cabin. The last I looked, there was still a handful of specific cabins available, but maybe not in the grade you want.

[colourbird]

8 minutes ago, arxcards said:

We are on the same cruise. I booked later than you, but booked a specific cabin. The last I looked, there was still a handful of specific cabins available, but maybe not in the grade you want.

 

We were trying to get balcony cabins near the front of the ship on one of the higher levels.

[MMDown Under]

My friend used to get so sea sick, she had to have a needle to stop her vomiting. I convinced her to try again, but to only cruise in cabins low down in the centre of the ship.  This solved her cruising problems so she was able to continue cruising  For her cabin location is vital. 

[OzKiwiJJ]

We've rarely had a problem choosing a cabin in a location that suits us. We've only had to settle for a guarantee cabin once on Princess, for a last minute booking, and even then we ended up exactly where I thought we would. Even our upgrade bid for our current cruise put us in our favourite location. Am I just lucky? Maybe. We prefer cabins around the mid-levels, with cabin decks above and below. We prefer mid-aft but are happy with any location that is not too far forward. 

[arxcards]

1 hour ago, colourbird said:

 

We were trying to get balcony cabins near the front of the ship on one of the higher levels.

BA & BB balconies will normally have selectable cabins. They are midship, upper balconies. They are also more expensive. BD, BE, BF are more likely to be guarantee, but are less expensive. All the same, if you tell an agent you will only book if you can get specific cabin numbers, they can usually shake one out of the booking system.

[cruiser3775]

2 hours ago, arxcards said:

If you book early enough, you can book a specific cabin, although not in all grades. Once those allocated cabins are filled, they will default to guarantees so they can be more flexible in how they sell the remaining cabins. Even then, get your T/A or PCP to shake the tree for you.

That's what I do now , thanks to the advice from the experienced people here. When I contact the travel agent, I say I will only book if I can get a specified cabin, and ask them to send me an email with the numbers of some cabins that are available. I tend to go for aft cabins close to the aft lifts. Even if the booking sites say only guaranteed cabins are available, or the cruise is fully booked, I have found a good TA can come up with some choices of specific cabins.

[colourbird]

15 minutes ago, arxcards said:

BA & BB balconies will normally have selectable cabins. They are midship, upper balconies. They are also more expensive. BD, BE, BF are more likely to be guarantee, but are less expensive. All the same, if you tell an agent you will only book if you can get specific cabin numbers, they can usually shake one out of the booking system.

 

We tried the TA contacting Princess method, but with no luck. The class of cabin made no difference as we could have selected our own cabin if booking the shorter segments.

 

Maybe Princess was hoping we'd book the two separate legs individually in order to get more money out of us.

[arxcards]

1 hour ago, colourbird said:

 

We tried the TA contacting Princess method, but with no luck. The class of cabin made no difference as we could have selected our own cabin if booking the shorter segments.

 

Maybe Princess was hoping we'd book the two separate legs individually in order to get more money out of us.

If they wanted that, they wouldn't be offering a combined 11 night cruise option at all.

[colourbird]

Just now, arxcards said:

If they wanted that, they wouldn't be offering a combined 11 night cruise option at all.

 

Then why not let us select a cabin? It makes no sense that passengers on the shorter legs can book cabins, but we can't. It could even get to the stage where we end up having to change cabins during the cruise depending on which ones are sold to the passengers on the shorter cruises.

[phoenixx]

On 5/3/2024 at 1:59 PM, Jean C said:

I think part of the problem is when Princess sells cruises with multiple embarkation and disembarkation ports. For example, for the 2026 cruise you can't choose a specific cabin from Auckland while there are many to choose from Sydney. They only allocate a few for Auckland and I suppose they juggle allocations later 😔 

Your TA can ask cruise line to release a particular cabin from Sydney allocation so they can then book it for you.

[arxcards]

19 hours ago, colourbird said:

 

Then why not let us select a cabin? It makes no sense that passengers on the shorter legs can book cabins, but we can't. It could even get to the stage where we end up having to change cabins during the cruise depending on which ones are sold to the passengers on the shorter cruises.

You could select a cabin, but not the ones you wanted. Your comment holds the answer - it isn't possible to sell the same cabins on the 7 & 4 night individual cruises and also sell them on the 11 night combo cruise. I think it holds true that of those cruises on offer, that the 7 night Brisbane to Brisbane cruise will be the most popular, it made sense that more cabins were allocated to that option.

 

We did consider booking the 7 and the 4 night cruises separately. There wasn't a big difference in pricing, and it is still an option to anyone wanting to book a b2b specific cabin. 

[colourbird]

1 hour ago, arxcards said:

You could select a cabin, but not the ones you wanted. Your comment holds the answer - it isn't possible to sell the same cabins on the 7 & 4 night individual cruises and also sell them on the 11 night combo cruise. I think it holds true that of those cruises on offer, that the 7 night Brisbane to Brisbane cruise will be the most popular, it made sense that more cabins were allocated to that option.

 

We did consider booking the 7 and the 4 night cruises separately. There wasn't a big difference in pricing, and it is still an option to anyone wanting to book a b2b specific cabin. 

 

I understand what you are saying, but it still doesn't make sense to me. If we want one of those cabins for the 11 nighter all they have to do is let us select one and it becomes unavailable for the shorter cruises. 

[OzKiwiJJ]

Just now, colourbird said:

 

I understand what you are saying, but it still doesn't make sense to me. If we want one of those cabins for the 11 nighter all they have to do is let us select one and it becomes unavailable for the shorter cruises. 

Then you haven't understood the situation. 

Cabins A,B,C,D get allocated to the 11 nighter.

Cabins E,F,G,H get allocated to the split itinerary.

That's what the booking system gets told and the software isn't designed to allow willy nilly selections between those cabin groups, it would be too chaotic to program. 

 

It might be possible to do it though a Princess Vacation Planner or a big and very good TA, who have the knowledge/ability to manually over-ride the booking system. 

[Cruise Junky]

Yes, this is a known issue on the main Princess board. Annoying to say the least.  Lots of complaints about.  

[arxcards]

20 hours ago, OzKiwiJJ said:

Then you haven't understood the situation. 

Cabins A,B,C,D get allocated to the 11 nighter.

Cabins E,F,G,H get allocated to the split itinerary.

That's what the booking system gets told and the software isn't designed to allow willy nilly selections between those cabin groups, it would be too chaotic to program. 

 

It might be possible to do it though a Princess Vacation Planner or a big and very good TA, who have the knowledge/ability to manually over-ride the booking system. 

That is the way. If you want cabin E and it is available for both short legs, a PVP or skilled T/A may be able to get it released it for the dual itinerary. When they are dual-porting, it would make it easier for Princess if it was all guarantees, but they have kept specific cabins available.

 

The other alternative is to have a loose booking arrangement, and the risk of passengers denied boarding due to overbooking.

 

The guarantee categories are usually the cheaper ones for each cabin type. Seems that passengers not only want the cheapest fare, but also their choice of cabin. That isn't always possible. In most instances, specific cabins are available for most cabin types on Princess, but once they have sold, they become guarantee only to allow them the flexibility to fill all available cabins.