With our new found freedom, aka retirement, we could now book a cruise without worrying about having a reliable internet connection back to the office for many hours a day. We decided on going to Alaska with Oceania or Celebrity and with my husband's first cruise and my 3rd, we decided to go with Celebrity, and maybe "move up" in future.
Initially I was pricing a cabin with balcony between II and Vacations-To-Go and they were quite comparable if I normalized the II one (without the freebies + MF + exchange fees) and VTG with the offers. At that point of analysis, I felt that if I picked the II one with the freebies with VTG, then the 2 pricing were pretty close and I would be worse off going with II as II cost would be higher when I include MF and exchange fee - I learned later not to be really true... read on....
With the above info, we decide to book through VTG. The agent said that with the offer, Celebrity will make the cabin assignment. If we wanted to pick cabin, it would cost $400 more per person. I really do not like surprises so we went with II (without the freebies). II then became a better deal as we were able to pick more desirable location / cabin on the ship. There were less desirable location (partially blocked veranda) in II which were much cheaper and my guess is that booking through VTG would have gotten us those locations.
I also tried with different types of resort/small 1BR vs large 1BR in II and it made a difference in the cost. Surprisingly, a SVR 1BR was more valuable and reduced cost by about $40 per person compared with SDO (1BR platinum). A small SDO bedroom increased the cost by $8 per person over a large SDO bedroom.
Initially I was pricing a cabin with balcony between II and Vacations-To-Go and they were quite comparable if I normalized the II one (without the freebies + MF + exchange fees) and VTG with the offers. At that point of analysis, I felt that if I picked the II one with the freebies with VTG, then the 2 pricing were pretty close and I would be worse off going with II as II cost would be higher when I include MF and exchange fee - I learned later not to be really true... read on....
With the above info, we decide to book through VTG. The agent said that with the offer, Celebrity will make the cabin assignment. If we wanted to pick cabin, it would cost $400 more per person. I really do not like surprises so we went with II (without the freebies). II then became a better deal as we were able to pick more desirable location / cabin on the ship. There were less desirable location (partially blocked veranda) in II which were much cheaper and my guess is that booking through VTG would have gotten us those locations.
I also tried with different types of resort/small 1BR vs large 1BR in II and it made a difference in the cost. Surprisingly, a SVR 1BR was more valuable and reduced cost by about $40 per person compared with SDO (1BR platinum). A small SDO bedroom increased the cost by $8 per person over a large SDO bedroom.
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