B-Day Minus 6 … Counting Down to “Booking Day”

Thursday — 23 July 2015
Deer Crossing RV Park — San Patricio, New Mexico

What do you do when you want a specific type of cabin on a cruise ship and there are only four of them to pick from?  Well, six actually, but two of them are less attractive to us because they are below a public deck.

That’s the dilemma we are facing with our RTW booking on Oceania’s Insignia.  Sure, if push comes to shove, we’ll take any cabin to make our dream come true, but it would really make my day if we could snag one of the coveted aft cabins sandwiched between the budget-buster owner suites.

I love aft cabins!  The sound of the wake … the expansive view all the way to the horizon … the fresh air.  And often they have extended balconies — a must for someone like me who spends most of her time when onboard the ship sitting outdoors … and would rather do so on a private veranda than on a public deck.

So, what is the answer to the “what to do question” I initially posed?  Why, you put your cruise agent on notice, of course!  And that’s exactly what I did last night.

For years now I have been booking our cruise vacations with Connie, an agent at Best Price Cruises (BPC), an online agency.  She is unable to offer discounts off cruise fares — simply not allowed by our cruise lines of preference.  But she can sweeten the pot, so to speak, with perks above and beyond what those companies offer.  Sure, booking through Connie means I have to give up control of the booking — the cruise line won’t talk to me directly about my reservation — but I find it is worth giving up that control in exchange for the perks.  Give some … get some!

The cabins circled in black on deck 6 aft are our first choice; deck 7 second choice.
If we can’t get one of those four cabins, we’ll take deck 8 as our third choice.

Connie already knew we were interested in the Insignia RTW 2017 voyage … I had contacted her earlier in July when there was a rumor that the itinerary was going to be released on the 15th.  Nothing came of that bit of kerfuffle, but at least she had a list of our preferred cabins — in priority order — and our pre-authorization to reserve one of them as soon as bookings opened.

It was well past business hours on the East Coast when I finally got around to calling Connie yesterday, so I sent her an email to reconfirm our intent to sail the 2017 RTW.  Connie called this morning to advise me that she has the late shift on 29 July … meaning she won’t be in the office when bookings open up at 8:00 EDT.  No matter — we have a plan: her associate will grab one of the cabins on my priority list and Connie will complete the booking when she comes in later in the day.  Works for us.

Not much we can do but wait at this stage of the booking process.  In the meantime, I need to keep myself busy … and what better way to do that than to write a blog post.  Actually a couple of posts — this one, and the one I wrote earlier for my Two to Travel’s Phaeton Journeys blog … that’s the one where I tell the story of our travels in the motorhome … you can check out here what we were doing yesterday when the news of the RTW itinerary was first leaked.

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