Following last week’s addition of official placeholder bookings, Disney Cruise Line is sending out emails to travel agents who have guests booked on a prior placeholder date. Wait! Guests with prior placeholder dates? Well, prior to last week’s change guests unsure of a future sail date that wanted to book onboard were being booked on specific sailings allowing DCL to monitor these dummy bookings.
Guests have a few options going forward. One option is for guests to pick a sailing that falls within their 24 month onboard booking window. Alternatively, guests who may not be ready to select a sail date can transition to the new placeholder process. Finally, guests who do not respond by April 17, 2015 will automatically be moved to the new process and bookings.
Essentially there are three options:
- Pick a sail date
- Choose to transfer to new placeholder process
- Do nothing and automatically transfer to new placeholder process after April 17th.
According to DCL only placeholder bookings on December 9th aboard the Disney Magic and April 27 aboard the Disney Wonder will automatically be moved to the new process.
Guests choosing or for those automatically transitioned to the new process who paid over a $200 deposit onboard will receive a refund of the difference in the deposit amounts. If the deposit paid onboard was less than $200 the difference will NOT be collected. For those who paid over $200, you can choose to move the difference towards onboard credit. Note, at this time, this option does not go towards your final cruise balance, it is just additional onboard credit. With this being such a new process, I would not be surprised if DCL refines the policy and allows the difference to go towards the final balance.
So, what happens when the 24 month clock ends on your placeholder under Disney Cruise Line’s new onboard booking placeholder process? Well, the placeholder will auto cancel and you will be refunded the $200 (or less if you original paid less as mentioned above.)
If you booked onboard and are unsure if your booking was on a placeholder date it would be a good idea to contact your travel agent or Disney Cruise Line before April 17th to confirm. Especially if you are set on the sail date you booked while onboard. Worst case scenario, could be that your booking was inadvertently marked with the Placeholder code onboard. That booking will now be transferred to the new process and DCL is unable to revert the change if someone else books that stateroom. I am not saying this will, but it is plausible and a quick check with DCL would not hurt.
Below is a copy of the email that is being sent to travel agents for guests affected by this change.
Thanks to Travel on a Dream for passing along this information.
I had booked a specific date, but on hearing about this auto-change I proactively called DCL to have them mark my reservation that I DEFINITELY wanted that booking. Very glad I did since I’m hearing that the generic “dummy date” cruise that was being used was very close to my selected cruise date. The rep I spoke with could not have been nicer – he said they had just gotten that memo today, but at the time he was unclear how “they” were determining which reservations would be affected. He definitely put a note on mine that it is a real booking and I do intend to sail on that date. Super easy, and it didn’t take long. I’ll keep an eye on it through the 17th and a little after just to be safe, but I feel pretty confident they know mine isn’t a dummy booking.