Disney Cruise Line’s website rolled out a much-awaited enhancement allowing guests and travel agents to manage and apply an onboard booking Future Cruise Placeholder reservations online rather than having to call in to apply the benefit to a future cruise booking.
Guests can see their Future Cruise Placeholder reservations on the My Reservations page of DisneyCruise.com.
Future Cruise Placeholders can also be found in the list of “My Cruises” on the Castaway Club page.
Clicking Search All Cruises will bring up a confirm travel party screen.
Once the travel party is confirmed, the familiar cruise search page will show with Special Rates for Placeholder.
At the time of booking a selected sailing, you will be prompted to confirm your Placeholder Conversion.
Unfortunately, guest with a placeholder booked with a foreign currency, and those with two placeholders for 2 cabins on the same sailing will still need to call. Finally, the Onboard Offer page has been updated with a new look for the blockout dates.
Special thanks to Heather J from Storybook Destinations and Wes, TheDCLDude, for assisting me with this article as I do not currently have an unused onboard booking placeholder.
Can you just still call Disney and have them book your cruise? And is their any other changes coming soon? Thank you
Yes, you can still call DCL. Not aware of any additional changes at this time.
This was long overdue. That being said, I miss the future cruise desk they used to have onboard and went away for Covid. Was hopeful someday the future cruise desk would come back but this new online feature ensures that desk will never come back.
Yay! Though like Ryan I do miss the future cruise desk.
@Ryan, Yes it was nice speaking with a cast member. Logan was especially helpful and miss her sweet face. I do like not having to call as I can see what staterooms are available and book for us and not have to listen to “someone will be with you shortly”
It is much better for me as an international guest !
Is the onboard credit if a placeholder is used for a Concierge booking new (or returning)? I know many years ago all onboard bookings resulted in onboard credits on the new cruise, and then only Concierge got the credit and other bookings got a discount. For the past few years, the descriptions of placeholder bookings has said they couldn’t be used for Concierge bookings at all.
As of today, the fine print reads “Important Details” as follows:
Long overdue.
I miss the desk too as you could do a placeholder in other currencies easily.
Apparently you still can but you have to visit Guest Services and have to await a mail to progress.
The cool thing about the future cruise desk is you could use the onboard discount without having to book a placeholder, you could just go straight to the specific cruise you wanted, skipping all the middleman business. Also, they would take my Disney gift card as payment right there on the spot. Currently you have to use the credit card on file while onboard when booking the placeholder and cannot use the gift card in your pocket. Even when I apply the gift card in my pocket to my onboard account, they still do not bill my onboard account for the placeholder and instead bill the credit card on file. Don’t like that because I use discounted Sams Club or BJ’s Disney gift cards to get an extra 4 or 5 percent off, so when combined with onboard booking discount I’m getting like a 14%-15% discount on my future cruise. May not sound like much but we’re family of 6 having to book 2 rooms, so and extra 4 or 5 percent equals a significant amount of money, especially on our European DCL cruises.
FYI: I have 2 staterooms / placeholders. I am unable to reserve online. Apparently this just works for single-cabin placeholders.
Yes, I received confirmation of this today while on the phone with DCL. I tried several times yesterday to make a reservation through the DCL website. Their internal reference sheet states that the guest still needs to call to book. Unfortunately, we typically solely get placeholders for 2 cabins.
Correct.
I tried using this already and when I entered the placeholder the cruise price showed $700 more than what is shown on the DCL site before logging in and entering the PH! Not what I was hoping for.