Whilst many here are seasoned cruisers we are coming up to some important dates, so let's have a recap.
Note the
DCL website has been upgraded and things will be different to what you booked in 2015.
Booking actives for cruise, open for the 120, days mark,on Tuesday for platinum and concierge, you should also now be paid in full. Concierge could put in requests by email since last week.
Note you can't book online if your not paid in full, and the Tuesday window relates to platinum and concierge, if one or more platinum cruisers are in your stateroom you will be classed as platinum, but if travelling with another stateroom that's gold you can't book together until 105 days.
The next booking Windows will open up at ,105 days mark, for Gold ( 5+ cruises) to be followed by 90 days Silver, and 75 days, new to DCL cruisers.
You may have booked on DCL many times before but the website has changed and you have to make decisions fast.
Check in online starts at 00.00, thats Eastern USA time and thats normally 5am UK time. But as USA swapped clocks last night and the U.K. swaps at Easter currently the time difference is just four hours.
Do not log into your reservation until 00.00.
You can log into your DCL profile before 00.00.
The best route is via
Castaway club if your registered and then go to’ view my cruises’.
Just before 00.00 hit this cruise reservation number, on the right hand side and also then click ‘my online check in’ left hand side. (Now that check in isn’t available to at least 3 hours later. Don’t worry about that at the moment, just click the toggle.
Now be sitting on the my online check in page at 00.00 and the moment your internet clock says 00.00 or 04.00 UK, click, my cruise activities.
You can try this a few times in advance the screen will come up but you will not have the toggles for booking.
Note only one person can log in per stateroom, if two log in it will freeze!
Now the best route is to have a plan in advance. Have a plan A, plan B and plan C agreed with the family if your desired activities go. Each day of the cruise is shown go to the day you want to do something, click add activity on that screen and then options come up for adult dinning, port adventures, spa, and even my onboard fun for the BBB on the Magic, just added recently. I have known new port adventures to show up they haven't been advertised on the site before, and care due to our port times dome long trips may not be available.
Brunch will go quickly at Palo, Dinner on sea days will go fast, Any shore trip with animals ( horses) will go fast. Now if you save any shore trips to your favourites before the booking date it will have a * next to it when you look on that day.
You can search adult dinning and spa from the main landing page without selecting a date if the day you prefer isn’t available.
Now when you select something, add all the names you have in your party, click check availability times should come up, select one, and confirm, now it goes to a shopping cart, my advice to you is to confirm that on the top right hand side before you move on to book the next thing.
The DCL site often boots you out and if you do this anything you have confirmed from your shopping cart will be safe, if you get booted out and haven’t confirmed, it will be lost.
I think first sea day Brunch will go fast, then second sea day, and Palo midweek say Frozen night will go fast, or movie night will go fast, my guess Iceland overnight, night, when there is not a show. Spa goes on formal nights.
To be on the safe side you can email all of your activities to yourself at the end and I would store them as DCLs website does strange things.
Online check in starts at 03.00 Eastern or ( normally ) 8am UK, ( Tuesday 7 am) but in the past for me it wasn’t up until late afternoon. This includes your port arrival time and its best to book this asap, unless you are on DCL bus transfers. Platinum and concierge do not need a PAT.
You need your passports and travel information, flights and credit card for this process; you will need to print out a document at the end with a bar code for port arrival. Ensure printer has ink.
If you have more than one reservation with DCL do not look at the other reservation before this, but log out and clear cookies.
Note if unlucky on Palo booking online, about 45% of slots are held back for reservations on embarkation.