Booking DCL discounts + acces. stateroom, a positive story

[goofieslonglostsis]

Knowing how others can and have run into this, I reckoned I'ld post it in a seperate topic on this part of the DIS.

As we all know, those of us needing an accessible stateroom can not just grab the nicer GTY prices. However, when other promos come out it can also be.. challenging to use those when needing an accessible stateroom. I ran into the same problem today.

I'm booked on the WBTA, have been for months. Obviously have an accessible stateroom booked, cat 11B. Now comes along a EU-resident promo code. Applicable on the cat. 11B and so many staterooms left, you can have your pick. Works out to be about a 30% discount on the price I've got at the moment. Taking into account a nice OBC promo I have on the old booking, this new promo is still a lot cheaper. However; by now all of the accessible cat 11B staterooms are booked. One of which by me. This promo does only apply on new bookings so it would require making a new booking and cancelling the old.

When contacting DCL they'll give the standard story of not being able to guarantee the booked accessible stateroom can be transferred to a new booking. It will be released into general stock at moment of cancelling and could be snagged up. And thus I was told this standard story. "sorry, but no we can not offer you this promo if you want to be sure of having an accessible stateroom".

I was bummed out, again not being able to snag a great discount just because of the wheels beneath my bum and decided there could be no harm in persuing it a bit. So I contacted DCL's spec. needs dep. and told them the story. They'ld look into it, but obviously couldn't promiss anything yet and could take some time before being able to provide an answer.

Lo and behold; within minutes they already call me back. And not just that but with the news I can use the promo. They've gone ahead, made a new booking for me, are watching for the old reservation to be cancelled (made with a TA, so obviously will have them do that), then they'll transfer the accessible stateroom to the new reservation and sent me a confirmation and I can make the new deposit. Turns out I also only "loose" $100,- on my OBC. For this discount I can totally do that.


So for those of you that in the future find themselves in the same position with already an accessible stateroom booked and wanting to use a discount that requires a new booking without running the risk of loosing their accessible stateroom; talk to the DCL spec. needs department! Perhaps they might be able to help you out where a regular CM can't.

 

[dclfun]

Thanks for sharing. I was also able to cancel my reservation for last year's WBTA when a promo came out and saved a huge amount of money. No problem to transfer the accessible stateroom I'd booked to the new reservation. I'm sorry you weren't helped to start with- it's an easy process.---Kathy

 

[goofieslonglostsis]

Also smooth sailings here. For me it very much sounded like the regular CM simply had no clue as how this can be done, kinda like some WDTC CM's have no clue of how to deal with accessible rooms or are unaware of brandnew promos.

Heck, so many people involved went into the stress-mode of "can't be done, this will be ending up in the ditch", some of which thus at first refusing it is possible, others wanting to get involved "because otherwise this is going to go wrong" when things were already taken care of.

Only thing that matters is that it has been taken care of, got all the stuff in writing and the important things on there are as they should be. They tried to sneak the travelinsurance on me (it still wonders me why they'ld auto-add that to those of us not from the US), but I'ld gladly have them removed that. Just did the math and realised I'm saving even more than I expected yesterday, forgot the fact that I already had a nice amount paid off on the old ressie. Me like promos!

It just goes to show that when being told something can't be done, it can be very worth the while to proceed it a bit further.