Is my ship sold out?

[warrenz1963]

How would I go about finding out if my sailing is sold out? I just want to know what to expect. TIA!!

 

[sponica]

I guess the easiest way is to look for a room for 2 people?

 

[lanejudy]

It's not really published anywhere how full is a ship. But you can get an idea from trying to book and see how many stateroom categories are still available. Some folks further try to see how many staterooms are available in those categories, though DCL only shows a few staterooms as option to select anyway.

DCL has flexibility with passenger numbers and staterooms. If most staterooms are booked with max occupancy, some staterooms will be left unassigned even on a full ship. However, if most staterooms only have 2 passengers, there could be no staterooms available without reaching max occupancy for the ship as a whole.

 

[RedHead0186]

They will also have a sign at port, and near guest services, if the sailing is sold out (because it'll say there are no upgrades available). I know that's late in the game, but at least you'll know getting on the ship if it's sold out or not. As @lanejudy noted, "sold out" is also a relative term, depending on how many people are in each stateroom.

 

[Marc D]

As @lanejudy mentioned, unlike other cruiselines where most cabins only sleep 2 or 3 guests, most staterooms on DCL accommodate 4 or 5 guests. Therefore, with the same number of staterooms sold, you could have up to twice the amount of guests on a specific cruise. Every bit of verifications you can do online about available staterooms will not inform you of how many guests are staying in the sold rooms.

Of course, there are trends, with cruises sailing when schools are off filled with more school-age kids, and repositioning and European cruises usually not sailing with plenty of young kids, but if you look at a regular Florida cruise, it is always a crapshoot. We often sailed on 7-nights cruises on Fantasy. Some felt almost empty and others were the busiest cruises we ever experienced. In all instances, the “we are sailing a full ship” sign was out at the supervisor desk.

 

[Starwind]

However, if most staterooms only have 2 passengers, there could be no staterooms available without reaching max occupancy for the ship as a whole.

This is a key point. Our recent Alaska cruise was at just over 60% capacity by passenger count, but was "sold out" by staterooms. There were less than 200 kids on the ship and many staterooms were 2 adults.

 

[Karin1984]

Isn't it so that the cruise is removed from the booking tool if all staterooms are booked?

 

[Marc D]

Isn't it so that the cruise is removed from the booking tool if all staterooms are booked?

Yes, but that’s a very rare occurrence on regular cruises. And the only thing it will imply is that most staterooms (because of possible lifeboat capacity issues preventing them from selling some staterooms) have at least two guests in them. It will most likely happen on one-time cruises, and those tend to be less than full as far as passenger count is concerned.

 

[71 Truck]

I do not think there is a good way to tell if a cruise is sold out by checking room availability. On several cruise over the years I will go to a cruise I have booked and look to see what is available to book.

I might see that all the inside state rooms are not available thinking they are sold out then check two weeks later and see they are now GTY .

I have seen this happen thinking our cruise is getting sold out then when we get on the ship finding out we were sailing not to capacity.

My wife and I do not have children so we sail when the kids are in school. This tends to make the ship not full.

 

[Dznypal]

We were just on the dream BI cruise. There was a sign at GS that said it was full but there were a lot of empty seats at the shows and tables at dinner.
We even got 3rd row center for the Just John and Paul show.
Even beauty and the beast had seats together.

I had read on tge FB there were about 2700 on the ship. Sounds crazy but I didn’t think it was that very crowded. Great cruise

 

[71 Truck]

We were just on the dream BI cruise. There was a sign at GS that said it was full but there were a lot of empty seats at the shows and tables at dinner.
We even got 3rd row center for the Just John and Paul show.
Even beauty and the beast had seats together.

I had read on tge FB there were about 2700 on the ship. Sounds crazy but I didn’t think it was that very crowded. Great cruise

I think the reason they do this even tho the cruise might not be full, is to give every state room host a reasonable number of rooms to clean and their best chance to get the most in gratuity's.