This does not happen with all cruise lines, but this time of year we get so many calls for multi berth cabins with children , people wanting to wait until the last minute to book a summer cruise.
Dining: 1A2A (this is just the dining to tell us which sittings are still open) a = available
Exclusive Occupancy Available
Upper Berths Available
Min Infant Age 12 Months
12 Months – 23 Months Available
24 Months – 35 Months Available
3 Years – 7 Years Available
8 Years – 12 Years Available
13 Years – 17 Years Available
This is what we see, so if you have two children , one is already two and the other is 11 , we have to check that these age groups are open , if one of them is closed we CANNOT book you , they will not budge on this and there is no point in calling/pleading , it just will not happen . And this happen lots, the numbers in the younger age groups can be pretty low , normally the babies are limited to 20 for each sailing !! Think about this , they could not cope with 100 babies , not enough cots , high chair , care facilities ??
the above will apply to Cunard. Princess and P&O , on all ships, all sailings.
This gets equally frustrating on the other cruise lines too , while they do not limit the age groups , not sure how they deal with that ?? They do however limit the number of cabins that will sleep 3/4 people , whether they be small or all adults
Using a simple math equation, if you can picture a ship with capacity of 100 cabins , of this they can actually take only 250 passengers. so if they put a family of 4 in each cabin , they would now have 400 passengers ?? this is going over the passenger ship capacity, so at some point they have a cut off when they know , for instance on this example
cabins sold = 75
Passengers occupying these cabins = 200
They now have 25 cabins left , but only the capacity to actually board another 50 people , so the rest of the cabins can now only have a maximum of two people in them.
Please book early for multi-berth cabins !!!