Costco Travel Booking

I'm looking and Costco travel has a $235 with booking a cruise. My question is if I need to make changes to the reservation would I contact Disney or Costco Travel? Example: They don’t offer the ground transportation on the Disney cruise. Or change a room #.

a $235 what ??

in any case, contact Costco.

You would contact Costco first.

Once you have booked a cruise with an agent (Costco or any other) or transferred a booking made with the cruiseline to an agency, the cruiseline (at least in my experience with RCCL, Celebrity, Princess etc.) will no longer discuss your booking with you or make changes to it. At that point your only partner for communications will be the agent with whom the cruise is now booked, and the cruiseline will only talk with him.

My most recent example of this happened just last week when I called the cruiseline to confirm that the OTA, to whom I had transferred the booking, had transferred my final payment in time. First the CSR said she couldn't give me that information. After insisting that I just wanted a "yes" or "no" answer as to whether my reservation was paid in full, she said "yes". Since I am working with this agency for the first time (and they had quoted me a exceptionally good price), I just wanted to be doubly sure that everything was done as promised. But, it was like "pulling teeth" to get that simple "yes".

I agree with your point 100%, but who were you booking with that you couldn't check your online docs to verify no balance due? Even Carnival gets their docs updated more or less immediately (and you can't print the boarding pass until paid in full... at least with CCL.)

It is a Celebrity cruise, and we've done a lot of cruising with them (Elite members). Their online info ("My Celebrity") does not give the amount due if it has been booked (or transferred to) with another agency. It refers you to the booking agency for that information. And I wanted to avoid having the cabin canceled because the final payment had not been made (as has happened to several posters on CruiseCritic, with varying cruiselines) -- which is why I made the payment almost two weeks in advance of official final payment date. Although I had already entered the online info for printing the Express Boarding Pass, the docs could not yet be printed at that point (and it took a couple of days for the payment amount to appear on my credit card).
Just sayin'...

Thanks for the response. That is quite interesting. Maybe X is making more of a push to bring bookings back inside than CCL is at the moment?

I also pay a couple weeks in advance to make I don't miss the date, but it never occurred to me that it might not be evident on the booking. I am also pretty anal about verifying these things, so I'd be annoyed if I couldn't see the info myself. I guess score one for Carnival... for once...

Frog, let us know how it turms out. We were ready to book QM2 TransAtlantic with Costco- but read a couple of negative Costco reviews on cruise critic, as in- Travel Agency difficult to get a hold of, no one seemed to be able to remedy the problem, etc. We decided the couple hundred in savings was not worth the gamble if something went wrong -and booked directly with Cunard.

I've used COSTCO for cruises and all inclusive resorts in Mexico. Price and service is fine. I think their cruise prices is probably better then the majority of TAs (possibly excluding a TA who has a group booking). Shop enough and you'll find someone who'll offer a slightly better deal.

Cruisecritic doesn't want posters discussing specific TAs. There are relatively few posts about COSTCO, pro or con. I respect cc policies and would never start a thread about COSTCO travel.

People who've had favorable experience with a TA, and who respect CC rules, won't be posting.

We were looking for a new TA since the company of the original TA changed how they worked the business. Someone on the rollcall for the cruise we were booking highly recommended Costco. We were looking to maximize OBC's yet go with a reliable company and it appeared Costco had a good offering. Would have booked through them but surprisingly, they don't support customers outside the US (well, what they said specifically was that they didn't support customers without a US address).

That shouldn't necessarily be a problem, the key quote being "without a US address". Any good friend in the U.S.?, relative? If you look at my signature, you will see that I don't live in the U.S. permanently, but I book 95% of our cruises with a travel agency in the U.S., and use the home address of a relative in VA. Since everything is done with eDocs for the cruise, the TA just needs a formal address to put on the reservation. (Additionally, of course, you would also need a Costco membership number if you choose to book with them). YMMV.