I got word a bit ago that the Canal authority has increased the per passenger fee charged to DCL. As a result, expect your cruise price to increase by $100 per person.

Can they really increase the price after booking?

Oh, and for everyone traveling through the Canal, I highly recommend reading David McCullough's The Path Between the Seas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Path_Between_the_Seas).

Can they really increase the price after booking?

Just a wild guess... but maybe since this would be considered a "fee" and not a part of the "fare" that they could pass along the increase to the passengers.

Again - a guess.

Can they really increase the price after booking?

Oh, and for everyone traveling through the Canal, I highly recommend reading David McCullough's The Path Between the Seas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Path_Between_the_Seas).

Just a wild guess... but maybe since this would be considered a "fee" and not a part of the "fare" that they could pass along the increase to the passengers.

Correct GusMan. They can add on any additional taxes when a port applies them. However, on the flip side, we got a refund from DCL a few cruises ago when one port dropped their fees.

I will second Andrew's recommendation about The Path Between the Seas. I took it with us on the first Panama cruise and read it through the trip. Fantastic history and great storytelling. It is absolutely a must read.

Just pulled the T's & C's from DCL site. This is printed on your confirmation from Disney, and if you book online, you have to agree to it when you complete the reservation.

Terms Subject to Change
Disney Cruise Vacations reserves the right to change all prices and other terms and conditions which appear on this website without prior notice. Price changes will not affect bookings with paid deposit or timely final payment, except where the increase results from increases in Government Taxes and Fees.

i got charged the extra fees per person.

also, according to my travel agent, the transfers also went up in price. originally they were 59/person and now they are 79/pp -- i will be taking that off my itin and finding transportation myself. it costs a lot less on my own...

but the port fees are not something any cruiseline has control over. it is a government fee. so yes, it will get tacked on. and yes, its 100/pp more now.

Well, that didn't take long:
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/business_tourism_aviation/2007/08/disney-abandons.html

They were getting slammed from a lot of directions over this, and I think rightfully so. Glad that someone figured out this wasn't worth the bad press. I do know that the Orlando Sentinal was running a full article about it tomorrow.

In other news, Disney raised drink prices on the Magic by $1 across the board.

In other news, Disney raised drink prices on the Magic by $1 across the board.

ROTFLMAO :D

Works for me - I don't drink. But based on the last Panama cruise - they would make more money!

ROTFLMAO :D

Works for me - I don't drink. But based on the last Panama cruise - they would make more money!

You don't drink anything on board, Tony? Water, soda, coffee, tea, lemonade...

:p All free.

As I noted in the Park Updates this week, we had asked Disney to comment on the complaints from passengers about this fee increase, but had not received a reply as of press time.

A Disney spokesperson sent me the following this afternoon:

Upon further reflection, we have made the decision to pay the toll on behalf of all our cruise guests on both the May 10 and August 17, 2008, Panama Canal sailings, as a goodwill gesture. We are looking forward to welcoming guests aboard the Disney Magic next year for these very special cruises.

In other news, Disney raised drink prices on the Magic by $1 across the board.

I may have to budget quite a bit more money for the "drinks that cost money", at least we have an extra 200.00 that we did not have yesterday! :)

:p All free.

I thought that stuff cost at meals. Not anymore?

Bottled water costs. Everything else is free both at meals, at at the Deck 9 drink station

Well, the wife and I are booked on the Westbound repo in May and never received a letter about this increase. I guess it doesn't matter now. However, someone pointed out before that the Canal fee built into the cost of the cruise was about $83 per person. Now that's it's a $100 person, Disney is only covering the $17 difference per person, not the full $100.

I would be interested in seeing the breakdown of port/transfer fees of my cruise price.

I thought it was a $100 increase... did I misunderstand?

It was a $100 increase.

The complaint most people had wasn't that Disney added more charges because the Canal charged them more. Instead, it was that Disney just added the $100 on top of what had already been charged to cover the transit.

If they had taken the approximately $83 per person that they were already paying to Panama, and applied that to the $100 per person fee, I don't think many people would have blinked. But, by trying to charge all $100, that was a whole different problem.

We checked our documents from the 2005 transit and compared the port taxes/fees line item from that trip to the port taxes/fees from this trip. Very close (the difference probably being the difference between Curacao and Aurba as a port). So, obviously, the PC fees had been included in the first fare. By claiming they hadn't on this trip - sheesh.

Tony, I'm even more confused now. You say it was a $100 increase, and then the rest implies that the new price is now $100.

Let me see if I can be even more cryptic this time:

2 weeks ago, Disney announced that they were charging every passenger $100 more for the Panama Canal Cruise. They claimed it was because the ACP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal_Authority) (Panama Canal Authority) had increased their fees for the transit.

When we cruised in 2005, DCL paid approximately $200,000 for the transit, based on the ACP fee schedule in place then. That fee was calculated based on the gross weight of the ship. That worked out to about $83/passenger.

When we booked the 2008 transit, the Fee for the transit was still based on the gross weight of the ship.

In May of this year, ACP changed the fee structure for passenger ships to charge based on number of Passenger Berths, instead of the Gross Weight. That new fee is now $100 per passenger. (Ironically, the ACP site says that the new fee structure was implemented because the Cruise Industry requested it.)

Fast forward two months, and we are back to Disney announcing that they would charge every passenger an additional $100 to cover this additional transit fee.

The problem is, the $100 isn't an additional fee. It is a replacement fee - replacing the gross weight calculation with the per-passenger calculation. So, instead of rebating customers the original transit fee value (~$83), applying it against the new fee structure ($100), and charging customers the difference ($17), they just added an additional $100 to the top.

My guess is that someone at DCL had this great idea that they could effectively double-dip and pocket the extra, and no-one would ever notice. Talking to someone in the Cruise industry about this, they were shocked to hear how Disney was handling this. No other cruise line is doing the same thing - and they are all being impacted by the new fee structure.

So after getting caught, and featured in such a public manner (including in the MP Park Updates, on the Orlando Sentinal website, etc), the DCL execs had their 'further reflection,' and decided it wasn't worth the grief and bad press.

It was a $100 increase.

The complaint most people had wasn't that Disney added more charges because the Canal charged them more. Instead, it was that Disney just added the $100 on top of what had already been charged to cover the transit.

If they had taken the approximately $83 per person that they were already paying to Panama, and applied that to the $100 per person fee, I don't think many people would have blinked. But, by trying to charge all $100, that was a whole different problem.

We checked our documents from the 2005 transit and compared the port taxes/fees line item from that trip to the port taxes/fees from this trip. Very close (the difference probably being the difference between Curacao and Aurba as a port). So, obviously, the PC fees had been included in the first fare. By claiming they hadn't on this trip - sheesh.Eh... the Panama Canal fees were included in the FARE of the first trip, but they were not a line-item in the port taxes / fees. They were rolled into the fare, as was gas and food and every other fixed cost of the cruise. The port taxes we paid on the first Panama Canal cruise were not even $90 per person, which could not have covered our "share" of the Panama Canal fee along with the other ports we visited. That <$90 represented only the taxes / fees for the ports we visited. Since Panama never assessed fees per-passenger, Disney did not either. Sure, we paid the fee, but we paid it as part of our fare, not part of the additional tax line item.

So when ACP changed the way they assess the fee, Disney added the $100 per person to the port taxes / fee line item, without reducing the FARE by the amount of the original assessment.

I completely see where someone at Disney thought this was justified. I also completely see why the passengers screamed, and why someone at Disney changed their mind.

AVP

Let me see if I can be even more cryptic this time:

Thanks - that actually did help me understand!

(Not sure WHY I needed to understand, since I have no Panama cruises in the foreseeable future, but you never know when this kind of random knowledge can come in handy!) ;)