Has anyone here done an II cruise exchange?

I have never gone on a cruise period, so I'm not sure if this is a good deal or not. They say it's an exchange, but when you get into the transaction you have to choose the room type and a nightly rate. Is that a discounted rate compared to just buying the cruise elsewhere?

The real issue we're having is that we have 2 deposited weeks that need to have an exchange initiated by the end of June. We are trying to figure out something we can do with them because we are pretty much all booked up for travel for the next 2 years. Does II offer any kind of extension past the expiration date of the deposit?

Generally, a cruise is not a good use of your MF, when compared with buying the same cruise from a discounter (we like www.vacationstogo.com ) But if you're about to lose the prepaid MF anyway, it's better than nothing.

Someone else will have to explain extending II deposits.

Jim

I see you are asking in Starwood, but I wanted to tell you what my experience with Marriott II exchange was, in case the end result is the same.

I split my lockout and deposited the studio and kept the one bedroom. When I was looking at cruises to see what type of deals II had, I found that using my already deposited week gave me basically a discounted cruise. While the non-deposited week could be exchange for the cruise at a better rate. It was a significant difference. It seemed that exchanging a week towards a cruise needed to be done at the same time as the deposit and that a previously deposited week didn't get a cruise exchange, only a discounted cruise.

It's been a few years, 2009 I think, and they told me $1000 cruise credit for my Platinum Plus MFC. I passed on it.