Cut Costs With Cruises

My first cruise was in 2008 with my family. As newbie cruisers, we weren’t sure what to expect. My dad already knew he sometimes gets queasy on rocky boats, my mum worried there wouldn’t be any nice food or drinkable water, and I wondered if I would feel trapped, if the ship would sink like the Titanic, and if I’d be completely bored. Anyone who has been on a cruise ship may think some of these things are ridiculous, as cruises are pretty much floating hotels with bars, discos, karaoke, and unlimited food nearly 24 hours a day, but to the unknowing first-timer, they were legitimate concerns. While my dad only gets sick on really rocky nights, his initial worry about throwing up every night was eased after the first few days. However, not all cruisers are so fortunate, and many people wear sea-sick patches or take motion sickness pills to deal with the daily ship sway (Ray uses both!). It usually does take a day or two to get your sea legs! And sometimes the same to get rid of them when you get back on land! If you are like me, you will spend a few times naturally swaying while walking on land shortly after getting off a cruise ship.

While the water on a ship often leaves little to be desired, it is drinkable, but obviously doesn’t compare to spring water. The concern about food that my mum had was quickly eased when she saw the buffet and evening dinner options. Even the pickiest of eaters could find something to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I soon found out that cruise ships are generally large and there are enough places to walk so you don’t feel confined, as long as you don’t spend too long in your cute, rather LITTLE sanctuary of an inside cabin room. We also found out there was a schedule of events each day with lots of activities for entertainment. My mum and I are rather fond of the karaoke and dancing sessions; the karaoke is more for my (Shelley) singing pleasure, and the dancing is for both of our pleasure. Of course, being English, our favorite daytime cruising activity for the ships that offer this is the afternoon tea with scones, tarts, and other delicious sweet goods!

Not only were we surprised about how great our first cruise was, but the price was a steal. While it was so far ago that I can’t remember the exact price, I do recall it being something like $449 plus all the taxes, fees, gratuities, etc., for a 5-night cruise. To our way of thinking, this is less than $100 per night, which you’d normally spend on a hotel (Granted you could claim that if there were several of us that we could split hotel rooms), plus unlimited food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, which, if you were conservative, you could say would cost around $35 per day in that alone. Plus, you get to travel from island to island, saving you flights, and you have the convenience of unpacking and not having to re-pack each time you move location. Plus, you get live entertainment, theatre shows, a mixture of magicians, comedians, gameshows, competitions, trivia, and more! Even if you don’t get what I would call a “steal” price for a cruise, this way of traveling is still great value and a better price than what it would be if you tried to fly from place to place, stay in hotels, pay for every meal you eat, and so forth.

Now for the best part: how to get good deals! The main key to this is a waiting game. Over time, and even more recently from the past cruise I did, I have realized that the more options and possibilities you let your mind open to, the less disappointed you will be, and the better deal you can find. What do I mean by this, exactly? When you plan to go on a cruise that involves you having to fly to that cruise port, you have the difficulty of trying to time when you should book that flight and cruise. You don’t want to book the cruise and then find out the flight prices are too high, or book the flight and then find out the cruise you set your hopes on sold out, so what’s the solution?

As I mentioned, keep your mind open to lots of options! This is because, as I mentioned in a previous post (How To Save Money When Booking Flights), flights often go up in price for anything less than 6 weeks out. In contrast, cruise prices tend to plummet in cost once you get 6 weeks or less from the cruising date. The closer it gets to the cruise, and it hasn’t sold out, the more the cruise line drops the price. Should you choose to buy your cruise and flight at the same time, you may get a great flight deal, but you may find out that you could’ve saved $100, $200, or maybe even $400 on a cruise, depending on the type of cruise, of course. A cruise I went on in November of 2016 was a 14-day South America cruise that started at some crazy price of $1,800 for an inside cabin. While you could view this as just a bit over $100 per day and therefore not too bad a deal, you’d also be amazed to know that this same cruise dropped to around $500 about a month before the cruise actually left for that same cabin type. We needed to book our flights and chose to book the cruise at the same time, bad idea… While there were no other cruise options for this type of cruise on the same dates, as it is one of the rarer ones, we were worried about what we would do if the cruise sold out and we were stuck with these flights.

Therefore, we waited until the cruise dropped to $999, plus taxes, fees, gratuities, etc., and considered that a good deal… Until we saw the prices plummet each week once the cruise hit about 5 weeks out. What we should’ve done is book the flights, and then keep watching the cruise price. Then, if it happened to sell out, we could’ve just spent 2 weeks roaming around South America planning out different places to see. If we had thought of that backup plan initially, we could’ve saved ourselves close to $500 each. While we still got a great deal at under $100 a night (not including all the taxes, fees, and gratuities, which do end up being a couple of extra hundred dollars), we know we could’ve gotten an even better deal if we’d been less scared and just waited.

So, keep your mind open! If you are doing something like a Caribbean cruise, have a few cruises in mind that leave on the same day or the day before or after, and wait them out. Definitely have your list of favorites, but be prepared to accept #2 on your list if your #1 happens to sell out, or #2 happens to drop to a much lower price than #1. Sometimes, if you really want to go to the places more on another cruise, then the extra price will be worth it; you just have to weigh up the pros and cons. After that somewhat costly mistake in 2016, even with being quite a seasoned traveler, we did a Greek Island cruise in 2017, and we booked our flights way ahead of time and waited until the last minute to get the best deal on that cruise! We had a few different cruise ships in mind. Granted, we had our hopes set on our top favorite option, but we had a pretty nice backup plan if cruise #1 didn’t make it. We also had another backup plan to just fly around Europe on reasonably cheap country-to-country flights and see certain cities, if all the cruise options happened to sell out and we waited too long to book. This way, no matter which of the 3 options we went for, we knew we’d be more than happy and that we’d have a blast! If we did miss the amazing Greek Islands cruise, there was always the next vacation to try! Spoiler alert: We were able to do the Greek cruise we wanted at a lower cost by booking our flight first, and then waiting until the cruise price dropped.

Another good tactic to consider is pretending you would be doing the trip this year (if the date hasn’t already passed), and keep an eye on the pricing trends over time as the cruise gets closer and closer to departure. This would help you know whether that specific itinerary you are looking for often sells out or not. Seasonality also plays a role. A Thanksgiving week cruise has a much higher chance of selling out and not dropping its price much, compared to the week before or after for the same ship and itinerary. We elected to take a weekend getaway cruise the weekend after Memorial Day, and got the same cruise for at least 50% less than the holiday weekend the week prior.

Wellness Tip: Make sure you take motion sickness pills on the ship just in case you face a rocky night. Some ships provide these for free at the guest services desk, medication machines, or in the sick bay, and some do charge you a couple of dollars. Charging people is becoming more commonplace. Some people (like Ray) may need both a sea sick patch and motion sickness pills. Some people may need just one of these. Sea sick patches are not available on the ship, and would need to be prescribed by a physician beforehand.

Parenting Tip: If you are cruising with young children, we cannot recommend the JMMD Baby Tricycle enough. This tricycle made our lives easier while cruising; it simply fit everywhere, it passed security easily, and its lightweight made it easy to carry up and down stairs when the elevator lines were way too long. It also helped keep our son engaged with the steering bar and pedals while we were in the onboarding line. You can find it on Amazon HERE.

Travel Tip: Instead of booking an excursion on the ship, you can book a local tour in advance; however, do some research online ahead of time and book something online that doesn’t require payment until you get there. If you’re feeling brave, when you get off the ship, walk towards the end of the dock and find the last area where you see tourist companies. If there is only one group, this will be the group you need to book a tour with. Do not book a tour with the first person you see. Shop around, ask a few people for prices, and find the best one for what you want to do. You can find the same tour, for the same quality, and duration for less. Do some shopping around and save yourself some money! If this seems like a hassle for you and you prefer us to book the excursion for you, simply include this detail in the Contact Us form HERE.