12 Cruise Hacks That can save you $500 or more on your next cruise

There is no doubt that overall, cruising is one of the most affordable vacations, especially when you have a week or more to travel.  While most vacation options can drain your pocket book quickly, cruising doesn’t have to be a financial stretch. With the right strategies, you can easily save $500 or more on your next cruise by taking advantage of some of these hacks — without cutting out the fun stuff.

From pre-cruise planning to onboard tricks, here are my top 12  money-saving cruise hacks that Susan and I follow regularly.

1. Book Early or VERY Last-Minute

In both cases this might sound crazy, but these have held true for us time and time again. While it may sound obvious to you that cruise lines release their best (lowest) fares early (up to 18 months in advance), while looking to fill their ships well in advance, but last-minute (within 90 days of sailing) deals can save you a bundle.  Most cruise lines require final payment from their confirmed passengers 90-120 days in advance.  So when that time comes, a certain percentage of passengers will cancel their cruise at this time. 

This leaves the cruise ships with empty cabins and only 90-120 days to fill them, or risk losing money.  Be aware that if you are booking 90 days or less in advance, you will have to pay for the cruise in full at the time of booking. If you live near a port city, this gives you ample opportunity to cruise quite often on steeply discounted rates.  Even if you have to fly to your closest cruise port, as do Susan and I, it’s always worth it for us to save big and squeeze in a short-notice cruise.

Either strategy, booking early or waiting and keeping your fingers crossed for short notice deals, can save you hundreds on the base fare.

2. Cruise During Shoulder Season

If saving money on cruises is on your regular “to do” list, avoid peak travel weeks (think holidays, spring break, mid-summer) and cruise during shoulder season (e.g., April–May or September–early December). You’ll find lower fares, fewer crowds, and bonus perks.

Click here to access our Best Time to Cruise Calendar.

3. Choose a “Guarantee” Cabin

You may have heard about “guarantee” cabins from your travel advisor or read about it online.  Guarantee cabins are a great way to save a few hundred dollars, as this lets the cruise line assign your room to you.  Here is how it works:

• Select a “guarantee” cabin within your preferred cabin type, including Inside, Ocean View and Balcony.
• You will not have an option to choose a specific cabin, since the “guarantee” cabin only guarantees you the cabin type (inside, ocean view, balcony), and not a specific cabin number or even cabin location.  Often people worry that this will give them the less desirable cabin locations, though you could be one of the lucky ones that get the highest level cabin within your cabin type.
• Within 30 days of your departure date, you will get a notice from the cruise line that a specific cabin has been assigned to you.  You won’t get a choice of available cabins and you won’t have the option to request a different cabin.  This is just the rules when booking a “guarantee” cabin and enjoying the savings. 
• Now with that said, and while the “guarantee” cabin is often significantly cheaper, depending on the ships “occupancy rate” (the percentage of cabins sold for any specific cruise) this sometimes results in a free upgrade—especially on less crowded sailings.
• Note:  If you are a stress planner and need to make sure you know all of the details about your trip during the planning process, or if you have your heart set on your cabin being in the forward, aft, or middle of the ship, the “guarantee” cabin option is NOT for you.

MAK’n It Work: As most cruise lines have programs where you can bid on next level cabins, saving money by booking a “guarantee” cabin gives you more money to work with during the bid-up process.  To give you an example, we were on the Celebrity Solstice in early 2023 and booked a “guarantee” balcony room – saving about $300 per person.  When Celebrity opened up their bidding for higher level cabins, we bid $400 per person on their Celebrity Suite.  While this was a low bid in most cases, since the ship had a low occupancy rate, our bid was accepted.  So for $100 more per person than a balcony room we were originally going to pay for, we were upgraded to the pretty awesome Celebrity Suite. You can check out my video walkthrough of the Celebrity Suite on our Cruise Reviews page.

4. Skip the Drink Package — Or Share One Strategically…NOT

Most ships offer two or three different drink packages at an added cost. These packages range from a basic beverage package (soda, bottled water, specialty coffee), to packages that also includes alcoholic beverages up to a certain dollar value (typically from $10-$14 depending on the cruise line), to ultimate drink packages that include top-shelf brands. As such, drink packages can range from $360 – $600+ per couple. As the cost of the drink package is based on the duration of your cruise, the longer you stay (and drink), the more you’ll pay.

When we travel with my sister and brother-in-law, we tend to tip back quite a few each day, making sure to explore all of the various venues throughout the ship and any speciality drinks they offer. Of course 2-3 days into the cruise and we’re ready to decide on our favorite lounge, where we then become staples there for the duration of the cruise (think Norm from Cheers).  While we are not big drinkers in our day to day lives, being on a cruise is our exception, and find ourselves challenging the cruise lines to rethink their “unlimited drink policy.”

MAK’n It Work: Now if you’re not a heavy drinker, or frankly when Susan and I travel by ourselves, we find it’s far cheaper to pay per drink or take advantage of daily specials and happy hours.  We find that the two drinks we have each day, even if at $15 each, is a far cry from the $65 – $100 per day for the ultimate drink package on most cruise lines.

Of course some cruise lines like Silversea, Regent Seven Seas, Seabourn, and Crystal Cruises, just to name a few, are all inclusive and include unlimited alcohol in their pricing.

Now for anyone thinking that you can purchase a drink package for just one person in the cabin, think again.  With very few exceptions, if one person in a cabin is purchasing a drink package, then the second person in that cabin needs to purchase the same package as well — unless they are a minor in which case they would be required to purchase the non-alcohol beverage package.  While some may have the idea, especially if traveling with another couple staying in another cabin, to share the drink packages, this is a clear violation of most cruise line policies (excluding the all inclusive lines). 

5. Pack These Essentials to Avoid Pricey Onboard Purchases

As we have all had to purchase pricy everyday items while at an airport or a hotel gift shop, cruise lines also charge a premium for essentials like sunscreen, medications, and toiletries. As such, make sure to pack:

• Sunscreen
• Motion sickness bands or meds
• Refillable water bottle
• USB power hub
• Basic medications like Pepto, antacids, gum, mints, cough drops. 

MAK’n It Work: We literally saved $40+ buying cough drops in Lerwick, Shetland Islands during a port stop earlier this year, instead of paying $12 in the ships gift shop. Don’t even know if bringing cough drops with us from home would have beat the deal with got in Lerwick.

6. Skip the Laundry Service—DIY Instead

Part of the challenge of cruising is finding the right combination of clothes to take.  While some people tend to take everything and anything and travel with the maximum baggage allowed by the airlines, others try to travel with just a carry-on bag. (Susan is in the middle of her Carryon Challenge – which will be a blog post later this Summer.) While most, if not all, cruise ships have dry cleaning service, they can be a bit pricy.  But in our experience, for cruises of 7 nights or longer, most ships will run a laundry promotion halfway through the cruise, where they will offer specials like “fill the bag for $49” or “half price bag sales”, discounting their regular laundry services.

But if you really want to save on laundry services, many cruise ships, such as Carnival, Disney, Princess, Oceania, and Holland America have self-service laundry rooms. A $5 wash and dry beats $50 laundry packages, especially on longer cruises.

MAK’n It Work:  Yes, in our cruise “go bag” you will find travel detergent, a hanging clothesline and foldable hangers. Foldable hangers are great especially if you do laundry by hand in your sink and hang wet clothes, since most cruise hangers are wooden. Just another way we save on the small things to enjoy the bigger things cruising has to offer.

7. Book Excursions Independently

Cruise line excursions are not only convenient, but have several other key benefits.  Those include providing you a guarantee that you will return to the ship before “All Aboard”, and most importantly for us, they handle the financial transaction in dealing with the actual tour provider which makes it an easy transaction for us.  This is key for us when traveling in a foreign country where we do not speak or understand the local language.  But with that said, the cruise ship excursions are often double the price of local tours.

Now don’t get me wrong, we probably book half of all of our shore excursions through independent companies, often the same actual tour provider that the cruise lines use, but end up using a third party booking agency to facilitate the transaction.  If wanting to look at true cost savings for your excursions, just make sure to book directly with reputable operators like Viator or GetYourGuide.  You can also reach out to the local tourism boards in those cities.

MAK’n It Work: We have two pointers here…one to enhance your experience and the other to maximize your travel dollars. 

When traveling with a small group, even as few as four people, consider hiring your own private tour guide.  This will give you far more flexibility in what is included on the tour, as well as the ability to decide how long you stay at each location.  While the cost may seem like a lot, in our experience it is about the same as if we would have purchased a similar excursion from the cruise line in a group of 20-40 people, following their pre-determined itinerary. 

Now where our true costs savings comes in, is that when not booking excursions with the cruise lines, we book using points from one of our credit card programs.  As an example, I use Chase and their Ultimate Rewards Program.  Without getting into all of the ways you can save using credit card points programs, with Ultimate Rewards, I am able to use my points to book with Viator, our go-to when it comes to shore excursions, or pre and post cruise city stays. 

8. Use a Travel Rewards Credit Card

As I mentioned above, while I often use credit card points to pay for our shore excursions, I rely heavily on my points programs, whether through a bank credit card like Chase or Citi or an airline rewards credit card program. While I have never paid for our actual cruise with credit card points, this is the first place I turn when looking at airfare to the embarkation port.

If starting a cruise outside of the US, say from Europe or Asia, often we will find that the cruise is not the majority of our vacation expense, but it’s the cost of the airline tickets that can eat up our travel budget. OK, full disclosure, we have moved on from traveling in economy class to booking in premiere economy, which certainly has a higher price tag, but feel it’s necessary when traveling 7+ hours by plane. 

There are some amazing deals to be had through various credit card programs, and I highly recommend checking out The Points Guy, who has focused on maximizing credit card points programs for travel.

9. Use Onboard Credit Wisely

More often than not, when booking a cruise, whether through a travel advisor or through the cruise line directly, your cruise will probably come with OBC (Onboard Credit).  The OBC amount per cabin can range from $25 to several hundred dollars, depending again on the cruise line, the promotional offer provided when you booked your cruise, amongst other factor.

While it is easy to just keep charging things to your cabin, in order to try to keep that sticker shock at the end of the cruise to a minimum, I suggest using your OBC for things you’d pay for anyway, such as a WiFi package (if not included), gratuities, drink or photo packages.

Oh, and make sure to use your OBC, because in most cases, it is a spend it or lose it credit. So if you don’t use it on the ship, it will not be credited back to you. Don’t let it go to waste!

10. Watch for Price Drops After You Book

Cruise fares change more often than you think, even after you book.  While your confirmed price won’t automatically be adjusted, if you hear of or see a price drop, call your cruise line or your travel advisor — as many will adjust your fare or offer you a credit, as long as final payment has not yet been made. Once final payment is made, regardless of any price drop, it is unlikely a credit or partial refund would be made.

11. Skip the WiFi Package (or Use It Smarter)

I am one of those people that think they just can’t get along without WiFi, even though my wife assures me I can. While the technology continues to advance, Cruise WiFi is still pretty pricey—and often slow. Instead of purchasing a WiFi package, consider:

• Most cruise ships have their own internal network for their App, allowing you to see schedule of events and dining options, without having their WiFi package.
• If you feel you need WiFi from time to time, use free WiFi while in various ports
• Download any maps or docs you might need before you board
• Download entertainment (movies, music, etc.) from Netflix, Hulu, Spotify ahead of time, which will allow you to use watch or listen without being “connected”.

12. Join a Group Cruise or Host Your Own

Booking your next cruise as part of a group can come with free perks like OBC (onboard credit), drink packages, or even a free cabin if you’re the organizer.  Watch for our upcoming guide on How to Cruise for Free by Leading a Group!

The bottom line is Smart Cruising = More Cash for Cocktails, Excursions, and Memories

With just a few strategic moves, you can cruise smarter, save money, and still live your best life at sea. Use these hacks to stretch your cruise budget—so your next sailing feels first-class, even if you didn’t pay full price.