10 Money-Saving Cruise Hacks (How I Save THOUSANDS)

well Cruises have become very expensive lately if you've recently booked a cruise or maybe just priced a cruise you've noticed cruise prices are on the rise however there are ways that you can save money when you book your next cruise and it might lead you to be able to sell more often and my first tip is to book the cheapest state room that you're comfortable staying in and then upgrade from there now this tip is especially useful if you book far enough in advance because the further in advance that you book The more likely you are to see price drops and in addition to that aot a lot of cruise lines actually have upgrade programs and I'm specifically talking about programs like celebrities move up program rural Caribbean Royal up program programs like these allow you to bid on stateroom upgrades before your cruise and I've saved a lot of money utilizing these upgrade bid programs and you can do the same these usually come out about a month or so before your cruise maybe a couple months before your cruise the cruise Line's going to send you an email and invite you to bid on upgrades for your cruise and then Additionally you can watch for Price drops so let's say you book an interior stateroom then you watch the prices of the cruise maybe you really want to stay in that balcony State room if you watch the cruise long enough and you watch the prices diligently you could see the price of that balcony State Room come down enough where you're comfortable with just calling up the cruise line or calling your travel agent paying the additional Fair between what you've currently booked at and that new price for the balcony and securing the room that you really want now speaking of price drops you're also going to want to check for Price drops on your cruise and again this is especially going to help out if you're booking your cruise far enough in advance you're watching for Price drops and you see the price drops you can call them or call up your travel agent and claim that price drop and actually pay the new lower fair and I've saved a lot of money doing this the next way to save money on your next cruise is to consider do you really need the drink package and I know a lot of you are like whoa like don't touch the drink package but really consider how much you're paying each day for the drink package and maybe go online do a little bit of research and comparison and see how much drinks cost on the cruise and how many do you realistically think you'll have each day and see how the math works out on that because you could save money by just buying drinks buy the drink on the cruise and I know a lot of folks like to buy the drink package because there's such a convenience there you pay for it ahead of time and you get on the ship you can just have a good time and forget and not have to count your pennies but in most cases unless you're a heavy drinker you're probably going to come out ahead by just buying your drinks buy the drink instead of paying for an expensive drink package because the thing about the drink package is you're going to have to pay that price every day of your cruise and you want to consider well maybe you're going to be in Port one day maybe you're going to be off the ship for a large majority of the day are you really going to drink enough drinks that day to justify having the drink package so just another thing to consider and saving money on your next cruise and similarly my next tip is to consider the Wi-Fi package that you're purchasing if you're purchasing Wi-Fi a lot of cruise lines have at least two different packages of Wi-Fi usually a premium and a standard some of them have even three and four tiers of Wi-Fi depending on what you want to do some uh tiers of Wi-Fi you can just send emails and maybe text messages and things like that that's perf perfectly fine for some people some people just want to be informed of what's going on back home or maybe what emails or corresponden that they're missing out on while they're on their Cruise then there's some people who might want to stream Netflix every night before they go to bed or watch YouTube videos and in order to do that they're going to need the streaming streaming internet is usually the most expensive package and there's a large gap between just needing internet for email and text messages and needing it for streaming capabilities so you can save yourself quite a bit of money uh if you don't need streaming quality internet just buy the basic internet and save yourself the extra coins tip number five is to book any upgrades for your cruise and I'm talking about drink packages or Wi-Fi or specialty dining you want to make those purchases before you step foot on the cruise ship because once you step on board the ship you are going to pay full price for those items and a lot of times the cruise lines are going to offer specials just about every holiday they offer some special some flash sale on the drink package or the Wi-Fi package or specialty dining you want to make sure you book all those things ahead of time so that you get the lowest price and in addition to that you want to keep checking the price just like you're checking the price on that cruise for those price drops check the price of any packages that you purchased because most Cruise Lines will actually let you cancel those at any time to get a refund and then you can just rebook them at the lower price happens with special to dining excursions anything you can pre- purchase from the cruise line most Cruise Lines will let you cancel and rebook at the lower price tip number six is if you're flying check with the cruise line and see if they offer airfare for your cruise because Cruise Lines often get special negotiated prices because they book in bulk they buy a lot of tickets from the airlines so the airlines give them discounts discounts that you're not going to see if you're booking directly with the airline yourself and in addition to this there's often special protections that are built in to purchasing your airfare directly through the cruise line protections like if the flight's delayed the cruise line will actually help you either they'll wait on you uh or they'll actually help you get to the next Port so go and check out the specific protection for the cruise line you're selling with but most of them do offer things like that which just make booking your airfare with the cruise line even sweeter my tip number seven is to book your own ground transportation for your cruise a lot of cruise lines will offer ground transportation between the airport and the cruise ship so let's say you're flying into Miami the cruise line that you're selling with might be charging $50 per person to transport you from Miami International over to the Port of Miami $50 a person is quite steep considering you could get ride share or a taxi depending on what city you're in there might be trains available and believe me when I say Cruise Lines will charge a premium for ground transportation so make sure you're double-checking those prices and seeing if you can do it cheaper yourself to save a few bucks tip number eight is to skip the photos on board the ship and what I mean by that is you know they set up on elegant night all those cool backdrops they come around in the dining room and take photos of you they might just see you out on deck and see if you want a picture and it's great it's fun to get your photo taken like that it's fun to get dressed up and go to a photo shoot but if you go to the photo gallery and check out those pictures they often are sold at a premium so my recommendation if you really want to save money on your cruise is unless it's a must buy photo unless it's the best you've ever looked in your entire life is to just take the photo yourself there are so many picturesque locations around the ship many beautiful beaches and landmarks where you can ask someone to take your photo or to get a good family photos so maybe consider getting some of the photos that you normally would buy from the Cruise Line Take It On your cell phone and then you can print them out later at home and you'll save yourself quite a bit of money by doing so my next tip for saving money on your next cruise is to book independent shore excursions now this is a big one because cruise lines are going to sell you on booking your cruise excursions with them they're going to tell you that if you book with anyone else you're probably going to get left in the port most of the time in my experience when you book a short Excursion with the cruise line two things are going to happen number one you're going to overpay and number two you're going to take a very crowded and very rough rushed shore excursions they put so many people on those charter buses and it takes a lot of time to load those folks on the bus and load those folks off the bus you really don't get as much time to see all the beautiful ports and destinations that you're visiting as you would on an independent Shore Excursion and by independent Shore Excursion I mean a Shore Excursion that you've booked with someone other than the cruise line and I can promise you that you're going to pay significantly less by booking an independent short Excursion versus booking it with the cruise line you're also going to get to see a whole lot more you're not going to be crowded in with a bunch of people so so I really like to book independent short excursions as much as I can uh short excursions group is a great way to do that if you go to their website I'll actually put a link down in the description down below to short excisions group because I use them all around the world and I think they're great and contrary to what the cruise lines would tell you most of the time when you book independent short excursions there's a guarantee there that they're going to get you back in time for the ship so you're not going to miss the ship and you're going to save a lot of money by booking independent and my last tip is to always always purchase the travel insurance because travel insurance covers a large host of things things like medical insurance emergency evacuation insurance so imagine you have a medical event on board a ship and you're out in the middle of the ocean you have to be metab backed out travel insurance can cover that travel insurance could cover things like trip delays trip cancellations all of that is included in travel insurance and you're just going to pay a small percentage of the price of your entire cruise to have the peace of mind that everything is covered cuz folks let's be honest the cruise lines often don't care what emergency you have in your life what personal thing you have in your life what reason you need to cancel the cruise they're still going to take your money and not give you a penny of it back so if you have travel insurance travel insurance is going to make sure that you are compensated for any money that you lose when you have to cancel so those are my 10 tips for saving money on your next Cruise let me know down in the comments what I missed do you have tips maybe that I didn't mention in this video what do you usually do to save money on your cruises thank you so much for watching this video and I'll see you on the next adventure

Channel: Zach the Traveling Man

Views: 3,314

Keywords: cruise tips, cruise tips and tricks, cruise tips for first timers, cruise advice, life well cruised, cruise hacks, first time cruise tips, embarkation process, tips for cruisers, carnival cruise tips, zach the traveling man, tips for first time cruisers, tips for embarkation day, boarding a cruise ship, embarkation on a cruise ship, cruise ship embarkation, how to save money on a cruise, cruise ship, cruise travel tips, cruise on a budget, cruise secrets, travel hacks

Id: X-tOMYYQCik

Length: 9min 0sec (540 seconds)

Published: Sat May 25 2024