I too would wonder if a next or two day away cruise is actually bookable. Some maybe are but I’d venture a guess that many aren’t and are only listed because the embarkation date hasn’t come and gone. It’s a lot easier to write computer code that says “remove on embarkation date” than it is to go through every cruise on all the lines and remove them in essence manually. You’d also have to consider each line’s policy in terms of when they cut off new bookings. Sounds like a potential nightmare to me.

There’s also a time and distance consideration. I doubt very few people living in the US would book a last minute cruise in Europe unless they were already there or already had airline tickets. Even if you could make the flights, and that’s a big if, you’re going to pay dearly for the tickets unless you catch flights from a consolidator. You could go broke saving money on the cruise.

Of course where being able to book a truly last minute cruise really comes into play is if you live within a few hours driving time to the embarkation port. That’s a real advantage and indeed some lines actually locally advertise last minute deals in cities like Ft Lauderdale, Miami, and Seattle where locals can get there quickly. You go back before 9/11 and my late father and stepmother lived in Orlando and used to drive over to the Miami/Ft Lauderdale area looking for a bargain basement cruise. They’d stay with my dad’s brother in Miami and actually go to the cruise terminals on embarkation day and try to snatch a standby fare. They were actually pretty successful and cruised quite frequently but those days are pretty much history. Nowadays you often can’t even get into the port areas much less a cruise terminal without cruise documents in hand.