Royal Caribbean cruises
 

I am thinking to buy cruice for next January.

Should I buy it now or later? When do I get best price?
And where to buy? Directly from Royal Caribbean or another web page?

I recently asked a very similar question - the answers I received will probably help you, too.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/crui...irect-ota.html

When to buy is pretty difficult to answer. Default rule of thumb is as early as possible, particularly if you are set on going on a specific itinerary and date. However, RC and most other cruise lines will adjust specific sailing prices up and down according to how sales are going. More often than not, the ship's analytics are pretty good and prices will slowly go up as the ship fills. Where you might see prices go down is if it's a relatively new itinerary that they don't have a lot of data on or if there was a change (eg. ship had to change itinerary due to departure/port of call issues like conflict or weather).

Another milestone to watch for is just past final payment date which is 75 days prior to the cruise for RC. After final payment, they kind of know who's committed to the cruise and how many cabin they still have to fill. If there are a lot of cabins left to fill there might be some discounting. But it's obviously a risk booking booking 75 days out regarding pricing, cabin availability, flights, etc.

What cruise route are you interested in? Are you flexible as to when in January you want to sail?

I always buy as early as possible. They typically will lower the price if it goes down, but wont raise the price if price goes up.

As long as you can float the deposit, no harm to book it early, as long as its fully refundable