I'm planning to take a 7-day Cruise with my wife November 6th. I'll be flying from Southern Cali (read: LAX or SAN) to Miami. I have a 33k on Delta for a free flight, but am open to other options to getting both of us there for free. Also, are there any rewards programs/credit cards that can help with the price of the cruise itself?

Thanks for your help!

Bryan

Marriott Chase card has some kind of program where you go thorugh their cruise agency.

But best situation is the Royal Caribbean Visa Card through Bank of America. Can earn all kinds of shipboard credits or even a free cruise. Princess has something similar with BarlcayCard.

Worldspan

the cruise is mia-mia?....have you looked on dl for availability?..find out what the cruise air costs....look on travelocity/expedia for your dates for a range of carriers & flights....good luck...

ps...i assume you want cheap? & both on the same flights, so see what dl charges for the paid fare if you can find the award....

[QUOTE=thunderl;16880039]I'm planning to take a 7-day Cruise with my wife November 6th. I'll be flying from Southern Cali (read: LAX or SAN) to Miami. I have a 33k on Delta for a free flight, but am open to other options to getting both of us there for free. Also, are there any rewards programs/credit cards that can help with the price of the cruise itself?

I am a newbie too. We used Marriott's Rewards page to book our cruise through Cruises Only. They award points 6-8 weeks after cruising. We received a better rate and more upgrades than any of the other sites I checked. (many!) Also spoke w/many at hotel and on ship. It seems like we did very well.

BTW---do you know about www.cruisecritic.com? Great site for info.

Check into the Best Western Gift Cards to cover your precruise hotel stay, else get a Hyatt Card or a Hilton card for free nights to cover. Next consider a Citi AA double/triple card play to cover your air fare. MIA and FLL are relatively easy to substitute for each other. You need an ff program that allows one ways at half cost as many times you can find an ff flight in (especially if you arrive a day before), but not out. Try an AARP 5% CB card to rack up cash for the trip.

Dunno your itinerary, but get over to cruisecritic.com and cruisemates.com to learn about your ship.

Does sound like you are a relative newbie to cruising. Check with your airline ff program for deals or a discount online broker. Many of us use vacationstogo for their lisiting of alternatives cruises available. No endorsement pro or con for prices - just focus on alternatives. Also you are still in the storm season, so watch the weather as you get closer.

Hi,

I am a newbie as well. I have been looking for something similar. I am planning a cruise in Hawaii. I hate to use my points for a cruise, as the reward cost is not very good. I have found you usually get 1-2 cents per point for cruises. On hotels and airlines you can get a lot better. This is my wife's, my parent's, and my aunt's dream and so we are all working together on this one. I have the mileage for the air fair figured out, but I am working on the cruise details.

Here is what I have so far:

Chase offers cruise rewards through their Ultimate Rewards Program. For the cruise I am looking at it will cost about 200,000 points. We have 100,000 through the chase sapphire program sign up bonus (right now you can only get the 50,000, but I was able to slid in at the 100,000 level). I will be having my wife apply for a chase sapphire card as well, to get us another 50,000. I talked to chase, and they said they can combine spouse points. You can also combine your chase sapphire points with your chase freedom card as well. This could get you some more points.

For anything that is missing, you can use cash, or I am hoping to use a gift card. Discover card will double the amount you buy with their points (for Norweigen). So for example, if you buy a $25 gift card with their points, they will give you $50. This will help some. This is at least for the cruise line we are looking to go on.

Hope this helps.

If you are going to be cruising with Royal Caribbean you can sign up for their BoA Visa card and start earning points on that. You can earn free on board credit (which works like real cash) and might even get free 7 day cruise but you will have to spend A LOT of $$$ to get that. (i think it's about 100k points)

Best to get the card, make a transaction, stripmine the $100 shipboard credit and then forget the card.

Check the reviews for NCL on this route. Nice itinerary but manage your service expectations.

Actually, the Citi Premier Thank You Card is offering a 50k points bonus ($125 Annual Fee though, $2k spend/3mos.) that you could convert into 5-$100 Carnival or Royal caribbean gift cards.

Also, the Chase Sapphire Preffered 50k points bonus ($0 Annual Fee 1st Yr, $3k spend/3 mos.) can convert into 2-$200 Carnival or Royal Caribbean gift cards with 10k points leftover. Or, you can just use the Sapphire points to pay yourself $500 cashback and use that for the credit card payment that you'd have charged your cruise to (so that you receive points for the cruise purchase as well).

Is 10k the best bonus on the royal caribbean visa? I'm not sure I want another card just for a $100 on board credit. I guess if you have a $5,000 cruise coming up and you purchase it on the card, it's another 10k points for another $100 in on board credit, but for a spend of 5k I'd like to think I can do better on another card (e.g., the starwood card) than a $100 on board credit.

Agreed (even though I am not a cruise fan - that is a great website for cruises). I would also suggest signing up with the cruise lines I was interested in to get promos through email or snail mail. Also suggest checking with Virtuoso agents if the cruise is middle to higher end. I think that these days it may pay to look at cruises you think you may not be able to afford because they might include more "freebies" than lower end cruises (everything from airfare to land excursions to liquor to tips). In the end - it's the overall cost of the trip that matters. Robyn

We cruise enough to be mid tier elites on both Princess and HAL lines and low tier on RCL but we dont have a single cruiseline-branded card. I think this is enough to tell the story how much worth the cruiseline cards are.

What you really need is an excellent, cruise-only Volume agent who can give you a very competitive pricing, as well as shipboard credits that often are part of the incentive programs offered to volume agents. (you would be booked as part of an "invisible" group, thus enjoy group perks).

Being shareholder of CCL and RCL also provide shipboard credit benefit. 100 shares would do.

Finally if you would cruise at least once every couple years, ALWAYS purchase the Future Cruise Open Booking onboard - a measly $100 per person that can be used for your next cruise with the line, allows you to book with very reduced deposit (that $100), AND shipboard credit based on length of cruise.

Only if you would normally use ALL the amenities with a mass market cruise lines...

For starter, the land excursions are 100% to 200% inflated priced.

The liquor is a cash cow of the ship. There is actually a documentary on an NCL voyage that the cruise started out at below-target revenue (based on booking as the ship did not sale full) and ended at just break-even profit wise for a large part due to liquor sales soared towards the tail end of the cruise for whatever reason.

So for DIY folks the all-inclusive package does not work at all especially if one does not want to travel with a tour group. For those who dont drink or only drink very moderately, the all-inclusive price is making these folks to subsidize those who drink heavily...

Tips on Mass Market Lines generally are $12 per person per day for suite occupants, and $10.50 to $11.50 per person per day for ordinary cabin. The service is no less than the high end market. The cabin attendants and the waiters / assistant waiters earn very little wage and their income rely on the tips from the passengers - that virtually guarantee you would get much better services than equivalent setting on land (hotel and restaurant landside).

As for airfares, one can either do an add-on as cruise-air with the mass market lines, or do the flights independently. I would strongly recommend people do it independently because even the high end lines DONT use regular tickets but "consolidator" tickets which can be a nightmare if there is any IRROP. Cruisecritics board has a forum specifically for Air and there is STICKY on why Cruise-Air is not a very good idea unless there is a huge price differential to offset the risk which varies on itinerary / destination, needless to say. Some itineraries you have no choice - such as Amazon cruise - that you must use cruise air because only Charter flights fly to the embarkation point if you dont do a round trip from US but choose to do only one-way - you either need the charter flight to fly down or to fly home.