For me, at least for now, churning is for (almost) free vacation for my family of four. (Last time we took a free amtrak vacation on Zephyr and it was awesome). We are next eying for our very first (5-7 days long) cruise, preferably from Galveston, TX port . (I'll consider any port if it turns out its good value).

I searched all over but could not find a churn 'path' for an (almost) free cruise trip. Can someone please advise. Thanks.

If it matters (for any conversion), I (will soon) have following points

Thank You : 100K
Southwest : 50K
Hilton : 100K
Marriott : 70K
American : 30K
Amtrak : 40K
United : 50K
Priority Club: 80K

The only real path to a free cruise that I know is to become a guest lecturer (BTDT). There are cards, but they are not Chase, so manufacturing sufficient spend is difficult and, in reality, you are just getting shipboard credit at a 1% rate per dollar of spend. Galveston, is a good drive-to bargain port. I suggest Royal Caribbean over Carnival if the kiddos are middle school or over.

BTW, you might check the TYR program regarding cruises since you have 100k, but you likely will need alot more k. Unfortunately that is a Citi program and I have no quick fixes to bulk TYRs.

Redeem your Thank You Points for $1,000 worth of gift certificates for Carnival Cruise line or Royal Carribean.

If the Thank You Points are all in your name, convince your spouse to apply for two Citi Premier Cards, using the double browser trick, for another $1,000 worth of Carnival or Royal Carribean gift certificates.

Otherwise, apply for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card for a $400 statement credit or the Ink Bold for a $500 statement credit (although the points might be more valuable transferred to an airline or hotel program, some people use them to replace cash expenses on a trip). Or, the Capital One Venture Card (10,000 point bonus) gives $100 reimbursement for travel expenses.

Would you need airfare to Galveston?

Think about your points and miles as a supplement to reduce your cost on flights or hotels associated with a cruise.

There is no real means to use any of what you have to get a "free cruise". The cruiselines' own cards only earn you 1% rebate which would take mucho spending for you to even make a dent on your cruise fare, realistically.

As for the certificates - before you order up such, be sure to check all the T&Cs - whether you can use 10 x $100 certificates on a single cruise (they dont come in $1000, but $100 denomination.) And also whether they can be applied to ALL prices or must be certain category and up - prices vary a great deal from lowest category to just lower mid level category - And whether using the cert would preclude you from getting any agency discount and such (RCL does not have such, agent usually use OBC as substitute but CCL and all CCL owns lines do have agency incentives on select sailing - can make a good difference with or without.) There are quite a lot of fine prints in using these certs. Good luck in figuring them all out. Key is not get trapped with such certs you ordered, and wound up do not actually getting any saving when you have to pay a higher price in order to use those certs - so you actually wound up LOSING. No saving in cruise fares, but lost the pts as you redeemed it for the cruise instead of other things.

What you need is a good cruise agent, as well as monitoring some cruise discount sites (cruises-n-more comes to mind) and try to cruise at a close-in window. However if you have to go by school holidays, then forget about much discount because thousands and thousands of families are doing the same thing. In fact RCCL's ships could have 1/3 of the passengers are all school-aged kids... during school holidays. Whether this is your kind of cruise vacation, it is of course up to you.

If your kids are young enough, it pays to take them out of school for just a few days and cruise just at the edge on both ends of the school holidays - much cheaper prices and much calmer cruises. Or if your kids are good in self-disciplined, they would do their assignments even on vacation, then anytime of missing a few days of school is no big deal.

I agree with happy's post.

I sail with cranival 2-3 times a year. The barclays's carnival card was my primary account. Took a lot of spending until I finally hit 100,000 fun points and was able to get $1,000 off my next cruise. I figured out I was better off with a cash back card.

Then after finding this site, I planned on churning cards for free cruises but have only ended up using points for flights/hotels and paying for my cruises. The points are just much more valuable that way. The way I look at it, I can sail from any port and not have to worry about the added expense of getting there.

In case you didn't know you can use UR points towards cruises at $.0125 per point. (I wouldn't do the statement credit mentioned above) The only catch is you have to have enough for full redemption and call the 1(800) number because you can't book online (phone fee is waived). The ones I priced out were the same prices as the cruise line's website.

Southwest rewards can be redeemed on Carnival. Values are dependent on days/duration. However, for our last cruise, it made more sense for us to redeem for flights & pay for the cruise; even if the cruise would have been free. It all depends on how you value your miles.
http://www.southwest.com/html/rapidr...rds/index.html

Keep in mind you must have the rapid rewards credit card to redeem for this. You probably do since you have so many RR points

I would save miles/points for other use.

Over supply of cabins/ships means very cheap prices right now imho. The industry is trying to keep prices up but you can still find great deals.

I am not talking about the smug Amex Platinum/Centurion card holders who say they got free bubble wine or $300 cabin credit or cabin upgrade but much better deals.

Drive to port using gas cards gotten with points, or get flight with points.
Apply for 2 more cards, charge cruise to cards to make some required spend.
Use the points gained from new cards for land based vacation for free, consider it an offset for what you paid for the cruise....also check out using card in casino onboard to finish required spend.....of course cruise extras like tips, soda cards, gas surcharges, bar tab, shore excursions, ect. will pad the card you use also.
If it's your first and your taking kids, try a 4-5 day, be prepared for tight living quarters. Think about the smallest room you ever stayed in, and unless it was in asia, think smaller.
even if you get a deal on a quad cabin, be prepared for lots of add on fees...safe estimate for cruises is $100 pp/pn
You can do it for less if you book your own excursions, sneak on a bottle of booze, share a soda card, stay away from casino and specialty resteraunts, and ask for a discount on the demanded tip that they charge per person.
It is a fun way to see multiple destinations, and the food is good, most companies provide a good time, but with kids, I'd look for deals on a disney ship. Carnival and Royal Caribbean are also family oriented to a lesser degree....NCL, Celebrity and Princess not so much...older crowd who will frown at your kids unless they have good manners and you have control of them.

Do check into the Carnival-Southwest Airlines deal. Southwest is a Chase card and I do magic tricks with Chase cards. But I will say RCL and Disney would be better for a cruising first impression.

WOW...Lots of extremely helpful comments. Thanks. let them keep coming.

To answer few questions (OP here) : If its Galveston, I dont need a flight. Yes, We'll be taking kids ( elementary school aged). We may be forced to cruise on school holidays only as the school district has some crappy rules on missing 3+ days of school unexcused. I dont want to train my kids to make-up a story to make it excused. I do agree that missing few days of elementary school is not a big deal though.

Seems like, I need to use my Fidelity AMEX Retirement Rewards points (2 cents per dollar cashback), which was my primary card before I got into churning. As it can be redeemed for cash at anytime for any reason without any devaluation, that was my last option. But, it seems thats the only option.

And if you have a good cruise agent, you usually can do better, even at rock bottom prices you may still get a small break. Besides if you use a cruise-only agent, over the time you build up a relationship that you get a much better personal service then book directly with cruise lines or with online travel services.

We cruise a lot. This year we did a TATL Ft. Lauderdale to Europe in late April. In October we will do a Holy Lands followed by a TATL back to Ft. Lauderdale. Total days on cruises this year would be 39 days with the 3 cruises. They were all rockbottom last minute prices. While my agent does not have group discount on those, she could still give me a small break like absorbing 30 to 50% of the taxes. Our cruises add volume to her bookings even though we dont book fancy cabins. We also dont need her to hold hands in choosing cruises or monitoring prices. I tell her what we are eyeing, what all-in prices she can quote, and is there any OBC from her side. We then decided which to book. I do the request for shareholder benefits by myself. Once that is done, I ask her to send me an updated guest copy of invoice on which the OBC is listed. In short, she would not make much money from our bookings, but she also does not need to do much work, and our bookings add value to her yearly total volume. So it is a win-win relationship that we have since 2006 after I got her thru a private referral from a friend on cruisecritic board. All her business is from customers referrals among customers.

It depends. A Carnival new ship such as Breeze or Dream, would beat RCCL's crappy Vision of the Sea or Grandeur of the Sea by a Mile.

New cruisers need to know lines have their own characters, and ships within the same lines are of different classes, and age. They make huge difference in terms of the "fit" between you and the cruise chosen.

Dont think cruise is an all-inclusive vacation as advertised. The daily gratuity is not included - the attendants rely on your tips for their living. Please pay the recommended amount and dont skim it.

Other expenses just like any other incidentals you would incur on a land trip - if you eat at the fancier specialty restaurants, drink alcohol or soda or specialty coffee / tea and fresh juice, eat ice cream outside the normal free hours (dining room, for example, is always free), and of course the shore excursion (just like your normal sightseeing tours on shore, but somewhat more expensive.) You need to factor those into your spending budget as well.

Some thoughts in no particular order.

1) There are two questions sort of being conflated here: (1) how can you use points to cruise, and (2) how to best earn points for cruise expenses. If you want to simply accrue miles or points with credit card spend to use on a cruise, I would look into whether cruising counts as a "travel" expense for the captial one venture card. There was a big promotion several months ago for the capital one, which people jumped on and then sort of forgot about the card, but it's pretty flexible. Every $1 you spend earns you 2 points. Each point can be redeemed for $.01 in travel. You just put the travel on your card and then pay it off with the points. If cruises qualify, that means you can simply pay for your cruise with your card and then pay the card with points at a rate of 2 percent cash back. While using the capital one card on all spend is not that efficient -- there are better cards for better categories -- for a one-card-in-my-wallet to go on a great cruise for my credit car spend, no muss no fuss, I think it might be a winner if you don't mind leaving some bonuses on the table.

2) With respect to how to pay for a cruise to get the most miles for the payment, I think there are two good options. First, is the Chase Sapphire card. It gives you 2 points per dollar spent on the cruise. Second, for Disney Cruises, you can buy disney gift cards at stores like Walgreens. If you have a Hilton Amex, you earn 6 points per dollar. So, if you value Hilton at more than 1/3 of chase, this is a good way to go. Many of the cruise lines make it hard to pay for the cruise with gift cards. There are restrictions in how you use them, etc. Disney is easy. You can pay off your cruise with them. When on board, you can pay all your expenses with them. They just add the value right to your account. (Note that neither of these options will work if you wanted to use capital one points -- you have to pay for the cruise with the card to make that work.)

3) Understand that all travel agents get good commissions on cruises. Most of them will rebate some of that commission to you in order to use them. The rebates can come in various forms. Some will give it to you in a flat reduction of the cruise price (though some cruises limit this). Others will give it to you in on board credits -- cash you can spend on board. Still others will give it to you in the form of credit card miles or points -- for example, Chase UR has its captive travel agency that offers up to 5x points to book through them. You won't get a discount, but depending on the value you put on points, it might be the way to go.

4) Happy sounds like she cruises more than we do, so you're getting good advice there, but I'm much less interested in the services provided by a travel agent as the discount. We plan everything ourselves and do all our own research, so I pick my travel agent based on the best deals. There are web sites where, once you know what you want, you can enter the details and get competing quotes from various agencies. I never much liked this, because I always found better deals on my own, until I got a quote for an upcoming cruise that's way better than anything I was able to work out even on my usual suspects of best deals.

5) For your kids' ages, disney gets very high marks. You need to have a very high tolerance for disney style entertainment, though. And there isn't as much to do for adults at night if the kids like the clubs. But disney really has it down to a science. It's also, though, much more expensive, although they don't nickle and dime you as much once on board like other lines.

6) I think Galveston has two really nice RCL ships in their ports for the next several months -- the Navigator and Mariner. They are headed to South East Asia and Europe for the summer, though.

Last year we were able to turn the Marriott 70k visa (x2) into a $1000 cruise discount and use AA miles to get a family of 4 flown into the port. It was during the spring break season, so the vacation wasn't entirely free, but considering the free flights, free hotel night prior to the cruise and the half price cruise, it was a great redemption in my opinion. It was especially nice for the sibling rivalry as my brother took the same cruise and paid full price for everything for his family (flights, cruise, etc.).

Looking at the cruise discounts again, though, it appears you need approximately 50k more Marriott points to get the same $1000 off, so I would think hard before going down that route and saving the points for other vacations.

I was able to book a cruise using my UR points and paying the remainder on my Chase Sapphire Preferred Card, so it appears you do NOT need to have enough points for the full redemption.