Just for fun, I decided to price out a repositioning cruise on NCL to start in a month from the time this entry is made public. Although I have no interest in taking this particular cruise, it illustrates the irrationality of some prices available to the potential cruiser.
You'll note that all prices are for solo cruisers. I have sailed (or will have sailed) in every category save for the Studio, the Spa, and the Haven. If pricing for this cruise was completely rational, the Studio cabin wouldn't be priced as high as it is. From what I can tell, it is a smaller version of an inside cabin with access to a "Studio Only" travel area. (Singles can mix here.) So, why is it priced more than the Inside cabin, the Oceanview cabin, and a Balcony cabin. It costs almost as much as the Club Balcony Suite. If I were taking this particular cruise, I'd spend the extra $124 and get almost 3 times the room to spread out AND have a balcony of my own.
Once one decides to go above the Club Balcony Suite level, prices start going into the stratosphere. I can only imagine how much money I'd want in my bank account before I'd even consider a room in the Haven. (When a suite there has more room than my apartment, the Haven is geared to people who have lots of money to burn.) I've met people who have cruised in both the Spa and the Haven suites, and they loved them. For me, I'll wait for the excuse to take a very special trip and then drop the coin to make it special for me and a potential partner.
With certain exceptions, you usually get what you pay for. Sometimes you get more. And sometimes, you get less. Before the pandemic struck, I found a Repositioning / Panama Canal cruise that I could have taken for $1000 - 21 days, New York to Seattle. Unfortunately, that cruise had to be cancelled on account of the pandemic. Later in the year, there was a 11 day Hawaii Cruise Tour (effectively 10 days of activities) that I could have taken for half the price the same package sells for today. This, too, was cancelled because of the pandemic. An ex girlfriend of many years ago was very sad about this, as she was looking to take this cruise with 3 of her girlfriends. (I could only imagine what would have happened if we bumped into each other on the cruise.)
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I have been tracking the price of another cruise I've been interested in as it gets closer to sail date. If I'm right, the price will drop another $50/stateroom class one or two more times before the ship sails. However, I wouldn't want to risk losing this deal at this point - so I'll be buying my tickets soon....
