Choosing Cruises - figuring out how to compare apples and oranges

 

RQS and I have been thinking of taking one of two New England/Eastern Canada. The first is a 7 day cruise where I've been to all of the ports before, either on NCL or Princess.

The only port I'd want to visit again on a cruise would be Halifax, as I'd like to show RQS around Peggy's Cove.  (See Lighthouse picture at the top of this post.)  It's a beautiful place, and worth going there for the photo opportunities alone.  However there is a 10 day cruise which has me salivating.

However, the above cruise makes a little more sense to me, as it adds 2 ports that I have yet to visit, Charlottetown and Sydney.  Strangely enough there is only a $20/pp difference in the price of a balcony cabin for the 7 and 10 day cruises.  

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Ideally, I'd have convinced RQS to have taken the above cruise.  You'll note that there is no map associated with it.  But I think it's because this cruise is a "one-off" that includes 3 ports in Greenland, and 2 ports in the Maritime provinces which I've yet to visit.

Hopefully, this cruise will be offered again in the future.

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Once a cruise has been selected, we now have the question to go with the "Free at Sea" package, or just go for the cheapest rates.  The difference between a "Sail Away" cabin rate ($849 before taxes and port fees) and a "Free at Sea" cabin rate ($1018 before taxes and port fees) is $169/pp.  When one factor in the following, the "Free at Sea" rate seems to make more sense.

• The Travel Agency is kicking in a $125 onboard credit for the cabin. ($62.50/pp)
• NCL provides 2 specialty dinners for 2.  (I consider this a $100/pp value)
• NCL provides 300 minutes of free Wifi.  (I think this can be upgraded to unlimited for $150,  based on the deal I'm being offered on my Hawaii cruise.)
• NCL provides a $50/cabin shore excursion credit for each excursion booked through the cruise line.  (NCL's excursions are overpriced, so this is not a great value.)
• NCL provides an unlimited open bar package.  (Based on what I'm paying for this package on my Hawaii cruise, I think this adds an extra $250 in taxes for each person in the cabin.)  Since RQS and I do not drink that much, opting for unlimited liquor may not make sense.  We'd each need to consume 3 alcoholic drinks each day to break even on this option.  Could we get an unlimited soft drink package in its stead?

To me, it seems like the "Free at Sea" deal is a breakeven proposition.  Couple the onboard credit with the specialty dinners, and we'd get the "free" Wifi for $6.50/pp.

What would you do if you were in our shoes?

Cruise Affordability

 

The other day, I discussed potential cruises with RQS.  We had found an Alaska 9 day cruise for a reasonably cheap price ($799 pp/double occupancy, excluding fees/taxes) that RQS was interested in taking.  Since I didn't want to do Alaska this year, I made a simple suggestion - look at the excursion package prices.  That was enough to get her to realize that 2022 wasn't the time to go to Alaska.

One thing I've learned about cruising is that shore excursions can easily double the price of a cruise. I could have easily busted my budget on my last cruise if I took ALL the excursion options available to me. Instead, I chose the option that allowed me to see parts of a city that I've never visited before.  But what happens on a cruise where ALL the ports have desired excursions?

Alaska and Hawaii cruises are known for their expensive excursions.  One takes these excursions to experience things that have no equivalents anywhere else.  Alaska has glaciers.  Hawaii has volcanoes. This is a simplistic explanation of the states' uniqueness.  And this uniqueness is why both states are on many peoples bucket lists.  Where else can you take a bus to see a glacier from a port city?  Where else can you get to an active volcano from a port city?  Both states are isolated and expensive to reach.  So they will be expensive places to visit.

If I wanted to cruise on the cheap, I'd stay in the Caribbean for my cruises.  Once you've seen an island with a fort, an island with a pristine beach, and an island with a tourist oriented shopping area, they all seem the same.  The specific details may be different for each island, but not enough is different to make any island stand out for long.  So, once a person has sailed the 3 Caribbean areas (West, South, and East), there is not much new to see.  Instead, a Caribbean cruise is a series of beach days that takes place on different islands.

Over time, a cruiser may decide to stay on the boat and avoid Caribbean shore excursions altogether.  The ship has become its own destination.  For me, that is how I afford many of my cruises.  When I think of my former cruise partner, she complained that we don't go on any shore excursions.  I'm not going into the reasons why I didn't go on excursions with her, save that there were none that made sense for us to go on.  Once one has cruised the same route (or a similar route) several times, one has already done the excursions worth doing.  The boat is now the destination, and not the Caribbean islands.

I monitor cruise prices all the time for trips I might want to take.  There are price points that one must set, where when prices fall below them, it's time to consider buying a ticket.  This was the case for my most recent winter cruise.  The cruise line effectively made me an office I couldn't refuse.  This is how I afford my trips....

I have decided NOT to take that cruise after all

 

My cruise partner and I just got sticker shock looking at how much taxes and port fees added to the rack rate for the cruise we were planning to take.  For a 5 day cruise to Bermuda, we were looking at a $450 pp cabin price, expecting $200 pp added in other costs.  Well, these costs were even more than that, and the cheapest price for the cabin we wanted would have set us back over $900 pp. Add in another $75 pp for gratuities, and we're nearing $1,000 pp. OUCH!  There goes that vacation plan....

Both of us still want to take a mini vacation.  Given that neither of us have been in DC for a while, that might be our next trip.  If we do this trip, we will see her cousin, and I will be traveling solely as Mario.  It'll be strange taking a vacation as Mario for a change.  But it will be worth it to have someone to travel with....

Here's a cruise similar to what I took in December.

I just saw the pricing of the above cruise, and figured I should mention it.  Given that we're less than a month out from the cruise, NCL has priced it to look like another "Unicorn" is out there for hunting. The key differences between this cruise and the cruise I took in December are: (1) the replacement of the port of Charleston, SC with Nassau and (2) my cruise took place on the Gem, while this cruise takes place on the Getaway.

If I were to take this cruise, I'd go for the mini-suite again, and possibly sail as Mario.  Why Mario, you might ask?  Well, I might want to get off in the Bahamas, and don't want any hassles with Bahamian customs.  At $749, plus taxes, port fees, and gratuities for a mini suite, this is a bargain!  But I am not interested in this cruise, as I was bored when I was in Nassau with XGFJ, and that there is nothing worth doing in Port Canaveral.

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My brother looks at auctions to occupy his time.  I look at cruise deals.  In this age of the pandemic, good deals keep coming around.  Although ship capacity is often limited to 50% these days, it is possible that added capacity will only serve to raise prices.  Recently, one video blogger prognosticated that when cruise lines start creeping back to sailing at 100% capacity, that pandemic suppressed demand will cause cruise prices to go up instead of down.  A cruise group he organizes had cabin prices double since he organized that group.

 

Right now, I expect that there will be a lot of last minute price drops until people get wise to the fact that cruise ships are no longer floating Petri Dishes. It's too bad that I couldn't take advantage of last minute discounts for the Hawaii cruise I'll be taking later this year. I simply love the idea of a good bargain.

On the topic of my Hawaiian cruise, I wonder if I will have a traveling companion by then.  If so, will she be comfortable with me sailing as Marian?  Who knows?  But it will be a very interesting situation of this were to come to pass.  And if it comes to pass, will I be able to get her a cruise ticket without putting the deal I have at risk?

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Originally, I was planning on taking my Hawaii cruise in Marian mode.  I am hoping that I will be able to do so later this year.  Keep your fingers crossed for me....

 

 

 

What would you do in my shoes?

Normally, when someone says that they snagged a deal way too good to be true, it means that the person with the deal may have been scammed.  I recently snagged a deal way too good to be true, and I have yet to feel that I have been scammed.  (I'll write more about this when I return from my cruise.)  Yet, I have a very minor gripe.  The price of my mini suite has dropped $250 since I booked the cruise, and I'd like to get some kind of freebie from the line (such as a soft drink package) to say thanks for booking the cruise at this price.

If you look at the map above, there are 6 staterooms in orange and brown.  (Port: 11632-11636, Starboard: 11132-11136.)  I have one of these staterooms.  From what I read, there are only 4 mini suites on the ship - all "Aft". But I could be misreading things, and there could be another 4 "Forward" mini suites as well.  As of the time I'm writing this entry, there was at least 1 "sail away" mini suite available.  This means, that if I rebooked my cruise to get the lower price, I might get a room of a lesser perceived value.  If one assumes I'm in room 11636 (only because it stands out from the rest), should I risk getting assigned one of the other cabins?

Although I am happy with the price I paid, and that I'll be spending more than that $250 on other things, Is it worth the effort to get the lower price?  How much effort is it worth to save money?  One person I cruised with would jump at the chance to save $250, and use this for other purposes.  As for me, I'm far from rich.  But not trying to save every last dollar has value too - it allows me to focus on getting acceptable value for what I spend, and not waste my valuable time chasing after ever decreasing savings.

So what would you do????
 

Still thinking of a bucket list cruise.

 

Two years ago, I could have gotten last minute deal on a balcony cabin for the above Thanksgiving time cruise for roughly $1,300 excluding taxes and port fees. (They dropped the single supplement a few days before sailing.  Otherwise, the cabin would have sold for $2,600.)  Today, a similar cruise would set me back roughly $8,000.  What's the difference?  Pent up demand for cruising combined with limited availability of cabins has made this cruise unaffordable for many. 

Two years ago, I posted an entry about cruises I considered taking.  Ships are not being repositioned in a way one can predict from year to year. In the past, you might find ships that did the West Coast Alaska run now doing a Mexico run.  Sometimes, ships would be repositioned through the Panama Canal, so that they can do a Caribbean run in the Winter.  (The reverse run would take place in the Spring, preparing for the yearly Alaska cruising season.)  Now, due to the pandemic, cruise lines are moving ships to regions where they can make the most money with limited capacity.  Before the pandemic, one could easily find cruises that did a full transit of the canal.  Today, many more ships do only a partial transit - and people seem happy with that.

When the time comes, I will make sure that I have a nice one piece bathing suit ready to go for a trip to the sun.  I can't wait to be at pool side on either a Hawaii or Panama Canal run.... 

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On other matters....

Casual readers of this blog will notice that I am not going to as many meetups as I used to in the past.  There are two reasons for this.  First is the problems I had last year.  The groups I was able to attend have either disbanded, or simply stopped meeting.  Second is that I'm simply too tired to go out for the sake of going out.     

When I look at my schedule, I find that I do not have enough hours in the day to keep up with the social demands on my life. There are people I want to keep up with that I haven't been able to do so.  They are available to meet, but not at times I am available - and vice versa.  

Dating is another wrinkle.  I'm getting tired of "swiping right" and then having conversations peter out before we get to a phone call stage or meeting for coffee.  No, I am not stretching things out too far.  I might be seen as a viable but 2nd/3rd choice candidate.  I have to find the time and energy to keep up my efforts in this area, but it's not that easy.

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All work and no play may be making Marian a very boring girl.  Before I took my current job, I could easily find the time to read books.  Today, I am way too tired to do this.  I can't remember the last time I borrowed a book from the library and finished it before it was past due.  I'm at the stage where I'm considering buying a few books, simply to have them available to read without having to wait for their availability via the library system.

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Luckily, my health hasn't failed me yet.  But I have to be careful, given my age and current risk factors....

 

 

Cruise prices don't always make sense.

 

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....

 

 

I may have found a unicorn.

 

The above is the itinerary for a cruise out of New York scheduled for the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  If I felt comfortable taking this cruise, I'd jump on it.  It is one of two cruises I've found lately that offer an excellent price/value combination - unicorns, as they are known by many.  However, I did not feel comfortable taking this cruise at this time, as several of these ports are on the CDC's list of Covid-19 high risk destinations.

With the exception of the Dominican Republic, almost all the islands are at a level 4 warning.  This means that the CDC is advising people NOT to travel to these places.  Of course, the CDC is reasonably honest here, as they place the USA in a level 4 category.  It is safer to travel to Canada (a level 3 country) than to travel to Puerto Rico.  So does taking this trip make sense?

 

Although this is the first cruise that I've found that has no single supplement, is it a unicorn? Right now, I'd feel comfortable getting off the ship in only three of the ports as Marian. But I don't think I'd feel safe from Covid-19 until I get my booster shot.  So I don't think this is the best unicorn to chase.

 

 

Comparing prices on long and short cruises.

On a solo cruise I took last year, I found out about this cruise from a woman who planned to take it in 2020.  However, her mother needed eye surgery.  And in Canada, you take the dates you can get for non-essential surgery.  This means that she won't be on this cruise. But I may still go on it.

When I first ran the numbers this summer, I figured that I should budget at least $4,000 for the trip, broken down as follows:

• Base Fare          - $2298 (includes $1149 single supplement)
• Port Fees/Taxes -     543
• Gratuities           -     315
  ---------------------------------
  Simple Cruise    - $3360
   
• Trip to NYC Pier -       60
•  from Seattle Pier -     40
  ---------------------------------
  Simple land cost  -    100
• Airfare (SEA-JFK) -   250
• Trip JFK to Home    -  60
  ---------------------------------
  Minimum Cost    - $3870

Of course, things aren't always what they seem.  I decided to see what the current price for the cruise was listed for on vacationstogo.com, and saw that the cost for an inside cabin had dropped by $200.  This means that I'd still be close to $3,800 for the cruise without any excursions.  That wasn't good enough for me.  So, in late October, I checked ncl.com for the same cruise and got the following results:

• Studio Cabin: from $2,099
• Inside Cabin:  from $1,198
• Oceanview:    from $2,099
• Balcony:         from $2,399
• Mini-Suite:      from $2,849

You'll notice that having an inside cabin costs less than having a studio cabin.  There is more room in the inside cabin, but it does not have access to the studio cabin's lounge area. But the $1,000 difference in price from the time I started tracking this cruise and now is making me reconsider taking this cruise.  My net daily expense (excluding land/air transit) would drop from $160/day to $100/day.  My net minimum cost has dropped to under $3,000. This looks like a great bargain in the making.

Towards the end of July, I noted in my old blog that NCL practices yield management. This means that one can and will see pricing anomalies throughout the sales life of the cruise. Once within 90 days of the cruise, most of the people who have planned to go on the cruise have already made their bookings for the cruise.  And this is the period where price/value calculations start to create anomalies more exaggerated than the $900 difference between the studio cabin and the inside cabin above.  This is also the period where I start seriously tracking prices for cruises I want to take, so that I can pounce on a rare great deal.

Not all great deals are a result of complex yield management. Within the last month before the cruise, some lines (such as Princess) offer last minute specials.  I logged into princess.com priced a last minute 15 day Hawaii cruise (including air) from San Francisco leaving the first weekend in November, and got inside cabin price of $922/per person. 

• Base Fare          - $1844 (includes $922 single supplement)
• Port Fees/Taxes -     241
• Gratuities           -     225
  ----------------------------------
  Simple Cruise --  - $2310

Of course, airfare might have to be bought through the cruise line, as last minute airfares can be very expensive otherwise.  I expect that the Hawaii cruise would likely set me back close to $3,500, as I would want to take the shore excursions I wouldn't bother taking on the Panama Canal run. Considering that Princess can not offer 7 day Hawaii cruises that only NCL can offer, I'd bet that Princess will offer similar last minute deals on their Hawaii runs as the sale time for each cruise starts to run out.  So, if I want to do a Hawaii run, I may hold off until it is close to embarkation day and take advantage of any last minute discounts that may be offered.

Compare the NCL 7 day Hawaii cruise above to the Princess 15 day cruise mentioned earlier.  The NCL cruise overnights in Kauai (Nawiliwili) and Maui (Kahului), while the Princess cruise daylights these ports. The extra time in port gives the cruiser much more time to enjoy the two islands.  The minor (to me) drawback of taking the NCL cruise is that there is no gambling on the cruise, as gambling is illegal in Hawaii.  But the most important difference between the two cruise line's ships is that NCL sails with an American flagged ship, while Princess sails with a "flag of convenience."  This forces Princess to make a stop in a foreign port at least once per cruise. Thus, Princess must offer 15 day cruises with a single stop in Ensenada (Mexico) if it wants to service the Hawaii cruise market.

The difference between what NCL can offer for a last minute Hawaii cruise vs. what Princess can offer for a similar cruise becomes very interesting when I look at NCL's price for a Thanksgiving time cruise.  For the November 23, 2019 cruise, I got the following results:

• Inside Cabin:  from    $899
• Oceanview:    from    $929
• Balcony:         from $1,299
• Mini-Suite:     from $5,598 (includes 100% single supplement)

Let's factor in roughly $700 for airfare, $250 for port fees, $100 for land transit, $105 for gratuities, and another $600 for shore excursions, and my total expenses for a 7 day cruise would be in the $2,700 range for an Oceanview cabin. Since NCL offers this cruise on a weekly basis, I'd bet that deals like this may show up relatively often.

You'll note that I've focused on cruises that sail within the next 6 months which stop in United States and Canadian ports. Being transgender, I need to feel safe in those few ports that I go on shore - especially while traveling with an ID showing a male presentation but presenting as a female. The Panama Canal and Hawaii cruises are (for most people) "once in a lifetime" trips, and I want to take both before I get too old to travel.