Like a lot of deal aggregation sites, Cruises Only is primarily helpful in that it allows you to search for cruise vacations offered by a number of different cruise lines on one site. There is no need to visit each individual cruise line site, which saves a lot of time. The easiest way to look for cruises is to use the site’s search function, which allows you to specify the criteria that you want your cruise vacation to match. You can choose the length of your cruise, your desired destination, the month in which you want to depart, and so on. If you have a lot of flexibility, you can enter “all” for each individual criterion, allowing you to consider a broad range of cruise options. This is an awesome function, as it allows you to keep certain criterion set (like when you want to leave), but allows you to be flexible in other respects, like which cruise line you want to book your cruise through.

Cruises Only also lists several deals on their homepage, some of which are quite excellent and affordable. For example, at this very moment there is a four-night Caribbean cruise available for only $209 (for an interior room). Such deals are always on the homepage. There is also an entire section of the site dedicated to cruise deals (cheap cruises, last-minute cruises specials, honeymoon cruises, etc.), so you can check this area of the site out as well if you are looking for a discounted cruise or a themed cruise (like a Christmas cruise, for instance).

Apart from aggregating tons of cruise offerings, Cruises Only is also a rich source for cruise information. Most notably, there is “Reviews & Ratings” section that lists both customer and expert ratings (ranging from one to six smiley faces for the former and one to six stars for the latter) of the specific cruise ships of over a dozen cruise lines. There are also lots of reviews submitted by cruise passengers, which list what they did and didn’t like about certain cruise ships. Basically, there is a ton of information about any given cruise ship you might sail on, which will help you choose the appropriate cruise vacation. Moreover, there is an “About Cruising” section that has information about all the different aspects of cruising, which those new to cruise vacations may find particularly helpful.

Overall, Cruises Only is a very helpful site, and you might want to consider using it for your next cruise vacation. Check out their website here:

Cruises Only

These types of cruise specials – the ones that are designed to entice customers to book a cruise – almost exclusively take the form of discounted cruises. Ticket prices are slashed and there are an abundance of bargains to be had (although, as we went to great lengths to explain, it is not entirely clear what precisely constitutes a bargain cruise). There can be no doubt cheap cruises can properly be called “cruise specials,” but there is also another type of cruise special out there that isn’t defined simply as a “cheap cruise.” These kinds of cruise specials, which we will explain shortly, are often overlooked by people because of our relentless drive to find the cheapest cruises possible, and while this impulse is entirely understandable, we don’t want to neglect to consider other cruising opportunities because we are exclusively preoccupied with cruise deals.

So, what other kinds of cruise specials are we missing? As is the case with so many other questions, the answer hangs on a matter of semantics, on what we define as “cruise special.” In this particular instance, we would liked to think of a cruise special as essentially a specialty cruise, a cruise that has some features that makes it fall outside the domain of standard cruises. Take, for example, Christmas or New Years Eve cruises, of which there are many, offered by small cruise lines and the world’s biggest cruise lines alike. These cruises will share many features with traditional cruises (obviously – you’re on a cruise ship, after all), but they also have special features, like Christmas trees on deck and strings of lights hung around the ballrooms. On a Christmas cruise, you might also find Santa Claus listening patiently to the Christmas wishes of children. Such cruise likely won’t be discounted, but they are nevertheless different from a normal cruise – they are, you might say, special, and hence they fall under the heading of “cruise specials.”

There are any number of other cruise specials like this. There are cruises for couples and there are cruises for singles. There are cruises for food and wine enthusiasts and cruises for those looking for adventures. The list goes on. Granted, these types of cruises generally don’t come to mind when we think about cruise specials, but they are definitely “cruise specials” in a meaningful sense of the phrase. They have a unique angle that renders them out of the ordinary.

When looking for cruise specials, all people are beholden only to their own wishes. If you are exclusively looking for cheap cruises, more power to you. But we suspect that there are at least a few people out there who are interested in a wider array of cruise specials, and to these people we recommend looking into some of the many themed cruises available.

The answer to the first question is quite simple. A Christmas cruise is what the name implies: it is a cruise that takes place during the Christmas holiday season. Any such cruise can technically be called a Christmas cruise (what else would you call it?), but generally the term “Christmas cruise” carries with it a little more. In particular, Christmas cruises attempt to recreate the holiday atmosphere on board by putting up Christmas decorations, playing Christmas music, serving Christmas dishes, and so on. Santa can even be found on board some cruise ships on and around Christmas, faithfully cataloging the gift requests of the ship’s younger passengers. All of these holiday preparations undertaken by the cruise lines merely compliment the traditional offerings of a cruise vacation, like trips to the spa and wild nights at the casino. So, a Christmas cruise can offer the best of two competing desires – to take a cruise and participate in Christmas festivities.

That’s what a Christmas cruise is, but how do you find a Christmas cruise deal? There are of course a number of different ways, just as there are to book a regular cruise, but to find a really good deal, we have a couple of tips. If you are particular about which cruise line you vacation with, you should check the official websites of your preferred cruise lines for deals. You may not find the cheapest cruises this way, but you’ll at least know what you’re getting if you book through a cruise line with which you have previous experience. Also, almost all cruise lines have loyalty programs for repeat customers. If you are a part of such a program, you will likely be offered some good deals for Christmas cruises (depending on the program, your participation in it, etc.).

For those who are not loyal to one particular cruise line, there are tons of cruise deals available. Since you aren’t concerned with which cruise line you book with, it is best to search deal sites (e.g., Orbitz) because they will list vacations associated with a broad range of cruise lines, increasing the likelihood that you’ll find a really good deal. One thing to keep in mind is that you don’t have to search explicitly for Christmas cruises. If you have some flexibility in your scheduling, it often best to search multiple dates to find the best deal. In other words, you can look for a Christmas cruise without having to sign up for something that is billed as a Christmas cruise, as the latter may cost more money. You can clearly see the sagacity of this advice when you look for last-minute cruise deals around Christmas time. You can find cruises that depart on, say, Dec. 22nd that are extremely inexpensive, and you likely wouldn’t be able to find this deal if you were searching for a Christmas cruise specifically. Sometimes it is easiest to find what you are looking for when you search for it indirectly.

Since there are dozens of cruise lines in the world, we can’t possibly survey every single one, much less report back on the bargain cruises each one of them offers. That would be a monumental undertaking of limited value, especially since there are websites that have updated databases that list cruise specials. There are websites like CruiseDeals.com, which is dedicated specifically to cruising, that aggregate information on deals from several cruise line websites. Such sites, coupled with other websites dedicated to travel deals in general (Orbtiz, Travelocity, etc.), are a good place to start looking for bargain cruises. What we can do is look at examples of cruise lines that offer bargain cruises and explain how these specific deals are indicative of any given deal a cruise line will offer.

Since we mentioned CruiseDeals.com, let’s start our search for cruise lines that offer bargain cruises there. As it turns out, this is an excellent place to begin, as it lists all the different cruise lines that offer deals through the site. There are, to begin, all the major cruise lines that you would expect to offer deals. Royal Caribbean International, Carnival Cruise Lines, Norwegian Cruise Line, and Princess Cruises, to list a few examples, are all prominently featured on the CruiseDeals website. There are also a number of smaller cruise lines, like Crystal Cruises, a Japanese luxury cruise line with two cruise ships, that offer deals through the website. As you can see, numerous cruise lines, and in fact most if not all cruise lines, offer bargain cruises, so that’s the general answer to our question “which cruise lines offer bargain cruises?”

But let’s look at a specific cruise line – say, Norwegian Cruise Line because we like their “freestyle cruising” philosophy – to get a sense of the deals we are talking about. To virtually any location that a Norwegian ship sails, you’ll be able to find a deal associated with it, if we are to understand “deal” as a price that is cheaper than the standard fare (although “standard fare” is itself a slippery concept). In order to get these deals, you’ll have to be flexible in how you plan your vacation. You might need to take your cruise during the off-season, when cruise lines offer deals to attract customers, or you might need to book a room on board that doesn’t have a view of the sea. Making adjustments like these is how you find a bargain cruise, and the same applies to most cruise lines.

Bargain cruises are offered by a wide range of cruise lines, but to get these bargains, you have to be open to many different options with respect to your on-board accommodations, your travel dates, and so on. The bottom line is that cruise lines offer bargains – you just need to find them.

We are at present only interested in determining what constitutes a bargain cruise, so we will not be explaining how to find cheap cruises, nor will be interested in discovering the cheapest cruise prices. These are topics best handled in separate articles, as the links we just offered to separate articles suggest.

The most obvious way to conceive of a bargain cruise is simply this: a bargain cruise is just a bargain when measured against another cruise. Now, one can’t compare any random cruises, as cruise-vacation packages vary widely. The price of a month long cruise around Europe can’t profitably be compared to the price of a weekend trip to Alaska. Clearly, the former will be more expensive, so this doesn’t tell us if either trip is in fact a bargain. However, when you compare two similar cruise vacations, you can get a better sense of the deal you are being offered. This is why it is helpful to consider several different cruise lines while planning your trip. If, for example, Carnival Cruise offers a trip to the Caribbean for half the price of Princess Cruises, and if the trips have similar itineraries and accommodations, then clearly Carnival Cruise is offering a bargain, relatively speaking. And to find the greatest deal of all, you would need to compare all the different prices of cruise lines. Surely, this is a good way to go about finding a bargain cruise.

But isn’t there a problem with comparing only cruise vacations? What if all cruises are expensive, meaning there is no such thing as a genuine cruise bargain? Some cars are cheaper than others, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that any particular car is a bargain. To address this problem, at least in part, we need to compare cruise vacations with other vacations, and when we do this, we learn that cruises are actually relatively cheap. This is primarily because cruise vacations are sold as packages. When you book a cruise you are not only securing transportation to some distant land, but also lining up a place to stay, and you are very often booking even more than that (like food and drink, in the case of an all-inclusive cruise). This is frequently not the case with normal vacations, which require you to book everything – plane tickets, hotels, etc. – separately. So, cruises can certainly be bargains compared to other vacations.

Yet we are still faced with the same problem as we had before, namely, it is difficult to call any vacation a bargain if you are comparing it to other vacations. Maybe no vacation is a bargain. To address this problem, we must define a cruise bargain in a highly subjective way, calling a cruise a bargain if it is a bargain to the person booking the cruise. This leads to some interesting conclusions, like the fact that wildly different prices for cruises can be considered bargains, but so be it. Plus, when a cruise bargain is defined in this way, you have the distinct advantage of setting your own standards. Is a week-long cruise to the Bahamas for a $1,000 a bargain? Only the person booking the cruise knows, and maybe that’s just the way bargains have to be.

All that said, we posit that to find what most people would be looking for in a “cruise bargain” you should do one of two things:

1. Determine everything that you want out of your cruise (destination, accommodations, on-board activities, etc.) and then search for the best price for packages that offer all (or most of) the items on your list; or

2. Determine how much you want to spend, and then search for cruises (regardless of destination, etc.) that can be had for that price or less.

With a vast fleet of 23 cruise ships (labeled “Fun Ships” by the company) that travel all over the world, Carnival Cruise Line offers scores of voyages every year. Given the vastness of its operation, it should come as no surprise that they offer all sorts of Carnival cruise deals. Carnival offers tons of cheap cruises – or, in any event, they offer a lot of discount cruises (“cheap” is relative term) – leaving future passengers with an abundance of cruise deals to pick from.

How do you go about finding a Carnival cruise deal? There are two main ways, one direct, the other more circuitous. The direct way involves booking your cruise through the Carnival Cruise Line website. If you point your browser toward Carnival’s homepage, you’ll see a tab at the top, near the right side of the screen, that says “Special Offers.” You will also see a box in the middle of the page on the left side that says “Special Offers.” Click on either of these and you’ll be brought to the same discount cruise page. On this page, you’ll see a list of “Quick Getaways” that offer some great cruise deals. The trips are short, ranging from two to five days longs, but they are also very cheap. A four-day trip to the Bahamas, for example, costs about $200, and even the most expensive of the “Quick Getaways” cost only slightly more than $300. (These are per-person rates, for the record, but still.)

There are also some “Early Saver Offers” offered through Carnival’s website. As long as you’re willing to book your cruise relatively far in advance (which is, by the way, one of our tips for how to find a cheap cruise), you can capitalize on some great offers, like a three-day trip to the Bahamas that leaves on September 15, 2011. The price? $179.

Great deals can also be found under the “Pack and Go” tab, which is located on Carnival’s specials page. These are last-minute cruise deals, offered so that Carnival can sail as full of a ship as possible. As long as you can more or less “pack and go,” last-minute cruise deals are great options for those who want to sail cheaply.

Finally, if you’ve been on a Carnival cruise before, you may be eligible for “Past Guest Offers.” The Carnival website asks you for a “Past Guest number,” and once you have supplied this information, you’ll have access to additional cruise deals.

Carnival cruise deals can also be found on websites that offer discounted cruises. There are many sites like this (e.g., CruiseCheap.com, CruiseDeals.com, etc.), and most of the major ones allow you to search for cruises offered by specific cruise lines. So, you can obtain a deal on a Carnival cruise without every visiting the Carnival website. However, if you are interested in checking out some of Carnival’s discounted cruises, the Carnival specials page is never a bad place to start:

Carnival Cruise Deals

But when outlining how to find cheap cruises, an interesting question came to mind: what is the cheapest cruise you can possibly take? If you are completely indifferent to the destination, duration, and accommodations of your cruise, and you don’t care which cruise line you travel with, what is the cheapest cruise price you can find? Granted, this question has limited application, as most people care a great deal about the specifics of their cruise, with many people minutely planning every last detail of their trip, down to which restaurants they will visit on any given night of the cruise. However, some people just want to take a cruise, and if they are frugally minded, they might be interested in the cheapest cruise available.

To find the cheapest cruise, it is best to use sites that aggregate information from the many websites of the different cruise lines. Technically, you could probably find the cheapest cruise if you were to visit each cruise line website individually, but this would be a monumentally tedious task that would take hours to complete. You would also have to check each of these sites frequently because the prices of a cruise vary as its departure date approaches. Popular aggregation websites for cruises include CruiseCheap.com and Travelocity.com, but these are merely two of many different websites that track discounted cruises.

That said, we were able to find some staggeringly low cruise prices just by quickly looking through some of these aggregation sites. For example, we were able to find a four-day trip to the Bahamas for a mere $169 dollars using CheapTickets.com (this particular cruise is listed on CruiseCheap.com too). This was a last-minute cruise deal (there are only a few more days left to book this Bahamian cruise), as all the cheapest cruises will be, and the available room is of course the most ascetic available, offering no ocean views or other amenities. But hey, a four-day cruise to the Bahamas for $169 is pretty good, regardless of your room on-board.

If you are traveling with a group (or even, hey, your family) it might be possible to find an even cheaper cruise, in terms of per-person rate. You might also be able to get a further discount if you’re a senior. Regardless of whether you are a senior citizen with a family or not, however, you can find some extremely cheap cruises.

First, it should be noted that cruise lines like to have their ships booked in advance. This makes sense, as operating a voyage is an expensive undertaking. Just think of the huge crews, which are often comprised of more than a thousand people, that cruise companies have to pay for the entire duration of a cruise. Cruise lines want to make sure that their considerable investment in a voyage is recouped by paying passengers. Moreover, cruise lines want to make sure as soon as possible that their investment is worthwhile. To that end, cruise lines often offer deals for booking in advance. As long as you can afford to be locked into a specific cruise vacation, deals for booking in advance are a win-win for passengers and cruise lines alike: you get a cheap deal on your cruise, and the cruise line knows that they won’t be sailing an empty vessel.

A cruise line’s fear of not recouping the cost of a cruise, coupled with their general desire to make as much money as possible on any given voyage, also drives them to offer last-minute cruise deals. Last-minute cruise deals are designed to fill whatever space remains on a ship before it sets sail. The ship, with its vast army of employees, is going to sail anyway, and a given voyage’s basic operating budget will stay largely the same, so the cruise may as well be filled as close as possible to full capacity. How might a cruise line fill empty rooms at the last minute? By offering cheap cruises of course! Again, this is a win-win arrangement for cruise lines and passengers, provided passengers have the flexibility to jump on a cruise right at the last minute.

Yet another way to score a cheap cruise deal is to book your cruise for an off-season voyage. Every destination has its season, so when the demand to go to these places tapers off during certain parts of the year, cruise lines will offer discounts for cruises to these locations. For example, May and September are not popular months to cruise to Alaska, but if you want to sail to Alaska and it doesn’t matter what month you go, consider booking in May or September, as the prices will likely be lower than usual. Again, cruise lines want to fill their ships with paying customers, and if in order to do this, passengers have to be offered special deals, than so be it.

Finally, much like the other service industries, cruise lines offer discounts for seniors and groups/families. The extent of these discounts will depend on the cruise you are interested in taking, but most major cruise lines offer some type of deal to seniors and groups that are booking together.

Finding a cheap cruise takes research and diligence. All the major cruise line sites offer deals for cruises, and there are lots of other sites that exclusively list cruise deals offered by cruise lines. However, if you follow the advice above, which largely boils down to paying close attention to when you book your cruise, you should be able to find a good deal.

Cruise lines prefer to sell out in advance, so you cruisers can cash in on significant savings just for booking well in advance. Cruise lines offer discounted cruises for booking last minute as well. If staterooms have not been booked several weeks or so before the cruise departs, prices may be reduced by as much as 75%.

If you don’t mind booking off-season, in addition to discounts, you will also enjoy smaller crowds and special discounts and lower prices on everything from shore excursion adventures and shopping to restaurants and hotel stays. Discounted cruises are often available during slow or shoulder seasons in year round destinations. The following is a list of destinations and their slow seasons:

-Alaska, May and September
-Bermuda, April-May and September-October
-Canada/New England, July-August
-Caribbean, late April-May, September-early January
-Hawaii, late August, late November, and February
-Mexican Riviera, early January and May, October-November
-Eastern and Western Mediterranean, March-April and September-November

Other ways to enjoy discounted cruises include inquiring about special senior rates and booking with popular cruise lines. Some of the world’s most popular cruise lines include:

-Carnival Cruise Lines
-Celebrity Cruises, Crystal Cruises
-Disney Cruise Line
-Holland America Line
-Norwegian Cruise Line
-Oceania Cruises
-Princess Cruises
-Royal Caribbean
-Seabourn Cruise Line
-Regent Seven Seas
-SilverSea Cruises
-Windstar Cruises

To qualify for a senior rate, you must be 55 or older. There are two ways to book a discounted cruise if you are a senior: you can call a cruise travel specialist or book directly with the cruise line. Proof of age is required. To enjoy discount cruises for groups and families it might be a good idea to book your cruise through a cruise travel specialist for the best deals or if you have a cruise line in mind, contact a live cruise travel agent.

To find the perfect discounted cruise, you can visit any of the following popular discounted cruises websites or discount booking search engines listed below. The sites listed here offer access to some of the lowest cruise prices on the market, a convenient way to shop and compare, and you can even book your cruise, if you’re prepared to purchase your tickets right away.

Kayak.com
Expedia.com
Orbitz.com
Travelocity.com
CheapTickets.com
VacationsToGo.com
Cruise411.com
Cruise.com

To find out more about discounted cruises, you can visit any number of cruise review websites to read reviews from real passengers, with real experiences. While there are many cruise review websites to choose from, some of the most popular (and reliable) cruise review websites are:

Cruisecritic.com
Cruisereviewsonline.com
Cruisereport.com
Cruisedirectonline.com
Cruisemates.com

• Book in advance
• Book last minute
• Book off-season
• Book with a group
• Take advantage of a package deal
• Book online
• Book through a popular cruise line
• Whip out that AARP card

Ok, let’s start with advanced booking and last minute booking. Cruise lines offer incentives and discounts for booking in advance. They would rather sell out way in advance than face the next scenario. If the cruise line doesn’t sell out, guess what? The cruise line will do anything to fill those last few rooms–even offer discounts of up to 75%. If you wait until a few months – or even a few weeks before the cruise to book, you could end up living in the lap of luxury onboard for a few bucks.

Booking off-season. The best off-season discounts are offered in year around destinations. For example, slow or shoulder seasons for say Alaska, may differ from the Mexican Riviera. The following is a list of destinations and their slow seasons: Alaska, May and September; Bermuda, April-May and September-October; Canada/New England, July-August; the Caribbean, late April-May, September-early January; Hawaii, late August, late November, and February; Mexican Riviera, early January and May, October-November; Eastern and Western Mediterranean, March-April and September-November. Expect plenty of perks during these times as well.

Group booking, online booking, and package deals. If you book with a group (family, group of friends, organization, etc.), the cruise line may offer a discounted rate beginning with the third person or so. Once the discount has been calculated, your group can split the costs evenly. When it comes to package deals, the rate is always lower for air and cruise combos. You can save up to 20% or more by opting for a package deal.

Online booking has numerous advantages. Cruise lines always offer the best deals and specials online, and discount booking search engines can offer even lower prices. Check the cruise line website first to see what kinds of deals they offer then compare them to the rates you find through any of the following booking search engines:

Kayak.com
Expedia.com
Orbitz.com
Travelocity.com
CheapTickets.com
VacationsToGo.com
Cruise411.com
Cruise.com

Booking with popular cruise lines. The most popular cruise lines have thousands of customers and frequent sailings, so they are more willing to offer a deal than say a small specialty cruise line that offers several sailings per year. Some of the world’s most popular cruise lines include: Carnival Cruise Line, Celebrity Cruises, Costa Cruises, Crystal Cruises, Disney Cruise Line, Holland America Line, Norwegian Cruise Lines, Oceania Cruises, Princess Cruises, Royal Caribbean, Yachts of Seabourn, Regent Seven Seas, Silversea Cruises, and Windstar Cruises.

Special rates for seniors. All cruise lines features special rates for seniors. To lock in special senior rates you have to speak with a cruise travel specialist for booking or book directly with the cruise line. A senior is a person who is 55 or older and proof of age is required.