At any given point in the year, cruise specials are available. Indeed, not only are cruise specials always possible to find, you can likely uncover them by looking at a single cruise line. This is because cruise specials are extremely common, and in fact the very nature of the cruise industry ensures that this is the case. Ships need to be filled all year round to make voyages financially worthwhile for the cruise lines, and in order to fill their ships, it is often necessary for companies to offer cruise specials to potential passengers to lure them on board. (For more on why cruise lines offer cruise deals, check out our article on how to find cheap cruises.)
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.