My wife and I are good shoppers. That is our superpower. Getting a good deal on a cruise involves getting many moving parts to line up. We recently returned from a 14 night transatlantic crossing on Cunard’s Queen Victoria. The major building blocks of our voyage cost $4,868 for two or $2,434 per person. How did we do it?
Let us put cruise costs in perspective. About 18 months ago we took a small ship cruise from Athens to Istanbul. It was 12 nights as I recall. We recently had lunch with one of our tablemates when they were visiting the NYC area. She traveled on a trip organized by her college alumni association. She paid a single supplement. Her cost was about $23,000. I assume there was a charitable contribution to the college built into the price. She referenced another couple on our same trip who booked directly with the cruise line. Their cost was about $5,500 per person. Cruises can be expensive.
Our recent trip with Cunard was 14 nights sailing from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to Southampton, England with stops in Freeport (Grand Bahamas), Hamilton (Bermuda) and Ponta Delgada (The Azores). The port call in Bermuda did not happen because of weather.
The cruise itself. We booked an ocean view cabin (with an obstructed view) through a travel agency we discovered through Cruise Compete. (They are affiliated with All Things Cruise. The total cost including taxes was: $1,142.00 per person.
Airfare to Fort Lauderdale. We priced one way fares from JFK to Florida and Heathrow to JFK. It made sense to book on our own. The airfare to Florida was about $149 per person.
Airfare Heathrow to JFK. We priced one way fares. This came to about $1,200 per person! I checked roundtrip fares if we flew JFK to LHR in January and LHR to JFK in March. It was $407 round trip! This inspired us to find a good fare on Cunard’s Queen Anne sailing from Southampton to New York in January! This made the LHR to JFK airfare $204 per person.
Onboard spending. We paid our own fares. We did not tell the ships staff I was writing articles about the voyage. We paid all our own onboard expenses. These were $1,877 or $939 per person.
Our total costs for airfare, cruise and onboard spending was $2,434 per person. For 14 days, that is about $174 per day per person!
There were indirect costs not included in the above numbers. These are not included because you might not incur them. They are unique to our situation.
- Cat sitting.
- Hotel at JFK the night before flying.
- Parking at JFK.
- Hotel in Fort Lauderdale before sailing.
We have friends who take ultra luxury vacations, but only once per year. We prefer to shop around, find deals and take several throughout the year, assuming that is possible.
cover photo Queen Victoria at Bermuda, credit Bryce Sanders
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