MY $500 CARNIVAL CRUISE (CABIN NOT PER PERSON)
I booked my next cruise over a year ago. It was the first casino deal I got offered. I had to look way out in the future to see the availability of the balcony cabin I wanted. I was willing to wait. I haven’t traveled on Carnival since I was in my 20’s. I did the Fantasy twice back then. I know cruising changed a lot in the past 25 years so I am eager to see what I think about Carnival now. When I tell people I am doing the Magic next I have gotten a lot of positive feedback. Several people on my Virgin Cruises have told me they just love Carnival. They say it is a very fun ship.
Here is the deal I got and how I did it:
I sent Carnival a copy of Caesar’s diamond card and within two weeks I was sent an email with a free balcony offer. You can read more about how I got Caesar’s diamond here. It was a year's wait to get a balcony out of South Florida where my cruising buddy Mary lives. With this Casino Offer for Carnival, I pay taxes, port fees, and a $100 deposit per person. This brought our total to $570.40 for a balcony cabin on a 6-day cruise. I was pleased and booked it pretty much without even telling Mary. Who can turn down a cruise for less than $300 a person? I knew Mary couldn’t. Since this was a year ago, I am pretty sure I just had to put the deposit on the cruise. I had a lot of time to pay the balance on this one (some cruise lines require you to pay a deposit, taxes, and fees when you book). However, some of my Chase cards had Chase offers for Carnival Cruises. One of the offers was $30 off and another was % off Carnival. I split the charges up on my credit card to maximize both offers. I ended up getting an additional $85.56 off our cruise. Around this time my parents were paying off their Carnival Cruise so we put part of their cruise on one of my Chase cards that had a Carnival Offer and saved them an additional $120.
Below is a picture of Chase Offers. You have to select the offer before you use it but it can save you lots of money!
My offer also included $50 casino play and free drinks while playing in the Casino. Mary and I have already used our onboard credit to book the Cloud 9 spa day passes for the entire cruise. I think we added $50 each to make that happen. Our cruise is visiting Half Moon Cay, Amber Cove, and Grand Turk.
To complete this deal, I booked my airfare to Ft. Lauderdale with Southwest Airlines. My round-trip ticket was 9,254 points. I had to pay $11.20 in taxes. I get most of my points from my Chase Sapphire card and transfer them to their travel partners. Southwest flies direct from Nashville to Ft. Lauderdale and it is usually super cheap on points.
