NancyOttawa wrote:
BlooCrayon wrote:
You are not going to find a cheap cruise in he summer--that's peak cruising time. If you want a cheap vacation or cruise, you need to go in the winter or off-season.


That seems so odd for me coming from a place with winter considering a lot of Canadian's like to take cruises in the winter to get a break from the cold. And we have several people here booking cruises in the next few weeks to take a cruise during March break with thier kids.  People with the winter season, aren't as interested in going south or on summer cruises when  it's already hot where they live.
False. Going from Canada to somewhere, lets say Jamaica, will be a huge difference even in January. Your low will probably be 70*. While that's cold for those of us living in Southern California I'm sure it's heaven for the Canadians. Southern Caribbean will be even warmer. And I can tell you that I booked a lot of cruises to a lot of hot destinations during the middle of summer with the exception being Alaska. 

As for cheap cruising, it is correct that the off season is the lowest price. My advice is that once you have selected your cruise and you put the deposit down, keep checking the price of your cruise. Sign up with the cruise line to get email notifications to you can check all of the sales. The majority of the time you can call the cruise line and have your price adjusted until final payment. As an example, my friend and I booked ours about a month or 2 ago and we made final payment today. A few hours later I happened to go on the Holland America site and saw that it came down close to $100. We called and had them adjusted to the lower rate and will both be getting refunds. It helped that we had not purchased the insurance but I don't recommend doing that. We just didn't purchase it because we get discounts through another company. 

Oh and be really careful going for what is automatically the lowest price when going through third party sites. Make sure they will not charge you fees for canceling or changing in addition to what the cruise line will charge. Also make sure you use a larger company and always buy the insurance.