hello everyone my name is zach i am the traveling man and today i wanted to talk
about something that i've never seen another cruise vlogger or youtuber talk about before
and it's a question that i get quite frequently a lot of you have asked this question via social
media you've sent me a lot of messages about it well it's a couple questions actually the first
is how do you cruise so much and the second is how much did this cruise cost what are you paying to
cruise i wanted to be transparent with you about that and actually in this video i'm gonna go over
the past six cruises that i've taken and tell you how much exactly how much i paid for those
and then break it down because uh among those six cruises there are i think four different cruise
lines so i'll compare those and sort of tell you which i thought was the best value and you'll see
in the numbers yourself and i think this might be helpful for a number of reasons but mainly i want
to show you today there's a lot of preconceived notions out there there's a lot of cruise lines
that folks expect to be a budget cruise line and there's cruise lines that folks think that's a
luxury cruise line there's no way i could ever even afford to cruise on it so i'm going to show
you uh some of these misconceptions and point them out to you as we compare and maybe it'll
help you see that you know you can afford to go on another cruise line or try different cruise lines
maybe it's not as expensive as you think so i'm going to start from the very beginning the very
first cruise that i took since cruising resumed in june of 2021 i'm going to start with that cruise
and then i'm going to go in sequential order all six cruises that i've been on since cruising began
now before we get into the list i do want to say that because i am a solo cruiser and if you're a
solo cruiser you already know this but if you've ever wondered or pondered about maybe going on a
cruise by yourself solo cruisers often pay double for their cruise so when you see these prices and
you think wow that's a lot of money for one person just keep in mind that typically you pay 200
of the cost of the cruise as a solo cruiser cruise prices have actually been quite low they've been a
lot lower than they were pre pandemic and we're actually starting to see i feel like the prices
are just starting to catch back up this is march 2022 when i'm filming this video but i think we're
starting to see those prices catch back up to what they were pre pandemic there's been a lot of
deals there have been a lot of discounts there's been a lot of uh reduced solar supplements solo
supplement is basically the extra amount you're paying to go solo so a lot of cruise lines reduce
that solo supplement to make it more attractive to fill their ships so i've taken advantage of these
cells so that's the quick answer to that question uh how do you afford to cruise so often is because
there have been a lot of great deals oh yeah while i'm talking about solo rates let me answer
another question that i get quite frequently is how do you find solo deals how do you know
what cruisers are offering a good deal for a solo rate well i've mentioned this website before and
i'll go ahead and say it again here and i'm not sponsored by them i wish i was if you guys are
watching sponsor me because i tell everyone about you cruiseplumb.com you can go to their website
up at the top right you're going to see a banner that says solo you click on it and it'll highlight
all of the cruises which have some sort of reduction in the solo supplement that's a
good starting point to highlight some cruises that have a reduced solo supplement for you so starting
with my first cruise and as i go down this list uh in addition to telling you the price of the
cruise i'll also tell you what was included with the cruise outside of what you normally get what
i mean by that is uh some cruise lines such as celebrity they have their always included
which means that your tips your gratuities uh your drinks your wi-fi they're all included
in the price of the cruise now this isn't normally the case when you're cruising with carnival and
royal caribbean uh msc cruise lines like that you normally don't get that but i will tell you
as i go down the list what perks were included in the cost of the cruise so starting with my first
cruise back on june 26 2021 uh with the adventure of the seas royal caribbean and the total price
of this cruise was 2 284 that's the total amount of the cruise fare plus taxes and port fees now
as i mentioned this didn't include tips it didn't include wi-fi uh it didn't include any drinks or
any drink package or dinner package or anything like that now this cruise i did take advantage
very dumbly because i didn't quite understand this is the first time i ever did royal up i didn't
quite understand what i was doing and i actually ripped myself off a bit on some money because
i paid 260 dollars to roil up or to to be upgraded to a spacious ocean view balcony uh and
that wasn't a good move because after the bid was accepted and i was on the hook at that point for
260 extra dollars paying royal caribbean i went on the website and noticed it was only like 60
dollars to upgrade through royals so it was just i really messed myself up there and ended up paying
more for that cruise than i should have so with the ocean view balcony at 2284 and the 260 extra
dollars to upgrade to that spacious ocean view i ended up paying a total of two thousand five
hundred and forty four dollars for their cruise on adventure of the seas my second cruise was the
inaugural sailing of the carnival mardi gras back on july 31st of 2021 i was so excited about this
cruise i actually chased this inaugural sailing i think for like two years during the whole
cruising shutdown every time they changed the day to the inaugural selling of the mardi gras
i called my vacation planner and i rebooked that thing and boy did i pay for it uh it's actually
i'll just go ahead and tell you up front this is the most expensive cruise on my list and i had a
just a regular balcony i didn't have any suite or anything like that there wasn't anything special
included much like the royal cruise i just talked about all of the wi-fi all of the gratuities
everything i paid for above the price of the cruise i'm going to tell you about here now
i will mention this is the first cruise we're going to come to where i had onboard credit
and i'm only going to mention promotional onboard credit and promotional onboard credit
i'll classify as being uh some more credit they give you when you book the crew so like if you go
on carnival's website right now and they say the price is 399 for the cruise and it comes with 50
onboard credit that's promotional onboard credit any onboard credit that you have through the
cruise line that they gave you maybe because of a cancelled cruise carnival was giving i think 650
or 600 or something like that when they were canceling cruises during the pandemic that's
not promotional more credit i'm only counting the onboard credit that the
cruise line essentially gave me as incentive to book the cruise in the first place so i had 50
of onboard credit on this cruise and the grand total for that balcony regular balcony on the
carnival mardi gras on deck 15. it was 2 982 so almost 3 000 to sell on the inaugural sailing of
the carnival mardi gras and if we factor in the 50 of promotional onboard credit that carnival
gave me and take that out of the cost of the cruise that actually drops the price to 2 932
so my next cruise was a seven-day cruise on the celebrity apex brand new ship over in greece
and for this cruise i had the concierge class the concierge class is a mini suite
they have a few different perks um it's like an upgraded stateroom basically and i only
paid 60 extra dollars usually it's hundreds of dollars difference to upgraded concierge but i
got a really good deal only 60 difference between concierge class and just a normal stateroom so i
was happy about that now with celebrity cruises they have their always included which means you
get the basic drink package a basic wi-fi package and all your tips and your tooties are included in
the price of your cruise now i opted to upgrade to the indulge package which gave me a premium drink
package premium wi-fi package and it also came with 450 dollars of onboard credit that was a
pretty good deal so with that indulge package and the price of the cruise and everything i ended up
paying a grand total of 2 730 and if we take out that promotional wi-fi with the indulge package
the total price of the cruise comes out to be two thousand two hundred and eighty dollars
my next cruise was a three night selling on the msc divina and i don't want to say too much about
the cruise other than the price wi-fi was included standard balcony room the total price was 349
next up we have royal caribbean's freedom of the seas on january 14 2022 and this was also
a three-night sailing leaving from florida going over to the bahamas and for this cruise i booked
a standard interior room for 323 total now this did come with a 25 of promotional onboard credit
and then at the last minute i did roil up to an ocean view balcony for 140 dollars this made the
cruise a total of 463 dollars and when you factor in that 25 of promotional onboard credit the total
price was 438 and finally we have the celebrity edge this was a seven night sailing that i did
back on january 30th of 2022 now this was a great deal i can't wait to tell you about this if you
knew me personally you'd know that i love to save money um despite all the cruises and the traveling
i do that's the one area in my life where i do splurge i like to be as thrifty as possible in
my day-to-day life so when i can really save money or really get a good deal on a cruise that makes
me feel better than just about anything so listen at the price of this one a seven night sailing
on the celebrity edge again celebrities always included so the tips were included the standard
beverage package the standard wi-fi was included and i also got because i think they had some sort
of sell black friday sale last year uh that gave me 200. of onboard credit so the state room that
i ended up booking was the deluxe porthole view with veranda and i booked this for only 1 171
so cheap i did opt to do the move up program this is uh sort of similar to royals
royal up program that's where you bid on your upgrade and i only had to pay 520 dollars total
to be moved up to aqua class aquaclass being similar to concierge class which i told you about
when i started on the apex but aquaclass has a few more little specialty perks than
the concierge class has so 520 to move up and upgrade into aqua class is an absolute steal
on top of that like 1171 dollar price that i paid for the crew so all that
together the total price of the crews having aqua class on the celebrity edge
was only 1 ninety one dollars y'all i can't tell you what a still that was that was such i still
can't believe i got that great of a deal on a celebrity cruise we factor in that two hundred
dollars of promotional onboard credit that brings the total price of the cruise the net price 1491.
and i used some of that onboard credit to upgrade um the internet package and
the beverage package and things like that now that we have the total prices figured out for
all the cruises i'm now gonna rank them from the lowest price to the greatest price now
these first couple of cruises on the list are three day cruises so of course they're cheaper
so when we're done with the total price i'm actually going to go down and break it down
by price per day and we'll look at it like that so we break these down a couple of different ways
to sort of see the value in these cruises so in order of total price here they are ranked
the msc davina cruz comes in at the cheapest next is the freedom of the seas
then my cruise on the celebrity edge then the celebrity apex followed by royal caribbean's
adventure of the seas and finally the most expensive cruise on this list was the carnival
mardi gras are we shocked by any of this yet let me know down in the comments what you think so far
uh any of this ranking up like you thought it would so now ranking these by price per day
they actually end up being in the same order the msc davina was the cheapest carnival mardi gras
was the most expensive when we break it down per day the msc divina was actually 117 dollars
per day the freedom of the seas was 155 per day next we have the celebrity edge coming in at 213
dollars per day next is the celebrity apex at 326 dollars per day followed by adventure of the seas
at 364 dollars per day finally carnival mardi gras came in at a whopping 419 dollars per day
so it was really cool and very interesting to me and quite enlightening for me to
put all these numbers together and and present them to you in this video because i learned a
few things first of all i will say that the the three day cruises that i took the msc divina and
also the freedom of the seas i did book those because they were such a great value i think
basically this was because of the time of year i went i went on the davina in november and i went
on freedom of the season january so these are the you know fewer people are cruising those times of
the year so i think you can find better deals those times of the year however i was surprised
when i ranked it by day that those were still the cheapest so i guess that just goes to show
us that you can find really good deals on those shorter cruises so be on the lookout for those
and you're not going to get to go to some of the more exotic places that you can on a longer
itinerary but if you're looking for pure value you are going to find some of the best value at sea
when you take those shorter cruises i was actually surprised that those came out ahead
of the celebrity edge crews because like i said i feel like i got such a great deal on that cruise
and i did get such a great deal on that cruise knowing that celebrity is a luxury cruise line and
i ended up selling on the celebrity edge for just 213 dollars per day i mean that's tremendous y'all
and that was in a mini suite you know that was in the aqua class where i had all those perks like
the thermal suites and the spa and i got to eat at blue restaurant oh blue restaurant every night you
know there was a lot of good perks that i had on that cruise and the coolest thing about it all was
there was only like 720 people total on the cruise with me so what a great luxurious experience that
was on the cheap the celebrity apex when i first booked that cruise and that was a greek cruise so
i flew over to athens and boarded that cruise but i remember thinking wow this seems kind of
cheap because all i had known prior to that this is sort of where i'm gonna make some comparisons
here in terms of value the fact that i could book a celebrity cruise for two thousand seven hundred
and thirty dollars for a seven day cruise on their brand new ship when i just gotten
off the carnival mardi gras and paid almost three thousand dollars for a standard balcony on there
i was like this this has to be wrong you know i thought carnival was supposed to be the cheaper
cruise line right i know i'm selling on their new ship but i thought it was supposed to be such a
great value when compared to a lot of the other cruise lines now i know when you compare carnival
and royal and a lot of folks have done this on the internet so you can go out and research this a bit
but when you compare carnival and royal especially over the past five to ten years they've kind of
gotten quite even on the price of their cruises carnival isn't consistently the value cruise line
anymore when compared with royal caribbean i know back in 2013 when i started cruising i was like
carnival's gonna be the cheapest so that stopped me from looking at any of the other cruise lines i
was just like i sell carnival because that's what i can afford when i decided that i was gonna sell
celebrity and mainly because i knew they had a new cruise ship and it was selling in greece so these
were both very attractive reasons for me to choose celebrity but i was really shocked that the tips
were included and all the drinks were included on board and the wi-fi was included you really
got to look at the prices of some crews because i'm not saying always but you can find deals like
this and you can go on celebrity cruises cheaper than you can carnival especially if you want to
sell the mardi gras i know that the prices of the carnival mardi gras have been consistently high
compared to some of the rest of the carnival fleet so if you look for these deals and
you know you might be thinking i want to go on a new ship and i normally sell carnival
because they're the cheapest and i'm going to go on the mardi gras look around a little bit
look at royal look at celebrity for sure and just compare these things it's not only at
the end of the day the total price of the cruise but think about some of these perks
uh that you're getting or some of the things that are included i should say uh in the price of the
cruise so if you're getting things like gratuities included and you're getting things like drinks
included and wi-fi included well you can just consider that you're probably going to be paying
15 to 20 a day on carnival for a wi-fi package all those things add up if you're into buying
the drink package and you want to buy that that's another 500 plus dollars for a seven day cruise on
carnival per person so i guess what i'm saying is if you really want to get a good value in a
cruise just do your research a bit look at the prices of cruise go to cruiseplume.com
it's not just for solo cruises they also highlight all the cruise deals that are available
see if there's cruise deals available on some of the cruise lines you might want to try other
than the cruise line you currently are loyal to or sell with most frequently because if you want to
have the opportunity to try other cruise lines i promise you it's out there for a good price for
a price that you can afford so that's all that's my total nerdy budget money presentation on the
price of my cruises i hope this has been helpful i thought it would be helpful again because folks
often ask me these questions let me know down in the comments if you found this helpful
and what you thought about my comparison were you surprised about any of uh
where some of these cruises ranked on this list i want to thank you so much for watching this video
taking the time out of your day to listen to what i had to say i hope you found it
informative please go down below if you enjoyed the video give me a thumbs up please consider
subscribing to the channel thank you so much for watching and i'll see you on the next adventure