The furthest under each line’s usual price, one per line.
Where the lines are discounting whole regions priced under each line’s own usual elsewhere
A card above compares a sailing with the same line’s other sailings in the same region, so when a line cuts a whole region, no single sailing there stands out. This is the other view: what each line charges for a balcony here, against what the same line charges everywhere else for a trip the same length.
Mexican Riviera, from California
Balconies here are priced under each line’s own usual elsewhere: Royal Caribbean 46%, Norwegian 38% and Princess 21%.
Carnival and Disney are charging about their usual.
Medians of 31 Royal Caribbean, 9 Norwegian, 11 Princess balcony sailings we priced in the last 3 days.
The cheapest balcony from each discounting line.
How we measure a deal
The line’s usual price. For every balcony and suite we hold a fresh price for, we take the price per night and compare it with the median of the same cruise line, same cabin grade, same region and similar length (2 to 4, 5 to 8, 9 to 14 or 15 to 21 nights), across every other sailing we priced in the last 3 days. We need at least 5 to compare against. Where a region has fewer, we use the same line across every region, and the card says so. We measure every sailing that way and publish the best 15 in each tier, no more than 5 from any one line, so one line that discounts hard cannot crowd out the rest.
How rare it is. Some lines price high and discount as a matter of course; others almost never move. So every deal is also measured against the line’s own habits: of all the sailings we have priced on that line in that cabin grade, how many sit this far under their usual price? “1 in 40” means this line does it about once in forty sailings. Twenty per cent off a line that never discounts can be the better find than half off a line that always does. A line with fewer than 20 priced sailings is measured against its tier instead, and the card says so. We rank by rarity first, then by how deep the saving is.
Unexpected cuts. We read every sailing about once a day, so each has its own price history. A cut counts when a price that held for at least three readings in a row drops 10% or more, and it is weighed the same way, by how often that line cuts that hard. A one- or two-day spike is never used as the starting price: the cheapest cabin in a grade jumps for a day when a category sells out, and that is not a price anyone was charged.
Deal or season? We repeat the comparison inside the same month. If the line’s other sailings that month cost about the same, the card says the season is doing the work: shoulder-season value, and you can count on it every year. If the sailing is also well under its own month, the month does not explain it.
Prices are per person, taxes and port fees included, for the cheapest cabin of that grade, exactly as Cruisebound sells it at the moment we read it. We read 30,436 sailings about once a day and rebuild this page every few minutes; 3,465 have a fresh balcony or suite price right now. There is no strike-through, brochure or member price anywhere on this page.
