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How To Find Cheap Repositioning Cruises

Drew MacomberbyDrew Macomber
May 29, 2019
16

A while ago I saw a sale for a $149 (pp) cruise from the Mediterranean to the US, and it piqued my interest in finding repositioning cruise deals.

Essentially, a repositioning cruise is often a discounted cruise that is a oneway instead of a roundtrip because the cruise line is transitioning the ship to a different region, to take advantage of a different peak season. The deal I saw was a ship that was moving to the Caribbean for winter.

While the deal from Europe didn’t work out for us, I got to thinking that it might be a fun way to get home from Europe, and somehow even cheaper than the average flight (despite including stops in the Mediterranean and days of food).

In fact, I’ve seen great cheap options for seeing amazing places like Bora Bora, Greek Islands, etc…

This post is just sharing a little bit of what I’ve found as some of the best sites to find these cruise deals and best practices.

Also, if you prefer specific cruise lines, check out the section for List Of Repositioning Cruises By Cruise Line.

 

Top 3 Sites To Find Cheap Repositioning Cruises

Cheap Repositioning Cruise Site

1) CruiseDirect Deals Page

Click here to see the CruiseDirect deals page.

This is the best and most easily accessible page for cruise deals.

It seems to have the largest number of deals, I like that I can sort and filter, I like that I can see ocean view prices before clicking through, etc…

I usually filter the days and sort by price, showing cheapest first.

However, for some reason, the filter on the left for “repositioning” doesn’t work. But if you go to the page I linked to, you should see the list of deals.

 

2) VacationsToGo

Click here and then select “repositioning cruise” (under “choose a region”).

I like that I can sort by price (which is what I normally do), or by savings (by clicking the right column header, “You Save”).

In general, you’ll find the cheapest options at CruiseDirect’s Deals page, but here you can easily compare tons of repositioning cruises, including long term ones and again, by savings.

 

For example, there is a 49 night cruise for $5,689 from London to New Zealand! A heck of a repositioning!

I personally would never consider spending that much time on a boat, especially given the few stops. But it is an interesting route with interesting destinations. It goes down Europe, to the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal, through French Polynesia and the Pacific, to New Zealand.

Again, I’m not spending 49 nights on a boat, but there are interesting deals, interesting destinations, and sometimes big savings.

Also, it does tell you if the deal is for a special room, like a balcony.

 

3) Costa Cruises

This is the only cruise line I’ll mention here for deals sites, and I’ll include it in the list of repositioning cruises by cruise line (below).

I’m giving a dedicated shout out here for two reasons.

First, this is where you’ll most likely find the cheapest cruise deals. They frequently have deals going to and from Europe.

Second, I wanted to mention both links to check.

There is a link for deals in english (here).

Then, there is a french link (here). For some reason this second link, not in english, has cheaper, better cruise deals.

 

List Of Repositioning Cruises By Cruise Line

  • Disney here.
  • Royal Caribbean here.
  • Carnival Cruise here and here.
  • Viking Ocean Cruises here.
  • Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) here.
  • Costa Cruises here.
  • Virgin here.
  • Pullmantur here.
  • Celebrity Cruises here.
  • Oceania Cruises here.

 

Things To Look Out For With Repositioning Cruise Deals

 

Not all cruise lines are created equal.

I think the first cruise deal site (Cruise Direct) I mentioned may have “Customer Rating” and you can click to see reviews.

 

Check # of days at sea and port calls!

I saw a repositioning cruise with no stops! None!

If you’re looking for cheap transit and like cruise culture and food, then this would make sense. But as someone who has never been on a cruise, I don’t think I could handle but so many days at sea without a break.

 

Sometimes price to oceanview rooms is similar.

Another thing I like about CruiseDirect, is that they show the “oceanview” and “balcony” price.

 

Conclusion

There are 3 great sites for checking repositioning cruises. The first two, because they have the most comprehensive lists, and the third is just one cruise line (Costa) who has some of the best discounts in the cruise world.

This could also be a great way to get across the Atlantic, but again, I’m skeptical of any route where there are few stops.

Either way, I think it’s something I’ll try out next time I see a crazy good deal.

Has anyone here tried a repositioning cruise? If it was a cheaper cruise line/deal, I’d be curious how tolerable it was, and pros and cons? Feel free to comment with any experience!

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Comments 16

  1. Adam says:
    3 years ago

    Always been intrigued by repositioning cruises, never taken the jump. Interested to hear others’ experiences.

    Reply
  2. Jason B says:
    3 years ago

    Very interesting. Is it possible to get a decent internet connection while underway and without paying a small fortune?

    Reply
    • dizzy says:
      3 years ago

      Not so much tho working as a cruise ship employee we got a little bit of discount on rate. I actually MS’d from the middle of the Pacific back when GM still worked. Best sites to use were text-heavy ones like reddit and facebook messenger (the mobile site on desktop). You can set your computer not to load vids/images and that helps a lot.
      I also MS’d by loading up my employee account and got refunded at the end….couldn’t do TOO much since I was afraid of being suspicious but got $1k of spend out of the way….not complaining.

  3. beefet says:
    3 years ago

    Piqued*

    Reply
  4. dizzy says:
    3 years ago

    I worked a contract on a cruise ship and we did a couple repositioning cruises while I was there. One thing that’s cool is that you can get to places where it would be suuuuper expensive to go to with flights. I have been to a lot of the south Pacific this way and that WAS cool. Cruise ship culture is horrifying to me tho (both as a passenger and employee)
    PS PLEASE treat the employees like gold, it’s really tough hours and in many cases junky pay. I had a relatively “good” job there and it was still 52 hours a week (most are 70 hour shifts).

    Reply
  5. AlaskanTraveler says:
    3 years ago

    I’ve looked at vacationstogo for a long time, and have always been curious about cheap re positioning cruises. One important thing to note, just like Vegas hotels, the price you see is not the price you get. All the taxes and port fees are added after several click throughs. From my experience the final price is on average about 50% higher than the listed price. So a $500 cruise for one person ends up actually costing $750 or $1500 for two people.

    Reply
    • Stephanie Woods says:
      3 years ago

      Why did you leave off Princess and Holland America contact info? On Costa, just about everyone smokes thought the ship and that is a big turn off for lots of Americans. I have taken 2 transatlantic cruises, and they are much cheaper than normal cruises, but you will only get 4-6 ports at best. The pros-great food, entertainment built in, interesting ports, relaxing. I can’t think of any cons other than it’s slower than a plane if you are in a hurry.

  6. AlaskanTraveler says:
    3 years ago

    A quick follow up. A 7 day Alaska cruise listed at $349 per person. The final price was $553 per person so 58% higher than the list price.

    Reply
    • Fegs says:
      3 years ago

      We just completed a Celebrity repositioning cruise from Ft Lauderdale to Dublin. It was wonderful. Lots of sea days, (9) which we love for the relaxation. We would do it again.

  7. Christine K says:
    3 years ago

    I have been visiting repositioningcruise.com for years. We purchased a $99 3-day cruise from Panama to Ft. Lauderdale with a sea view cabin and it was great. The ship was 1/2 full but no sacrifice on entertainment or food. The site is my go-to “day dream about travel” place to ponder the possibilities. It’s fascinating to see where the ships go and some of the prices are really great. I have been looking at the Los Angeles to Vancouver (or reverse) as it gets down to around $149 on occasion.

    Reply
    • Dan @ Points With a Crew says:
      3 years ago

      It looks like repositioningcruise.com is owned / run by vacations to go, so should be the same itinerary

  8. Audrey says:
    3 years ago

    Though it wasn’t not a repositioning cruise, I recently did a cruise of the Canary Islands on Pullmantur. It was $219 (maybe $400 total) plus kids under 12 paid only taxes.
    I’d say it was okay, not great. It’s a Spanish cruise line and I didn’t find much in the way of activities for a mom and two kids aged 11 and 14. Basic drinks were included, even alcohol, so people hit that pretty hard. Often scheduled activities never took place. Food was pretty good but how much time can you spend eating?
    I actually think I’d prefer to not have port stops though because it’s so perfunctory and such short time that it was more annoying and frustrating than enjoyable. If you’re used to being able to explore, this ain’t the way to do it.
    However, I’ve seen Pullmantur repositioning cruises as low as $159++ for 13 days, so I never say never. It might be a fun and relatively cheap way to get somewhere – or then again it might not.

    Reply
  9. Jessica says:
    3 years ago

    Is everything the same on a repositioning cruise as a regular cruise? Like are all the restaurants open, are there shows to see, are there other passengers on board?

    Reply
  10. Ian says:
    3 years ago

    We did a repositioning cruise last spring from Miami to Barcelona on NCL. Fourteen nights oceanview our all in price, taxes, etc was $559 per person for two. Not bad for 14 days accommodations, 3 meals a day, entertainment every night and transportation. We had a choice of 5 restaurants for no extra cost. Cruises are usually priced for two people. Unless they are running a special for singles. The only extra that we had to pay was gratuities. We stayed off of our devices except when we were in port because we found the internet package too expensive which was a nice break. We loved it and would have done it again this year if we hadn’t found such good business class fares. The normal months for transatlantic are March/ April eastbound and September/October westbound as the ships are moving between the Caribbean and Europe.

    Reply
  11. Sumner Herrick says:
    3 years ago

    Ponant, an all-inclusive French line, has some good cruises at decent prices, but it’s always Point A to Point B–no stops in between. As a solo traveler, it’s hard to get a real bargain on repo cruises most times.

    Reply
  12. DaninMCI says:
    3 years ago

    I like repostioning cruises and like vacationstogo but I wish they would stop mixing Cunard transatlantic cruises in with the repositioning cruises.

    Reply

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