Cost of Living on A Royal Caribbean Cruise Ship

[plane2port]

It costs about $235 a day for two people to cruise for a month on Royal Caribbean's Enchantment of the Seas.

I have been fantasizing and wondering what it would cost to live on a cruise ship. In my first post in this series, I talked about a select hand full of cruisers who had turned cruise ships into their full-time residences.

In my last post, I looked at the costs of living for a month on the Carnival Victory. In this post I will investigate how much a similar month of cruising would cost on Royal Caribbean.

Finding a Ship
I went back to the VacationsToGo search engine to look at Royal Caribbean cruises that sailed out of Miami in January of next year.

The obvious choice to investigate was the Enchantment that sails alternating three- and four-day itineraries our of Miami.

The three-day itineraries sail to Royal's private island CocoCay, and then to Nassau.

The four-night itineraries sail to CocoCay, Nassau, and Key West.

Calculating Total Costs of Cruising for a Month
You need to add taxes, port fees, and gratuities to the advertised price. The gratuity amounts that I used are the suggested $12.95/day/person that RCCL recommends. The tables below outline the true costs for each itinerary.



Cost Breakdown for the Three-Day Enchantment Itineraries

Sail Date Base Price for 1 Taxes & Fees for 1 Subtotal for 2 Gratuities for 2 Total cruise cost
Jan. 6 246 88.90 669.80 77.70 747.50
Jan. 13 246 88.90 669.80 77.70 747.50
Jan. 20 246 88.90 669.80 77.70 747.50
Jan. 27 246 88.90 669.80 77.70 747.50

total $2990


Cost Breakdown for the Four-Day Enchantment Itineraries

Sail Date Base Price for 1 Taxes & Fees for 1 Subtotal for 2 Gratuities for 2 Total cruise cost
Jan. 2 330 102.66 865.32 103.6 968.92
Jan. 9 260 102.66 725.32 103.6 828.92
Jan. 20 288 102.66 781.32 103.6 884.92
Jan. 27 288 102.66 781.32 103.6 884.92
Jan. 30 330 102.66 865.32 103.6 968.92

total $4536.60

Final Breakdown
The total costs for 32 days of cruising are $7526.60. The cost per day is $235.20 for two people.

As I mentioned in my previous post, this analysis was done as an example. I would not want to take these back-to-backs for a whole month, because I wouldn't want to go through U.S. Customs twice a week.

In my next post, I want to investigate costs on Norwegian, but this will be somewhat challenging!

 

[Matt]

Good theory. I tried to do this in the past, the issue I faced was decoding the taxes and port fees. Nobody would give me a straight answer, but what I did find is that it tends to be related to the port (MIA is expensive due to demand) and is not related to the length of your cruise. My theory was to AirBnB out your home in FL as much as possible, cruise as much as possible, and use points for hotel nights to overlap when you needed a day or two between itineraries. It can be done, but a bit of a PITA.

Anyway, a big lesson from that study was that selecting short duration cruises vastly skews the base cost to total cost. For example, here' a royal caribbean 24 day cruise for $1399 PP plus $158 taxes. Here taxes are about 11% of the total fare, whereas in your examples, taxes were as bad as 39% of the total fare, never minding that the base fare was also often higher than this.



This one is from Australia. Which you could make an argument against, but if you truly wanted to live on cruise ships I think it would be reasonable to take any port into account, rather than just RT MIA.

So, IMO, if you 'really' want to find the cheapest way to live on a cruise ship, you should not just piece together small cruises, but find the longest ones possible.

 

[plane2port]

I remember the post you did a while back about spending an extended amount of time on cruise ships. I believe you also had the idea of working as an Uber driver on the turn around day. I thought that was inventive.

I agree that if you were to actually live for an extended time on a cruise ship you would not do these shorter b2b itineraries. The purpose of using Miami as the departure port was that since so many cruises depart from there it would be easier to compare costs between different lines. I used the shorter itineraries because they were cheaper on a per diem basis and I wanted to get the minimum costs involved.

 

[BuddyFunJet]

From chatting with a guy that lives on SilverSea and a couple that spent about 9 months a year on Regent, the cruise lines cut special deals with people that spend extended times onboard. SilverSea also arranged for the guy to change ships for a period when his main ship was in for maintenance.

Adding up the published fares will give you a top figure but talking to the line should let you do better.

BTW, port charges would decrease in case of back to back trips on the same ship in a single reservation.

 

[Bikeguy]

It's been my experience that the positioning cruises have significantly lower prices per day than the same port return cruises. Would be interesting to see if several of those could be strung together.

 

[plane2port]

It's been my experience that the positioning cruises have significantly lower prices per day than the same port return cruises. Would be interesting to see if several of those could be strung together.

In general this is true, although the cruises that I used in my post are as cheap on a per diem basis as some of the least expensive repo cruises. As you mention, the trick would be to string these together efficiently.

The sweet spot would be to have a cruise that 1) had a cheap per diem price, and 2)stopped at very few ports so port charges would be minimal.

 

[plane2port]

From chatting with a guy that lives on SilverSea and a couple that spent about 9 months a year on Regent, the cruise lines cut special deals with people that spend extended times onboard. SilverSea also arranged for the guy to change ships for a period when his main ship was in for maintenance.

Adding up the published fares will give you a top figure but talking to the line should let you do better.

BTW, port charges would decrease in case of back to back trips on the same ship in a single reservation.

There may be opportunities to cut deals on the luxury lines like SilverSea and Crystal, but with the mainstream lines, not so much (according to what others who cruise long-term have said.)

You raise an interesting point about the port charges on back-to-back trips booked on the same reservation. This would certainly change my calculations, and will be something that I will definitely consider in the future. Thanks.

 

[MJonTravel]

Back in the day when I was a little more...ahem...motivated, I strung together a few 3 and 4 night cruises. The best thing about those, other than being really cheap at the time, was the ability to use turn around day to run to the bank and deposit cash. I've historically focused on the shorter cruises due to pricing, but in truth, they've gotten relatively more expensive than they were just a few years ago. Cruise lines, not unlike airlines, have evolved in their pricing and capacity, and frankly there's demand for cruising, so pricing has risen. I like Matt's suggestion about looking at longer itineraries for lower overall costs nowadays.

 

[plane2port]

I have been reading a blog by a woman who does short back-to-back cruises on Princess out of Fort Lauderdale. She has been cruising all winter, and she says that she likes the short cruises for two reasons. 1)the short cruises have more of a "party" vibe, and she likes to be around the excitement of people who are enthusiatic about being on vacation. 2)She feels like she is "coming home" when the ship does its turn around day in Fort Lauderdale.

Her blog is pescadoamarillo.blogspot.com.

Back in the day when I was a little more...ahem...motivated, I strung together a few 3 and 4 night cruises. The best thing about those, other than being really cheap at the time, was the ability to use turn around day to run to the bank and deposit cash. I've historically focused on the shorter cruises due to pricing, but in truth, they've gotten relatively more expensive than they were just a few years ago. Cruise lines, not unlike airlines, have evolved in their pricing and capacity, and frankly there's demand for cruising, so pricing has risen. I like Matt's suggestion about looking at longer itineraries for lower overall costs nowadays.

 

[MJonTravel]

I have been reading a blog by a woman who does short back-to-back cruises on Princess out of Fort Lauderdale. She has been cruising all winter, and she says that she likes the short cruises for two reasons. 1)the short cruises have more of a "party" vibe, and she likes to be around the excitement of people who are enthusiatic about being on vacation. 2)She feels like she is "coming home" when the ship does its turn around day in Fort Lauderdale.

Her blog is pescadoamarillo.blogspot.com.

I need more time off. Love reading this blog.

 

[plane2port]

I've gone back and updated prices as of June 1. Prices have decreased from $235/day to $229/day. I plan to check back in after the final payment day.

http://www.plane2port.com/june-update-cost-living-royal-caribbean-cruise-ship/

 

[Gloobnib]

I've gone back and updated prices as of June 1. Prices have decreased from $235/day to $229/day. I plan to check back in after the final payment day.

http://www.plane2port.com/june-update-cost-living-royal-caribbean-cruise-ship/

I wonder if someone could theoretically make this work (and be more economical) by stringing together a bunch of 'last minute deals' for cruises that are well past final payment day but are not yet sold out. Maybe booking the 'cheapest available' 2ish weeks out? You would also need to have a fallback plan (airbnb? Cheap points redemption for hotels?) in case you hit a week or two where no viably inexpensive cruises were available.

 

[plane2port]

I wonder if someone could theoretically make this work (and be more economical) by stringing together a bunch of 'last minute deals' for cruises that are well past final payment day but are not yet sold out. Maybe booking the 'cheapest available' 2ish weeks out? You would also need to have a fallback plan (airbnb? Cheap points redemption for hotels?) in case you hit a week or two where no viably inexpensive cruises were available.

I really do think that this would be the cheapest way to do it if you were flexible in the geographic area where you wanted to cruise. It seems that in every season the cruise lines have excess capacity in one area or the other. Right now, the best deals are in Europe. A lot of Americans are uneasy about European travel right now, and there are great deals to be had all over Europe. Conversely, all the Caribbean cruises are priced at top dollar, so you'd not even want to consider ship-hopping there this summer.

Last summer there was excess capacity in Alaska, and you could have spend the whole summer cruising there very cheaply. You could use Anchorage (with access to Haines and Seward) or Seattle/Vancouver as a base. If you had a hiatus in cruises, you would also have the option to camp in some awesome places while you waited for a cabin on the next cheap cruise.

I would like to try doing just what you suggested. If I were doing this in the US, I would have my vehicle outfitted out for tent camping. While I was cruising, I would park the car with the camping gear at a hotel or parking lot that gave me the best deal on parking. If I didn't find a suitable cruise, I would visit some state or national parks. If I was doing this in Europe, I would just go visit some nearby areas and stay in cheap hotels booked on booking.com, or like you suggested Airbnb. For example, if I was "stuck" in Venice, I might consider a wine tasting the area west of Venice, which is famous for its Valpolicellas.

I will be at home this fall with grandparental duties, but I may put together a "virtual" trip" along these lines, just for the fun of it.