Let's Book Your Cruise Blog

The rules are a little complicated, but it helps to understand how cruise pricing works

Sometimes the cards aren’t dealt your way, and you have to cancel your casino comp cruise. When that happens, you wonder: Will I get any kind of refund?

The short answer is Yes. The long answer requires an understanding of how cruise pricing works. I’ll try to make this short:

When you book a cruise, you pay a certain amount in cruise fare, and a certain amount in taxes and fees. In most casino comps, for instance, the casino pays your cruise fare, and you’re responsible for taxes and fees.

If you decide to pay to upgrade your cabin, or if you have a comp for one with a discounted fare for the second guest, what you’re paying is cruise fare. And if you have to cancel, that cruise fare is just like the cruise fare on any other reservation, which means it’s subject to the terms of Royal Caribbean’s cancellation policy.

Regardless of when you cancel (or even if you no-show), you’ll always get refunded your taxes and fees. But your cruise fare might be a different story, depending on when you cancel.

Not sure how much you paid in taxes and fees, or whether you paid cruise fare at all? You can always see that by looking at the PDF confirmation you get when I book your cruise. That info can be found in the middle of the first page in the seciton “Booking Charges.”

With recent changes to the Club Royale system, replacing the offer code on your booking (for instance, if you got a better offer for a sailing you were already booked on) now requires you to cancel your original booking and create a new booking with the new offer code. When you’re deciding whether to do this, keep in mind that same these rules do apply to the first (canceled) booking. That means:

• Cancel a comp where you paid taxes only = full refund
• Cancel a comp where you paid cruise fare = partial refund depending on timing

As always, feel free to email me if you have any questions!