My cruise points use to book cruise or for on board amenities?

[Cruisinforabruisen]

Hi, we have racked ourselves up ose to 70,000 points. Thinking we can get ourselves to the 75,000 needed to book a 4 or 5 night cruise. Is it worth booking the cruise with points or are we better off putting the points towards drink packages/ other on board amenities and paying for the cruise itself? 

[Ampurp85]

Imho the cruise has better value than drink packages, etc. I think you need to look at the value. A 4/5 night could be as high as $2k for 2 people, how much will the 70,000 converts to when it comes to the onboard amenities?

[ChessE4]

$700 OBC is value of points. Price of interior room 4 nights, I don't know. I prefer longer cruises. OBC can be used for tips and other charges. I find it flexible, and I don't redeem all points at once.

[San415]

We use our Visa RCI card for everything we can, we just pay it off each month, so no interest. We cruise once a year on a B2B, so 2 weeks - 2 cruises. WE book at least 2 seven day cruises. We use our points as OBC. To give real examples: Wonder of the sea 1st cruise in April we have $950.00 OBC. Second cruise ( Wonder of the Seas) we have $1300.00 OBC. To us this is "free" money. We used a portion of the cred for the second cruise to purchase the ship tour for both of us and also the CocoCay Beach club for both of us. We have about $900 still left. So about $900 OBC still for each cruise. We will use that for beverages. We rarely spend more than $800 total for drinks, so for us it's like getting a beverage package that is custom made for us, for free. The extra left over OBC we will have returned by check in the mail to us as this type of credit is refundable. Or you can put it in a slot machine and cash it out to yourself if you didn't want to wait for it.

I have checked the cost of cruises and we found it wouldn't work well for us. We don't want to stay in an interior and by the time you were to upgrade you would be losing money. Most of the time I check I can get a cruise well in advance for a better price. Take for example in 2025 April 24th, Voyager of the sea, interior cabin is $320 PP and April 04, 2025, Independance of the sea, 3 night is $290 PP. So even for short cruises you would lose money.

I put all I can in OBC from our card on each vacation, so only a small odd amount is left over on the credit card. That way we can see the real value we get each year from the card, as we feel it's like starting with a clean slate after each vacation. We use the card for just about 100% of spending money, groceries, appointment co pays, clothing, cell phone bill, dirTV bill. One thing we don't use it for, and I often think I should check on the ability to do so, is other bills besides at&t bills. I don't think you can pay your mortgage with a card, but I think I could add other utilities to it. Also we get double points for using to pay our cruises with it.

[TomC]

 My wife and used points to buy down the cost of our Independence of the Seas cruise, then used additional points towards on board credits. As we were within the final payment window, using points towards the cost of the cruise was issued as a credit back to our credit card after a few weeks.