Introduction: A free cruise using points? Our NCL Epic Transatlantic Haven Suite

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I am becoming a frequent floater in my old age. I have to admit, I just love cruising and I really love the Haven concept – that is, a ship within a ship idea, from NCL. In fact, I love just about everything about NCL when it comes to getting on a ship. But more on that later on.

Today I wanted to cover how I paid for just about all of this trip with a number of different types of points and even, in the end, got cash back to use for my next cruise. I am not saying this is the “be all to end all” best possible way of always booking a cruise but this works VERY well for me.

Step one: I clear my cache on my computer and go to Top Cash Back. I tend to start almost everything I do on the web now starting at Top Cash Back because they are simple, reliable and the customer support is amazing. Oh, and when it comes to cruises they pay 12% cash back when booking a cruise via Expedia. Update: The current June2019 payout is down to 6% cash back sad to say! 🙁

Not a bad start but it gets even better. You see when I go to cash out, up to 10 weeks AFTER the cruise is completed, I look for bonus offers via an Amex gift card. Most times the stock bonus is 3% if you choose this option but other times of the year it can be 5 or even 6% more. Thus I can net out, if I am willing to wait, up to 18% cash back on the price of my cruise. THAT is amazing to me. Bottom line from this I will get almost $674 back when I do cash out. UPDATE: They now have a Visa choice that is 5% bonus CASH!

Step two: I always book at Expedia and I hold the Expedia®+ Voyager Card . Let me say, if you are a Delta flyer and EVER use Expedia you should hold the Citi Expedia+ card. Why, when it comes with $95 annual card fee? Every year they give you an annual $100 statement credit for travel expenses. I buy, on two separate purchases, a $50 Delta e-Gift card and thus they PAY ME net $5.00 per year to hold the card. This gives me GOLD status with Expedia that results in a 30% bump in Expedia points. The way I use Expedia points is to pay for hotels and I thus value them at 7/10th cents each. On this one single cruise the gold status resulted in an extra $26 in point value to me (see why I hold the Expedia®+ Voyager Card ).

Bottom line, with bonus, I cleared $113 in value by booking via Expedia and got all the exact same perks NCL was offering on their site vs. booking here.

Step Three: How I pay for this over time. The nice thing about Expedia, after the initial deposit, if you can book far enough out you can make many payments of any size you want. Well Barclays Arrival+ card lets you pay yourself back when you make a travel charge of at least $100. Thus, over time and with creative spending, I wracked up a bunch of points and kept making tiny payments. Oh, and for this specific trip, I had tons of “five back” cards (now dead fyi) with $25 credits on them. I made a LOT of $25 payment thanks to this amazing deal last year.

But even now, for another cruise I am working on, I am doing the same and making many $100-ish dollar payments and then paying myself back with points. Plus, important when using the automated metro machines in Europe, the Barclays Arrival+ card has real chip-N-pin that works when abroad. This is another reason I always hold this card. Next step

Step four: Look for Amex offers. I wish they would target me with these many times a year as I would always do them. With NCL you have the chance to prepay the tips. I really like this. The charge, unlike the purchase of the cruise itself, is billed by NCL. Thus when Amex offered a spend $300 get $100 back “Amex Offers to You” deal. I jumped on it. Again, not always repeatable but I do look and hold off paying the tips on any trip as long as I can to see if an offer pops up.

Step five: Use points to pay for your air! Most of us do not live where cruise ships depart from. I venture to say few have homes in both Barcelona and Port Canaveral so I had to position to BCN and I did that via a level 1 Delta One award ticket (see hidden Delta award charts) for 70,000 points each for my wife and I. Considering these tickets, one way, were running MANY thousands of dollars each I got tremendous value for my SkyMiles this way and enjoyed the ride over all in business class (well other than the CRJ200 ride to begin with out of South Bend). Cost was a $34.40 and I paid with my Citi Prestige Mastercard so that if anything went sideways I would have the sweet travel insurance that kicks in if there were a delay of any kind of over 3 hours.

Step six: Paying for my hotel with points. I know different folks value Chase Ultimate Rewards® points for other uses i.e. for transfer to partners – I get that. I like, via my Chase Sapphire Reserve® card, getting 1.5 cents value each for booking hotels. Now I am not a fan of the service they use to get this done, but more on that later. For now, my room that included a very nice breakfast each day was paid in full with points. My only charges were for a few incidentals like a drink by the pool.

Step seven: My flight home from Orlando to South Bend. Thanks to my $6,000 bumpertunity this past May I have had a bunch of “Delta Dollars” to burn up. I decided, after almost two weeks in a suite with a butler, to splurge on paid 1st class home as I did not want to risk coach maybe medallion upgrade after this kind of opulence. Out of pocket cost was zero.

Step eight: Lastly, I am shooting for lifetime Plaintum+ status with Norwegian. This will give me so many perks, no matter what class of cabin I book, once I hit it. NCL offers “insiders deals” that adds one extra night credit and after booking at Expedia I had them call NCL and add this perk to my booked reservation. The result was I got 39 nights credit for a 13 day cruise toward my lifetime status goal (1x for each day, 1x extra for booking a suite, 1x extra for the insiders deal).

So was this trip “free”? Let’s just say even paying $30 for the bus ride from the ship to MCO airport, two Ground Link rides in BCN, food and drinks and sight seeing in Barcelona, I still came out net ahead. Not bad for a 3 week vacation that I will cover over the next few weeks! – René