So I Did a Thing...

 

 Last night, minutes before heading to bed, I decided to pop up the Solo Cruise Search on CruisePlum.com. With my husband's career situation being in flux, I haven't been able to book anything for us in the foreseeable future. It's been a hot minute though since I've been on a trip by myself so last night I thought I'd just take a peak to see what was out there. Initially it was about comparing the price per day with an offer I'd found on Holland America for standby travel. $198/day seemed like a lot for an inside room, even for a solo price, but I wanted to confirm that feeling. Turns out I was right! MSC had a ton of sailings under $50/day for solo travelers, but unfortunately, they only sail out of the East Coast and Europe at the moment and I'm not in the mood to fly to Florida. You know who sails out of the West Coast in the fall? Norwegian, that's who! Ok, there's lots of other cruise lines that do this too, but Norwegian is my favorite, and I get lots of perks with them thanks to my Latitude's Rewards status. And they happened to have the cheapest balcony rate for a solo traveler on the west coast in the list. And it was on my favorite ship, the NCL Bliss! Now you do have to be careful as this is only a list of published solo discounts and sometimes you can find solo prices on the website that are better, but in this case, it was pretty good at $144/day after gratuities. I'm not sure if you have to pay gratuities on top of the $129pppd on Holland's balcony standby, but as a base their balcony rate for a solo traveler would have been $258 per day, almost double what I was looking at!

 When I saw this deal for a solo balcony on a 7-day cruise for only $869 (+$140 in gratuities = $1,008 or $144/day) I was intrigued, but when I saw that they additionally had a deal going for $100 onboard credit and double Latitude reward points I was hooked! Yeah, it was almost 11 o'clock at night, but why not book a cruise real quick before bed? I'll tell you why not, sometimes it's good to sleep on things. I probably would have felt more at peace with my decision if I'd taken a beat to pray about it and sleep on it, but I was worried, justly, that the price would change or the cruise would disappear altogether by the next day as has happened to me in the past. As of today though (10/16/25), this cruise deal is still available, so if you want to join me, grab it! You'll need to scroll over on the balcony list to see the "Solo Balcony" to get this price. 

 What made this very doable for me was that I had two Cruise Next credits sitting in my account and Norwegian is currently running a special where you can use two credits on any booking, even though it was only a month away. That made it only $508 out of pocket. I've got a ton of points to use on flights and a hotel for the night before - you should always fly in the night before a cruise if you can. Additionally, we've been funding my travel account as we go with money I earn from banking bonuses, which I'll talk about later, shopping portal earnings, and dividends from stock so I had more than enough to cover this little trip without having to affect our budget at all. Oh, and I made sure to send in my shareholder benefit request right away so I could get and additional $100 in onboard credit from our NCLH stock!

 What other costs will I incur on this trip? I've booked a hotel with a free airport shuttle, so I'll just need to Uber/Lyft to the cruise port the next day - that'll be around $50 or less. Dinner on Saturday should be around $20-30. Internet on the cruise will be around $100, but I'm hoping to cover that and any shore excursions I do with my $200 in onboard credit. I get two specialty dinners as well as a special dinner with the officers with my Latitude Rewards, so I'll plan to eat in the main dining room on the other 4 nights. All told, I'm hoping to complete this trip for $600 out of pocket, not bad for a week's vacation!

Here's the Thing: You may have heard that solo cruising is expensive, and while I wouldn't say it's as cost effective as two-person travel, it can be very doable if you keep your eye out!

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