(EXPIRED) $150 back on $500 at Carnival Cruises with new Amex Offer [targeted, enrollment required]

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There is a new Amex Offer out today that’s good for $150 back on $500 or more at Carnival Cruise lines. This could work out to be an excellent stack for those who have booked a deeply discounted Carnival cruise thanks to their Fun Match program. Since you can make multiple payments toward a cruise, a multi-player household where 2 or more players have this offer could add up to excellent savings.

a screenshot of a card

The Deal

  • Get $150 back when you spend $500 or more with Carnival Cruise lines via a new Amex Offer [targeted, enrollment required]

Key Terms

  • Expires 11/7/22
  • Valid when you book online at Carnival.com, by phone, or through your preferred travel advisor
  • See offer for full terms

Quick Thoughts

I wrote about Carnival’s “Fun Match” program last year after completing some status matches in Fort Lauderdale and then hearing about a Carnival match via our Frequent Miler Insiders group. The short story is that if you have casino elite status — including Caesars Diamond status, which can be gotten by first getting the Wyndham Earner Business card, which comes with free Wyndham Diamond status, and then matching Wyndham Diamond to Caesars Diamond — you can get a cruise that costs $100 per person plus port taxes and gratuities and it comes with $100 per person in onboard credits. Port taxes really vary by itinerary (some itineraries were less than $100 and some were hundreds) and you’ll pay gratuities separately, but I previously showed how my wife, as just a Caesars Diamond member courtesy of Wyndham Diamond, was able to get this offer for a balcony room on European cruises around the Greek Isles or through the Norwegian Fjords or cruises to Alaska. After taxes and gratuities, a couple can expect to pay around $600-$700 for a balcony room on many different cruises — so after this offer, you could potentially end up with a balcony room on a 9-14 day cruise for two people plus $200 in onboard credit for four or five hundred bucks all-in, which is a solid deal. Read more about it in this post: Status cruising: Saving $2K+ on a cruise to Europe, Alaska, etc with a match.

Those traveling with kids will pay a bit more since additional passengers beyond the first 2 do not get the $100 per passenger deal. Still, a 10-night European cruise in a balcony room that we are scheduled to take this fall came to around $1100 all-in for my family of four before gratuities (about $1650 with gratuities, which was around $2,000 off of the retail price for the 10-day cruise I booked and it comes with the $200 onboard credit).

When I originally wrote about the deal, we booked two cruises. We later cancelled them both (free cancellation was offered in February and we weren’t sure what the COVID situation would be later in the year). We ended up re-booking the fall cruise. I initially put down a $400 deposit and I waited until later to make additional payments, using a few offers for $40 back on $100 on various Chase and Bank of America cards in my household (that targeted offer has come and gone a few times over the past couple of years). I paid off the remainder of the cruise last month using an Amex card on which I was working on a welcome bonus. Funny enough, I didn’t get targeted for this offer — but my wife found it on most of her cards.

I did not prepay my gratuities, hoping for an opportunity like this to save a few bucks. That was fortunate as gratuities add $580 to the price of my cruise — enough to trigger this offer. Waiting to pay the gratuities is going to save me another $150.

If I were booking anew, I would be hoping to find the offer on one of my wife’s cards and one of mine since we would each theoretically be able to sync up the offer. We could then pay part on each of our cards and save a total of $300 on $1,000 between the two of us.

If you’ll be cruising with Carnival, it’s definitely worth taking a look for this offer and syncing it up sooner rather than later. I noticed many new Amex Offers this morning and I updated our Current Amex Offers database accordingly with more than 40 new offers found today.

H/T: A.R. in the MilesTalk Facebook group

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