| We aren't made of money. As much as I wish we were that just isn't the case. We decided to do a "Honeymoon Cruise" because we were so close to the Long Beach port that it just seemed like a great idea. We were happy to book the cruise at a discounted deposit of $98. That changed though, but let me explain how. Reagan's sister checks the cruise daily for us and about 2 weeks after we booked Carnival ran another sale. Originally we were on the 5th deck (almost at the bottom of the boat) in an interior room. It was $819.78 when we booked, this included all taxes, tips and everything. We knew it was a big expense, but you only get married to the person you love once. When Casey checked the cruise she saw that the room we got had DROPPED in price, not only that but they were also offering a $50 onboard credit and a room upgrade to a higher deck. Casey filled out the form and we waited. We were approved within a few hours, however, she had explained once we do this we would have to pay the difference in the deposit as the original deal we booked included the "half off" deposit. So we had to pay another $50 towards that. But...and this is what's cool. Casey called the line and they put us on Deck 7. The Empress deck! We are excited as this room is directly on the deck we board the ship and we don't have to take a ton of stairs and elevators to get anywhere. Here is a photo of where we are now! As you can see we are still in an interior cabin, but maybe they will do another sail to put us near a window. So we put down the other $50 deposit. But we have paid a total of $275.78 for our cruise leaving us with a balance of $544. Wait, WHAT? Yes, the only real money we have used was the $150 deposit. The rest of the money we have put down on this cruise came from SURVEYS. I kid you not. I do surveys and redeem those points for gift cards or Paypal payments I can then use towards the cruise. I have already put an additional $125.78 on the cruise by using nothing but survey money I have gotten through different survey sites. I'll end this with a list of the companies I use. Not only that but I also used an additional $49.95 of my Survey money to purchase the Faster to the Fun option that lets us board quicker and have priority luggage delivery. On top of THAT, we received a $25 GC for an issue we had with Pampers diapers, by emailing them with our problem they sent us a $25 GC which we then used to put $25 in our stateroom. So here is the breakdown. We now have $75 in onboard credit. (Didn't spend a dime of REAL money.) We purchased the Faster to the Fun option for $49.95. (Didn't spend a dime of REAL money.) We have made a total payment towards our cruise of $275.78 ($150 was our deposit, and the then $125.78 was from Survey money so not REAL money spent on that either. I am currently waiting for another $45 which will then be paid towards this cruise bringing us to under the $500 mark. I am hoping to get this paid off using the majority of survey money. As you can see, a cruise spending only $150 of our own money would be awesome. How are we getting to Long Beach California? We are taking a bus. It's a grand total of $7 from Vegas to Long Beach. $14 in travel expense. Once I have the cruise taken care of and put more money for our onboard spending I'm going to work on getting a few Uber gift cards and maybe some food gift cards for the few days we will be in Long Beach. Here are the Survey sites that I use: |