Onboard Credit or a Refund: What You Actually Get

Repricing. The line lowers the fare on your existing booking. If you have already paid in full, the difference is refunded to your original payment method. If you have not, your remaining balance shrinks. This is the best outcome and it is usually only available before final payment.

Onboard credit. A spending balance applied to your account for the sailing. It is real value, but it is constrained: it is almost always non-refundable, it expires at the end of the cruise, it often cannot be used in the casino, and unspent credit is lost.

A cabin upgrade. Some lines resolve a post-final-payment drop by moving you to a better category instead of paying anything. Subject to availability, which in practice means subject to the sailing not being full.

• Carnival pays onboard credit under Early Saver, or refunds the difference if the booking is not yet paid in full.
• Celebrity and Royal Caribbean reprice before final payment, which means a refund if you have paid in full, and offer a cabin upgrade after it.
• Norwegian varies by region and fare type, and the remedy is at its discretion.

Each line's published terms, with sources, are on the price protection pages.

A credit for the full difference sounds as good as a refund of it, and sometimes it is. But onboard credit you cannot spend is worth nothing, and credit that expires at the end of the sailing has to be spent on that sailing.

If you were going to spend it on drinks and excursions anyway, credit is as good as cash. If you were not, the cash is worth more. Worth thinking about before deciding a program is generous.

Knowing the currency in advance changes how you treat a drop. A repricing claim before final payment is nearly always worth filing. A small onboard credit claim on a sailing where you do not plan to spend much may not be worth the phone call.

CruiseSignal tells you the amount and which program it falls under, so you can make that call rather than find out afterwards.