Quick answer: Do not redeem points directly for a cruise, since no bank currency transfers to a cruise line. Book around a kids sail free promo, pay cash for the fare, and use points for flights and the pre cruise hotel.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth first: cruises are the single worst way to spend your points directly. Amex Membership Rewards cash out at a miserable 0.7 cents each toward cruises. Chase Ultimate Rewards do better at 1.5 cents through Chase Travel, but that’s still well below the 2+ cents per point these currencies are worth when transferred to airlines and hotels.

So this isn’t an article about redeeming points for a cruise. It’s about the family playbook that actually works: pay cash where cash wins, use points where points win, and stack the promotions cruise lines practically beg families to take.

Prices, promos, and redemption rates verified October 8, 2026.

The hard truth about points and cruises

No major bank currency transfers directly to a cruise line. There is no Chase-to-Royal-Caribbean or Amex-to-Carnival transfer partner. Your options for spending points on the cruise fare itself are:

• Chase Travel: book the cruise through the portal (often requires calling a specialist) and redeem Ultimate Rewards at 1.5 cents each with the Sapphire Reserve. Simple, no blackout dates, but you’re leaving value on the table versus transferring those points to Hyatt or an airline.
• Amex Travel Pay with Points: cruises redeem at 0.7 cents per Membership Rewards point. On a $4,000 family cruise, that’s over 570,000 points for something your 201,000-point balance can’t touch — and those points are worth roughly three times more transferred to Delta or ANA.

The math is blunt: never burn Amex points on a cruise fare. Chase points at 1.5x are acceptable if you value simplicity over squeezing maximum value. But the real playbook doesn’t start with the cruise fare at all.

Play 1: Kids sail free — the biggest lever

This dwarfs every points trick in the article. Cruise lines routinely let kids sail free as third and fourth guests in a cabin with two paying adults:

• Royal Caribbean: kids 12 and under sail free on select sailings; recent promos also made the 3rd and 4th guests free regardless of age (great for teens).
• MSC Cruises: kids 17 and under sail free as 3rd/4th guests on select sailings — the most generous age cutoff at sea.
• Norwegian, Costa, and Holland America run their own versions throughout the year.

The catch, always: taxes, fees, and port charges still apply to every guest, and the promos are capacity-controlled on select sailings with blackout dates around holidays. But on a 7-night Caribbean sailing, two kids sailing free can erase $1,500–$2,500 from the fare. No points redemption in existence beats that.

The family move: pick your sailing around a kids-sail-free promo first, then figure out points second.

Play 2: Amex Cruise Privileges (Platinum cardholders)

If you hold the Amex Platinum, book sailings of five nights or longer through Amex Travel and you unlock the Cruise Privileges Program: onboard credits, a welcome amenity, and occasional cabin upgrades, varying by cruise line and cabin type. You must pay with your Platinum card — and you earn 2 Membership Rewards points per dollar on the purchase.

This is the correct way to involve Amex in a cruise: pay cash, collect 2x points on a $4,000 fare (8,000 MR), and pocket the onboard credit. Redeeming points for the fare at 0.7 cents each would be setting money on fire.

Play 3: Use points for everything around the cruise

Here’s where your points actually win. A cruise vacation isn’t just the cruise:

• Flights to the port: transfer Chase points to United or Southwest, or Amex points to Delta, and fly the family to Fort Lauderdale, Miami, or Port Canaveral nearly free. This is the highest-value use of your balances on the whole trip.
• Pre-cruise hotel: ships leave early; flying in the night before is non-negotiable with kids. Transfer Chase points to Hyatt at 1:1 and book near the port — Hyatt Place and Hyatt House properties near Port Everglades and Port Canaveral are excellent value.
• Onboard spending: pay with the right card. The Sapphire Reserve earns 3x on travel and dining — onboard purchases, specialty dining, and shore excursions booked through the cruise line all code as travel.

The honest split for a family of four: points cover the flights and the hotel, cash covers the cruise fare during a kids-sail-free promo.

Play 4: The casino status match (advanced)

The sleeper play in cruising: Royal Caribbean and Celebrity run casino loyalty programs that status-match from land-based casino programs. Players have parlayed hotel and casino elite status into deeply discounted or even free sailings. This is a niche game with real upside if anyone in the family already holds casino status — worth ten minutes of research before you pay full fare.

Play 5: What about Virgin Voyages?

You’ll see “book a cruise with Virgin points” all over points blogs: Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Red points redeem for Virgin Voyages sailings starting around 160,000 points per cabin. It’s a legitimate sweet spot — with one enormous asterisk for this audience.

Virgin Voyages is adults-only (18+). It’s a parents’ getaway play, not a family play. File it under date-night research, not the family playbook.

The family math: 7-night Caribbean, family of four

Say the cruise fare is $4,800 for four on a sailing with kids-sail-free:

• Pay cash with kids sail free: ~$2,600 out of pocket (two adult fares plus taxes/fees for all four), kids’ fares $0.
• Redeem Chase points at 1.5x: ~173,000 UR points for the same sailing — nearly four times the author’s entire Chase balance.
• Redeem Amex points at 0.7x: ~371,000 MR points. Absurd.
• The playbook way: $2,600 cash on the Amex Platinum via Amex Travel (5,200 MR earned + onboard credit), flights to Fort Lauderdale on transferred points (~60,000 points round trip for four on Southwest), pre-cruise Hyatt Place on ~12,000 transferred Hyatt points.

Same vacation. A fraction of the points burned.

Don’t forget the protections

Cruises are prepaid, nonrefundable, and expensive — exactly the trip worth insuring. The Chase Sapphire Reserve’s trip cancellation and interruption coverage (up to $10,000 per person) applies to prepaid cruise fares, and its travel insurance has no exclusion for cruises. Pay at least the deposit with the Reserve and you’re covered if illness or a schedule change kills the trip. Given we’re a family that just watched mono cancel a soccer weekend, this one hits home.

The bottom line

Stop trying to redeem points for the cruise. The family playbook is: kids-sail-free promo for the fare, Amex Cruise Privileges for the perks, points for the flights and the hotel, and the Sapphire Reserve for the purchase protection. That’s how a family of four cruises on the smartest possible mix of cash and points.