Lesson 3 of 5

One offer, one leg

An offer is used up once, so the order you spend them in can change the bill.

Video, 5 min: Stacking Club Royale Offers on a Back-to-Back Cruise. Free, on our YouTube channel.

An offer is used once

A Club Royale offer covers one sailing. When you use it, it is gone. A back-to-back is two bookings, one for each leg, so covering both legs takes two offers: one on each.

Royal Caribbean's terms do not mention back-to-backs, so this is our reading, not a Royal Caribbean rule.

Why the order matters

Each offer has its own list of sailings. Two offers can say the same thing on the card and still fit different weeks.

Our example is Mariner of the Seas out of New Orleans, seven nights from 28 November and seven more after that. Both offers fit the first leg, and both save the same amount there. Only one of them fits the second leg.

• Wrong order. The offer that fits both legs is spent on the first. The second week has no offer that fits and is full fare. The two weeks cost $1,635.
• Right order. The offer that fits only the first leg goes there, and the flexible one is saved for the second. The two weeks cost $971.

That is $663 less for the same ship and the same two weeks. Taxes and port fees were $648 for two guests either way. No order changes those.

How often it matters

We checked 168 two-leg trips where two or more of our real offers fit. On 19 of them, about one in nine, the order cost money, a median of $205. On three-leg trips it was about one in four. The rule of thumb: spend the pickiest offer first, and keep the offer that fits almost everything for last.

What the site does for you

Add your offers to legtolegcruises.com and, for each trip, it works out which offer belongs on which leg. It puts at most one offer on a leg, and it never applies an offer to a sailing that is not on its list. When a fare is missing, the page says the leg is unpriced and shows a floor with a plus sign. It does not guess.

One thing to ask Royal Caribbean

The legs of a back-to-back meet on the turnaround day. Royal Caribbean's casino terms talk about sailing dates that are shared by more than one booking, and they do not say whether that day counts. In our reading it might. Ask before you put an offer on both legs. The number is on the terms page, and our guide to two offers on a back-to-back lists it.

See the full worked example in stacking offers. Next lesson: the second guest.

In short: One offer covers one sailing, so a back-to-back needs one offer for each leg. Spend the pickiest offer first and the flexible one last.

The legtolegcruises.com lessons are independent and not affiliated with Royal Caribbean International or Club Royale. Fares, offers and rules change often, so confirm every detail with Royal Caribbean before you book.