Have you ever gone on a cruise to reach a new level in a loyalty program?

We did several 3/4 day cruises on Princess to reach Elite. They got so inexpensive in the last part of 2013 we just could not resist. It was fun driving to San Pedro every Monday for 6 weeks.

Not yet, but I would not put it past us.

Years ago, I was a few thousand miles short of 1K status on an airline, so mid December I found a decent airfare and flew myself to Hawaii for four days to make that status for the coming year.

RCCL does not give you the benefits until your next cruise. I reached Diamond level after a few days of a 14 night cruise. I went to the desk and was told I would get the Diamond benefits on the next cruise.

GTV I also remember when it was by the cruise not by the # of days.

Thanks everyone for putting in your two cents. I enjoyed reading your replies.

We have only done this one time and our travel agent recommended that we do it. Funny thing was that we would have moved up anyway since on Carnival you reach the level when you receive your luggage tags for the cruise. So, we didn't actually need to take that extra cruise. It didn't really matter to us because it was local, short and cheap plus we had a nice time and went with friends. Nothing really lost. Next time, I check with the cruise line myself and not rely on anyone else

We’ve never picked a cruise to earn “points” on a particular cruise line – it’s always been more about the itinerary and ship – but we’ve been on enough cruises that we’re pretty high up in the past passenger programs for a few cruise lines now (we think Celebrity has the best perks, for us at least!). However, if we had a long cruise planned and we could get more perks on it by going on another short cruise first, absolutely we would do that!

Thanks everyone for participating. I enjoyed reading all your responses. Anyone one out there want to chime in?

I've only been on three cruises but two were quite long, as will my next one be. I don't really foresee the Points program being a big thing for me as I intend to use the cruise lines based on itinerary instead of companies. I've been on NCL and Princess, so after this next NCL I may take a river cruise, or another line depending on departure points and such. I live in Northern Alberta so the closest cruise port to me is Vancouver, and there is not a lot of cruises that I like leaving from there. Everywhere I want to go requires long flights and those are not cheap.

I did a 2 day cruise on RCCL and got credit for a cruise , you can not do that anymore they are all counting days now