My family is going to have our first time cruise on April 15, that will depart from Ft. Lauderdale. I haven't booked our flights to get there yet. I was just now checking the airfare and found it was outrageous. For the round trip flights between Boston and Ft. Lauderdale, we will be charged at least $600+ apiece. Please give me some advice: Should I wait a little bit longer to book by myself or just use the cruise line add-on airfare? My final payment is due on January 30.
Thanks very much!

I think you can do better than that, but fares that weekend will be higher than most other times - I know, I have been trying to book Boston-Savannah and getting outrageous fares.

Why - it is Easter weekend, Passover, Patriots Day weekend and beginning of public school vacation in Massachusetts.

Some suggestions - try JetBlue - they just started flying Boston-Dulles-West Palm Beach and FLL

Try other airport in Florida - PBI (West Palm Beach) and even Miami - they are surprisingly close together and if you save enough money even a one-way car rental would be worth it. One way car rentals in Florida are still cheap.

Wow - you are right, fares are outrageous. Did some quick checking - assuming cruise is a week, you can get a fare of $400 on SWA out of Manchester. But even checking itasoftware.com, there are few flights and no bargains for this time.

Depends on what cruiseline will charge for add-on fare and what flights they will give you. Even in April, I would not fly day of cruise departure - weather delays could still really mess you up.

Another idea is to repost on airline section - maybe someone else has a brilliant idea.

Can you try flying out of another airport? It would be worth it to try JFK or Newark. I am sure you could cut your costs quite a bit.

My experience has been that the air fares offerred are higher than I can get on my own except when you leave from one port and end at another. On a difficult (popular weekend) you don't want to find out 30 days before departure that only full fares are available or you aremaking 2 stops with a change of plane each way to save $200/person.

I have no answer but i would like to say that this winter the airfares have been terrible from Boston to anywhere! We wanted to go to Panama this year and last year i could have gotten a flight for $400. this year there was nothing under $850.

I just got through days of being on computer searching for reasonable airfare fr Bos to Tampa to take the Carnival cruise on 2/18. The prices from Orbitz, Travelocity, etc. were terrible - all starting about $700. I tried Southwest & JetBlue - they don't come up in Orbitz, etc. so you have to go to their sites directly. Southwest doesn't go to some places, and JetBlue doesn't go to some. It was a huge exercise in frustrating as I tried to coordinate flights and cruise, but was finally able to find a JetBlue fare to Tampa for the time frame at just under $500pp including taxes and fees. I believe both Southwest & JetBlue fly to FLL, and Manchester airport is OK. Also, there's QIXO, but watch out for those flights have have 2 stops - you'd be spending a whole day at airports. G'luck!

Check fares again - I have found fares have gone down about $75 Boston-Savannah in past week, so maybe they have for your route as well.