Ask three cruise lines whether your deposit is refundable and you could get three genuinely different answers — and unusually, none of them would be wrong. There’s no industry standard here. We checked six of the big lines against their own booking terms, and the differences are bigger than most people realise before they book.
It splits into three groups, and which group your line falls into changes what “I’ll just cancel if my plans change” actually means.
Group 1: pay a bit more, and your deposit genuinely comes back
Royal Caribbean, Celebrity and Princess all now offer a real choice at the point of booking. Pick the standard fare and, if you cancel early enough, you get every penny back — deposit included. Pick the cheaper “non-refundable deposit” fare instead, and that deposit is gone the moment you pay it, whatever happens next.
Royal Caribbean’s own cancellation policy puts it plainly: the standard cancellation table reads “no charge (except for Nonrefundable Deposit amounts)” right up until the final weeks before sailing — so unless you specifically chose the discounted non-refundable option, an early cancellation costs you nothing.
Celebrity, Royal Caribbean’s sister brand, runs the identical structure — confirmed on their own UK cancellation policy: cancel a longer cruise 120 days or more out on a standard fare and it’s “no charge (except non-refundable deposit amounts)”; choose the cheaper fare and you’ve already given that up.
Princess made the same structure the default rather than the exception. Their own cancellation and refund policy lists the earliest cancellation charge as “Deposit Amount if non-refundable” — wording that only makes sense if a refundable version exists too. It does: since October 2025 Princess bookings default to non-refundable, and getting your deposit’s safety net back is now something you pay for.
The trade-off is honest, at least: a lower headline price for giving up your deposit, or a higher one for keeping it protected. You’re choosing, not being caught out.
Group 2: no refundable option, but a long grace period
P&O doesn’t offer a refundable deposit on any of its three fares — Select Price, Early Saver or Saver. Read their own booking terms and conditions and the deposit is at risk from the day you pay it, on every fare, no exceptions.
What Select Price and Early Saver do buy you is time. Cancel more than 91 days before departure (121 days on some 2027 sailings) and the deposit is the most you can lose — nothing more. Cancel a Saver fare, though, and you can lose the entire fare from the day you book it, with no grace period at all.
It’s a genuinely different shape to Royal Caribbean’s choice. Nobody’s deposit comes back at P&O. But on two of the three fares, for three to four months, it’s the only thing you stand to lose.
Group 3: the deposit is simply gone, no upgrade on offer
NCL and MSC don’t give you a choice at all. NCL’s own UK terms and conditions show a single cancellation scale: “Loss of Deposit” for any cancellation more than 60 days out, rising from there. There’s no fare that protects it, at any price.
MSC’s UK booking terms are, if anything, more direct about it — the deposit is described as non-refundable from the moment you pay it, full stop.
Worth knowing if you’ve read about NCL’s US customers getting a refundable option: that may be true stateside, but it isn’t in the contract UK bookers actually sign.
What this actually means for you
The number that matters isn’t the deposit amount, it’s what you get for it. Before you book:
- Ask directly whether a refundable-deposit fare exists for that line. On Royal Caribbean, Celebrity or Princess, it usually does — for a price.
- If it doesn’t, find out how long the deposit-only window lasts. P&O’s Select Price and Early Saver give you three to four months where the deposit is your ceiling, not your floor.
- If neither applies, assume the deposit is gone the moment you pay it. That’s the honest starting position on NCL and MSC.
None of this is a reason to avoid any particular line — it’s a reason to ask the question before you pay, not after you try to cancel.
Want to see how the actual prices compare once you know which fare you’re looking at? Search live cruise prices on our tracker →
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