Cruise prices may change more than once between the day a traveler makes their booking and the day they sail. For this reason, some passengers embarking on future sailings keep an eye on the cost of their cruise tickets and additional onboard charges, hoping to rebook when a better deal comes along.
However, travelers who relied on Royal Price Tracker to handle that process for voyages on Royal Caribbean Cruises, one of the most popular budget cruise lines, suddenly lost access to its services this week. The website, which is not owned by or affiliated with Royal Caribbean, announced on Thursday that its tracking tool had been suspended due to an unspecified legal matter.
Royal Price Tracker hasn’t explained what led to the suspension. However, some passengers suspect Royal Caribbean may have played a role — a theory neither the cruise line nor the website’s owner has confirmed.
Royal Price Tracker Pauses Its Services Over A Mysterious Legal Matter
Royal Price Tracker is an independently operated website that allows travelers to monitor fluctuating prices for Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises vacations. However, when passengers visit the website, they now see a notice explaining that the tracking services have been paused and that its premium product will not launch this week as planned.
“We will no longer be launching Premium as planned on August 13, and all tracking services have been paused. … We know many of you were excited about Premium, and we genuinely appreciate the support and enthusiasm for what we have built. We’ll share more information when we’re able to,” the notice states.
Additionally, the message states, “a legal matter arose regarding aspects of the service.”
Travelers Were Blindsided By Royal Price Tracker’s Suspension
The suspension appears to have been sudden. One Reddit user claimed the service had alerted them to a lower dining package price the day before the pause.
“It was working yesterday and notified me on low dinner packages,” they wrote.
Others said they had recently registered to track upcoming cruises and were disappointed they could no longer access the service, one writing, “Bummer, I’m tracking a looot of things right now.”
For many passengers, Royal Price Tracker had become a valuable planning tool that made it easier to save money on upcoming cruises.
Passengers Say The Royal Caribbean Tracker Saved Them Money And Time
Royal Caribbean, which recently announced rare new sailings across a bucket-list region for the 2027-2028 season, advertises discounts on pre-cruise purchases. However, the displayed percentage doesn’t always tell travelers whether they are getting the lowest price.
Royal Price Tracker was created in order to avoid the need for manual checks. Once a suitable cruise or add-on had been chosen, the user would get an email alert whenever the price changed rather than logging into Cruise Planner each day.
In a Reddit announcement shared about two months before the suspension, the website’s creator, Mike, who goes by u/Hiking4Days on the platform, said the website had added cabin-price tracking for both Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises.
Other additions included:
- Improved price-history graphs
- Historical pricing tools
- A drink package calculator
- Favorites
- Searchable pages for cruises, ships, ports, excursions, and itineraries
Passengers’ responses to the updates showed why the service had developed a loyal following.
“Thank you for your website. It has saved me a ton!” one commenter wrote.
Another said the tracker had saved them “countless hours” of opening the Royal Caribbean app each morning to check the latest price, while a frequent cruiser described the website as a “lifesaver.”
Royal Price Tracker’s Creator Had Long-Term Plans For The Site
When one Reddit user asked about more detailed cabin tracking just 15 days before the pause, he said a solution was being developed and that the site had “some big things coming by the end of the year.”
However, Mike stated in a later comment that Royal Price Tracker is supported by donations and has no other means of monetization.
“Currently we don’t have any monetization yet other than mainly donations. But we are working on some options. Our goal is to keep the site free, ad-free, and provide an additional service as a way to monetize,” he wrote.
With Royal Price Tracker’s premium service in the works, some passengers wondered whether its monetization strategy had attracted unnecessary attention.
Royal Caribbean Passengers Speculate About What Caused The Suspension
With no detailed explanation, Reddit users began offering their own theories about what the legal matter could be.
Many suspect Royal Caribbean objected to how its publicly displayed prices were being used. Others suggested the tracker may have scraped the cruise line’s website or accessed pricing information in a way that conflicted with Royal Caribbean’s terms and conditions.
One commenter speculated that the cruise line may not have taken issue with the tool while it remained entirely free but became more concerned once its creators started considering monetization.
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“Scraping the Royal API like that and enabling the extra services on top of it is likely in violation of the RC terms of service. As an engineer working on a web application with our own APIs, it bothers me to no end trying to deal with people building new features on our API and then trying to sell those features.” |
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“Monetization has taken down sooooo many of these little handy pet projects. I get it. The developer wishes to find some compensation for their time, but it’s often unsuccessful outside of ‘buy me a coffee’ style donation.” |
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“Premium tier would check multiple times a day. So if the issue was data scraping, I can see how ‘now we’re going to scrape even more AND make money off it!’ might be an issue for RCCL.” |
However, neither Royal Price Tracker nor Royal Caribbean has confirmed any of these claims.
For now, travelers who want to track cruise prices will need to find another website, keep records of their purchases, or check the Cruise Planner manually.
TheTravel contacted Royal Price Tracker for comment but did not receive a response before publication.
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