Royal Caribbean BOGO60, Kids Sail Free Ends Jan 1
Key points
- Royal Caribbean's BOGO60 and Kids Sail Free booking window runs December 9, 2025, through January 1, 2026
- Kids Sail Free only prices as free cruise fare for kids 12 and under when booked as additional guests in qualifying occupancy staterooms
- The Kids Sail Free blackout list blocks many peak family travel dates, including late December, spring break windows, and most of summer 2026
- Taxes, fees, and port expenses still apply to kids even when the cruise fare is priced at $0
- Certain booking changes and nonrefundable deposits can turn repricing into a trap if the promo falls off your reservation
Impact
- Family Cabin Math
- The discount mainly changes the base cruise fare, while taxes, fees, and port expenses still add meaningful cost per kid
- School Break Availability
- Blackout ranges cover many school holiday periods, so families must verify eligibility by exact sail date before committing
- Air And Hotel Timing
- Deal-driven booking compression can push travelers into tighter flight windows and higher pre-cruise hotel prices in gateway ports
- Repricing Risk
- Fare changes, cancellations and reinstatements, or other booking edits can remove promotional lines and erase expected savings
- Advisor And Call Center Load
- More shoppers comparing overlapping promos increases hold times and raises the odds of missed fine print
Royal Caribbean's current Wave Season stack combines BOGO60 (60% off the second guest's cruise fare) with Kids Sail Free on select itineraries. The booking window runs from December 9, 2025, through January 1, 2026, and the savings only apply when the correct promotional lines attach to your reservation at checkout. For families, the practical move is to verify eligibility by exact sail date and cabin occupancy first, then price flights and a pre-cruise hotel night around the embarkation weekend before you assume the "kids free" math will hold.
The core change versus simpler "percent off" sales is that Kids Sail Free is constrained by a long blackout list and by how Royal Caribbean prices triple, quad, and family-occupancy staterooms. If you shop by school break dates, your highest-risk failure mode is booking a sailing that looks eligible in marketing language, but prices without the Kids Sail Free line once you select the ship, date, and cabin.
Who Is Affected
Families booking three nights or longer with kids 12 and under are the primary audience, but only when the kids are additional guests in the same stateroom as the first two guests and the cabin supports the party size. Royal Caribbean notes that accurate Kids Sail Free pricing depends on entering correct names and dates of birth, and that the promo only shows when there is a qualifying child in the reservation with at least two other guests.
Travelers aiming for peak demand periods are affected even if they never intended to use Kids Sail Free, because the blackout list effectively funnels family demand into the remaining eligible weeks. For this specific offer window, the Kids Sail Free exclusions include late December travel (December 18, 2025, through January 5, 2026), a spring break block (March 6 through April 9, 2026), and a broad summer block (May 21 through September 4, 2026), with additional exclusions stretching into 2027 and 2028. If you are shopping Alaska cruise tours, there are separate Alaska cruise tour blackout ranges that can invalidate the deal even when a regular Alaska sailing might price as eligible.
Groups and multi-cabin families also need to pay attention to what breaks the promo after booking. Online Vacation Center's posted Royal Caribbean terms state that certain post-offer-period changes, including cancel and reinstate behavior, rebooking the same ship and sail date, fare changes, or changing ship or sail date, can remove offer components. That matters because "deal chasing" behavior can backfire if your plan depends on keeping the Kids Sail Free line attached.
What Travelers Should Do
If you are shopping this deal today, start by building one "control" quote and one "best case" quote. Your control quote should use the exact sail date you actually want, and the cabin type your family can live with, then confirm that both BOGO60 and Kids Sail Free appear as line items before you pay a deposit. Also remember that taxes, fees, and port expenses are additional for every guest, including kids, so sanity-check the full checkout total, not just the headline cruise fare.
Use clear decision thresholds for rebooking versus waiting. If your sailing is inside the blackout ranges, stop treating Kids Sail Free as a lever and instead compare the total trip cost across nearby dates that are eligible, especially just outside late December and the spring break window. If you are booking an eligible date but you expect to reprice later, avoid locking yourself into a deposit structure that makes changes painful, since nonrefundable deposit bookings are explicitly described as non-refundable from the time of booking.
Over the next 24 to 72 hours, monitor three things: whether your chosen sailing remains eligible as inventory shifts, whether a fare change would strip the promo lines, and whether your flight and hotel plan still has enough buffer. Cruise deals like this can compress booking timelines, which often pushes travelers into tighter day-of-embarkation flights and pricier pre-cruise hotel nights, even though arriving a day early is still the simplest way to reduce missed-ship risk.
Background
BOGO60 is straightforward in concept but easy to misread in practice. The posted terms describe it as 60% off the cruise fare of the second guest booked in the same stateroom as the first full-fare paying guest, and it is tied to prevailing rates during the December 9, 2025, through January 1, 2026 booking window for sailings departing on or after December 10, 2025.
Kids Sail Free is where families get surprised. Royal Caribbean frames it as a limited-time offer for guests 12 and under, but it only applies on select sail dates, it depends on correct guest details, and it is limited to triple, quad, and family occupancy bookings. Even when the cruise fare is priced at $0 for the kid, taxes, fees, and port expenses still apply, and other costs like onboard add-ons remain outside the promo.
This is also a "systems" disruption, not just a coupon. When a mass-market line pushes family value messaging during Wave Season, demand concentrates into the non-blackout weeks, cabins that sleep four disappear faster, and the travel system around the cruise starts to tighten. Flights into embarkation cities get pricier on peak weekends, hotels near ports sell out earlier, and call centers see more repricing attempts when travelers notice a promo line fell off after a booking edit. For more context on how Wave Season demand can stay resilient even as pricing rises, see Cruise booking trends are smashing fall expectations, and for a clean verification mindset on promo line items, see Virgin Voyages Wave 2026, 80% Off, Bar Tab.
If you want the evergreen framing for why these deal clocks matter, and how to shop them without getting trapped by fine print, start with Wave Season.