By ignoring the list price you can save up to 50 percent, provided you learn to haggle. A good travel agent will be able to find you some rock bottom fares ­ those are the prices to start negotiating from. Remember, booking a cruise is a game of chicken and it's all about who can walk away. If they sense you're desperate to get on that ship, plan on mortgaging your house; but if you play it cool, you may land a fantastic deal.

Booking is like comedy - it's all in the timing. Travel when they want you to. During the year there are "soft spots" when the cruise business turns into a ghost town. The trick is to book your cruise when nobody else wants to. Some ideal times to travel are the week after Labor Day, the first two weeks in December, and the week after New Year's. The slow season means lower rates. If you travel between late October and early December you can save about 20 percent. Another good time period is from April to May.

Keep up to date on current events in the cruise market to spot great deals. For example, between July and November 1999, seven mega-passenger ships were introduced, setting off a price war in the cruise industry. 

The early fall ­ hurricane season - is an especially good time to cruise the Caribbean. Hurricanes sound scary but most ships carry the latest sophisticated weather-detecting systems (including televisions tuned to the Weather Channel). Cruise ships get plenty of advance warning for most hurricanes; on average, given 24 hours notice, a cruiser can get 700 miles away from a hurricane's fury.

Sign up early and save 40 percent. In the olden days, if there were vacancies on cruise ships, they would go for a song. Soon there were ugly uprisings from early booking customers who resented this, so the cruise lines instituted early bird savings policies. In some cases you can book 18 months in advance.

If you book a whole group, some cruise lines will give you one free passage for every 15 bookings. If you belong to a group like a church or social club, it's time to whip out that directory and start making some calls. Besides, it will be more fun to travel with your friends.

Visit countries where you can get the best exchange rates. There are some places where you would have to pay through the nose to buy a bunch of flowers.