A Three-Day Cruise to the Bahamas for $210? There Must be a Catch

The resort at sea

Having taken bargain cruises, I was prepared for a tiny, interior, windowless room. Instead, exterior cabin 6126 had a large porthole window next to a small table and two chairs, a queen bed, mini refrigerator and relatively spacious bathroom with a curtained shower. Internet access cost $15 for 24 hours.

Up four floors, past the Tuscan landscape art that betray the ship’s origins, there’s a fully equipped gym that in two days of use I shared only once, with a staff dancer. It is part of the spa, offering a range of treatments from $20 brow shaping to 75-minute Balinese massages for $180.

At the 5 p.m. sail-away party by the aptly named Plunge Pool (there’s also a small adults-only pool), entertainers led passengers in a conga line and “The Macarena.” The ship comedian, Vince Taylor, reminded the crowd, “Remember, what happens on the cruise stays on Facebook!”

At the bar, I ordered a Bahamian Sands beer ($6.50) and met a multigenerational family from Georgia celebrating a daughter’s graduation from medical school, a Colombian mother and daughter who praised the trip as “más económico” compared to alternatives, and young couples across the racial spectrum cruising for the first time. My fellow passengers were also far younger than the 50-plus set that tend to dominate longer cruises. The company says its core demographic is 25 to 45.

Some took the cruise to gamble in the ship’s casino. Others combined it with an island resort stay, getting off for a few days before returning (the cruise line sells ship and hotel packages). At dinner — a light “Floribbean” meal of shrimp cocktail and seared tuna niçoise salad — I met Kathleen Young from Central Florida, who uses the ship monthly to avoid flying on a small plane to the island, where she was receiving treatment for cancer.