
Cruise Sheet: Find cruise deals - kirubakaran
http://cruisesheet.com/
======
kirubakaran
Since some comments are accusing me of nefarious motives, I thought I'll
explain: (thanks though, it gave me a good laugh)

1\. I saw the link on
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6697416](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6697416)
where plainOldText was kind enough to post
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6698086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6698086)

2\. I thought, well, more people need to see this awesome app, so let me post
the link as a story.

The only profit I got was in karma points. I checked xe.com and it says 1.000
HN = 0.000 USD.

(ps: Thanks dangrossman, plainOldText and bradly)

~~~
tynan
Thanks for the link-- I'm the creator of the site and I appreciate it.

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PilateDeGuerre
This is great. I want to use this. Some improvements are needed:

\- When searching Florida to Florida (so as to find roundtrip cruises) the
cruises just says Miami Round Trip w/o giving any ideas of where it is going
to stop, what region, etc. (see:
[http://cruisesheet.com/?from=Florida&to=Florida](http://cruisesheet.com/?from=Florida&to=Florida))

\- No way to search within a time frame. Say I want to leave after November
18th but before December 12th. There is no way to do this search and sort by
price.

\- Clicking custom search goes nowhere

\- I have not once been able to get the low price you list

~~~
tynan
Thanks for the feedback. This was just a weekend project, so I have a lot of
improvements to make, but not a ton of spare time to dedicate to them. I'll
get there, though.

The low price is double occupancy-- a few people have gotten stuck on that, so
I have to make it clearer.

------
danmccorm
Umm: ERROR WITH QUERY: SELECT * FROM deal WHERE added_date >= '2013-11-08' \-
INTERVAL 30 MINUTE AND from_id IN(19) AND ship_id = ORDER BY cpd ASC LIMIT 0,
100 You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to
your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'ORDER BY cpd ASC
LIMIT 0, 100' at line 1

[http://cruisesheet.com/?from=Bayonne%2C+New+Jersey&ship=Expl...](http://cruisesheet.com/?from=Bayonne%2C+New+Jersey&ship=Explorer+of+the+Seas)

------
cm2012
I had no idea cruises were so cheap. Wow - it is literally cheaper than rent
alone to live on a cruise ship.

~~~
Avalaxy
Well, there's more besides the 'rooms are 2p'. It doesn't include food for
example... You have to buy that, and it can be pretty expensive because the
restaurants on the boat have a monopoly. The other thing is that cruise ships
usually have mandatory gratuities that can be pretty expensive.

~~~
letney
No. Every US based cruise I've ever been on or heard about has free meals. Its
common to hear people talk about gaining 10 lbs on a cruise because they ate
so much.

~~~
Avalaxy
Seriously? On European cruises (at least the ones I've been with) the food
cost money (and lots of it).

~~~
letney
Yes. At the sit down dinners I often couldn't decide on an entree -- so I
would just order both.

Drinks (including soda, coffee, and of course alcohol) are very much not free
though. You are also not allowed to bring any alcohol on board.

Some cruises have begun charging "charging extra for new premium amenities
such as fancy alternative restaurants" [1] -- but the run of the mill buffets
are all you can eat and free.

[1] [http://www.aarp.org/travel/cruises/info-08-2012/cruise-
ships...](http://www.aarp.org/travel/cruises/info-08-2012/cruise-ships-food-
excursions.html)

------
gburt
Is there a way to line these up so you can get back to your starting
destination fairly easily? If we could line them up back to back I'd love to
do this for like 6 months, I think.

~~~
tynan
I'm the creator of this site... I tried some algorithms to build something
like this. The problem is that there are peak seasons that make the price
crazy expensive. To be on contiguous ships all year, the best price seemed to
be around $30k... if you don't care that the ports line up (which probably
makes it impossible to actually do) it was around $20k.

------
lpolovets
Cool site! I am just curious, where do you get the data from? Is it scraping?
I've had a few ideas for cruise-related sites, but have been consistently
stifled by the lack of affordable data about cruise itineraries.

~~~
tynan
Scraping from a few sources and coallating the data. Hoping I make some money
of commissions to fund buying access to good data.

~~~
lpolovets
Thanks, and good luck!

------
xoail
Somebody should organize a Cruiseathon. Hackathon on a Cruise. I will be game!

~~~
larrys
Keep in mind that internet access can be slow and sometimes out of reach of
the Satellite. Other than that it's a great idea and there have been tech
cruises.

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dkl
The "Round Trips" don't say where they go and all the links on the right don't
work for me.

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Avalaxy
This is really nice, I just found an awesome deal! Too bad the listed cruises
are only for United Statians, and I couldn't book a cruise when I clicked on
the link, because they only accept bookings from United Statians. Fixed it by
just visiting the website of Holland America Line, from there I can book it.
But it would be much nicer if I could just purchase it from your link. I
assume you'd also get a commission for it.

It would also be nice of there would be some pictures of the cruise or the
cruise ship. Anyway, bookmarked this, will come in handy :)

------
kposehn
This is the kind of thing most affiliate marketers dream of making, and rarely
ever succeed at.

Very well done and I think this could easily become a business itself. Keep
this one rocking!

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DocG
I read original article also, but... ...I've never wanted to be on a cruise so
much before.

When I finish my living abroad, I think I will try it. It would cost me around
the same to get a cheap hostel.

------
johnmurch
Mentioned on [http://tynan.com/cruisework](http://tynan.com/cruisework) \- Why
Cruises are a great place for development/focus.

------
TimCinel
What's with the trailing "8" on every page, is it a typo or does it mean
something more? ;)

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mattmaroon
Uh, awesome. Can I filter by price? i.e. everything less than $500? Or date
range?

Anyway, awesome.

~~~
tynan
Not yet-- will be adding these. Bookmark and check back in a couple weeks!

------
marze
Wow, this looked like a spam post at first with three votes.

And wow, the cruises listed are cheap!

------
kubiiii
It is basically cheaper to cruise than to live at home.

~~~
cperciva
Except that when you're on a cruise you're typically also paying rent for a
house or apartment elsewhere.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Rent out your place on airbnb. Bonus if you can rent it out for more than it
costs you, and you can fund your cruising with the profits.

------
deleted_account
1) Post fluff blog post about how cruises are great places to work:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6697416](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6697416).
Get upvoted.

2) Follow up with link to the website you built to find cruise deals.

3) Profit.

How much are you making off this, Kirubakaran?

~~~
dangrossman
This site was linked from that post, which is probably where kirubakaran found
it. I'm not sure why you think he's making money for sharing Tynan's link. Are
you suggesting that, while submitting links to HN is free, he _paid off_ two
different people to submit the blog post and the link to Cruise Sheet
separately? Why?

~~~
deleted_account
Because it's such a maddeningly blatant shill post which, out of context,
would be considered the worst type of spam: a single link to a "Find hidden
hot cruise deals" site.

And in the context of the post it's not much better. You know where I like to
work? From the deck of a cruise ship! No shit, I'd love to be on a cruise ship
too.

"You know where I like to code? From the beaches of Aruba!" Followed up by a
link to an Aruba travel deals site. No.

Extended rant: my frustration equally applies to Tynan's post
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6697416](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6697416)
\- nothing personal per se, save for the obviousness of the article I ham-
handedly parodied above.

These class of ex post facto blog posts authored solely for self promotion
seem like the bread and butter of HN. He build a website to sell cruise ship
deals and now he _really_ wants everyone to know how great it is to [insert
relevant occupation] from the deck of a cruise ship.

I really need to start thinking of HN as "Hustler News" instead of "Hacker
News" I think it'd alleviate the cognitive dissonance I got going on.

