Improved Fare Tracker for Disney Cruise Line

We launched our Disney Cruise Line coverage in October with over 300 pages of information that dazzle the eye with more than 400 beautiful photos. A critical piece of this project is the data-driven Disney Cruise Line Fare Tracker, a tool that displays fare change histories for hundreds of different DCL sailings in 2013 and beyond. Each day we collect more than 50,000 different pieces of fare data and process them to display these charts. This tool helps people detect trends in DCL fares, with the ultimate goal of helping them determine the best time to purchase a cruise.

This week, we upgraded the Fare Tracker so that the Fare Tracker chart for a given cruise includes a separate line (in red) depicting historical data for a similar cruise. When such data exists, we now display fare information for a sailing on the same itinerary at the same time the previous year. For example, the Disney Fantasy is sailing on a 7-Night Eastern Caribbean cruise on Saturday, October 4, 2014. If you look at the Fare Tracker for that cruise, you will see data for the same itinerary departing on a comparable day in 2013 (7-Night Eastern Caribbean Cruise on Disney Fantasy – Itinerary A on Saturday, October 5, 2013):

Since the above chart shows a steep price increase starting at 255 days prior to sailing for the 2013 cruise, if I wanted to sail the 2014 cruise, I would purchase prior to that point (255 days prior to October 4 is January 22, 2014). And once it is after 212 days prior to the October 4 sail date (March 6, 2014), I wouldn’t worry much about my fare changing: it looks pretty constant after that point for the comparable 2013 cruise, although there is a slight drop (of $9.20!) 100 days before the sail date.

We hope that you like this addition. We expect the Fare Tracker to become more and more useful over time as we collect more data and make user interface improvements.

Have you looked at the DCL Fare Tracker? What features would you like to see on the Fare Tracker? What other Disney Cruise Line tools would help you out?