Last Updated: June 26, 2013May 17, 2019

Third-par­ty In­sur­ance

Gen­er­al­ly the third-par­ty in­sur­ance poli­cies are bet­ter and here’s why: They tend to be more com­pre­hen­sive. They cov­er you if your flight is can­celled and you miss a day or two of your cruise va­ca­tion; many even cover pre-ex­ist­ing med­ical con­di­tions. Plus they of­fer cash back for can­cel­la­tion (typ­ical­ly up to 75%) as op­posed to the fu­ture cruise cred­it of­fered by the cruise line policies  And they’ll cov­er you if the cruise line goes bel­ly up — though some cred­it cards will al­so pro­tect you if that hap­pens. Do note that the ex­tent of cov­er­age can dif­fer from in­sur­er to in­sur­er, so al­ways read the fine print be­fore you com­mit to a pol­icy. Or check with Square­mouth (tel. 800/240-0369; square­mouth.com) to com­pare third-par­ty poli­cies.