Royal Caribbean and family has just introduced the Points Choice program, and at the same time saves us all from wondering if it will follow Carnival’s demise.

Updated January 21, 2026. Included a section with details on how the Points Choice program works.

Royal Caribbean introduces Points Choice program

On October 28, 2025, Royal Caribbean introduced the Points Choice program along with sister cruise lines Celebrity Cruises and Silversea. This continues a string of positive improvements the combined loyalty programs made for customer loyalty.

In mid 2024, the three cruise lines introduced the ability to status match between each chain. That was a perfectly reasonable approach to encourage some of their loyal members to try out different chains. Perhaps someone had a lifetime of Royal Caribbean cruises but was ready for a Celebrity cruise? Without the status match, that member would be no different than any other average Joe going to Celebrity. In fact, with no status, the member might have instead considered Princess (part of Carnival) as an alternative. This helps prevent leakage to other companies.

Now, with Points Choice, it’s the next evolution of the loyalty program, allowing customers to eventually earn loyalty credit in the program of their choice. Sailing on a Celebrity ship but want to credit to your Royal Caribbean Crown and Anchor account? You’ll be able to do that starting with cruises departing on or after January 30, 2026.

Note that this will only apply with credit earned once the program goes live. Points Choice will not work retroactively on credit already earned within each cruise line’s loyalty program. You can think of this equivalently in the airline loyalty world as flying on American and crediting your flight to British Airways. It makes sense, and frankly seems long overdue.

Earning status in each cruise line

As a brief reminder, let’s discuss how to earn status within each cruise line.

Royal Caribbean Crown and Anchor

In Royal Caribbean’s loyalty program, you’ll need to earn “Cruise Points” to earn status. This means you’ll earn credit with the following structure:

• One Cruise Point for each night of your sailing
• One additional Cruise Point for each night if you’re booked in a suite

It’s a simple program at face value to understand, and you can earn benefits after your first three-night cruise:

• Gold = 3 Cruise Points
• Platinum = 30 Cruise Points
• Emerald = 55 Cruise Points
• Diamond = 80 Cruise Points
• Diamond Plus = 175 Cruise Points
• Pinnacle Club = 700 Cruise Points

In theory, you could earn Pinnacle Club in a single year by spending the whole year in a suite. We certainly wouldn’t advocate you spend your money that way, but it is possible.

Celebrity Cruises Captain’s Club

Celebrity Cruises’ loyalty program is a bit more convoluted in the “Club Points” earn rates. Not only does the type of room impact the earn rate, but where your cruise occurs also changes the answer. (All earn rates are per night.)

• Ocean cruises
  • Inside & Ocean View = 2 Club Points
  • Veranda & Infinite Veranda = 3 Club Points
  • Concierge Class & AquaClass = 5 Club Points
  • Most base-level suites = 8 Club Points
  • Celebrity, Signature, Horizon, & Royal Suites = 12 Club Points
  • Reflection, Penthouse, & Edge Villas = 18 Club Points
  • Iconic Suite = 24 Club Points
• Galapagos cruises
  • Sky Suite with Veranda = 8 Club Points
  • Sky Suite, Premium Sky Suite, & Ultimate Sky Suite with Infinite Veranda = 12 Club Points
  • Royal Suite & Penthouse = 18 Club Points
• River cruises
  • River View & Infinite Balcony = 8 Club Points
  • Balcony = 12 Club Points
  • Skylight Infinite Balcony & Vista Balcony Suites = 18 Club Points

Earning status on Celebrity Cruises could then take a long time if you stay in the cheapest rooms:

• Preview = 0 Club Points
• Classic = 2 Club Points
• Select = 150 Club Points
• Elite = 300 Club Points
• Elite Plus = 750 Club Points
• Zenith = 3,000 Club Points

Silversea Venetian Society

Silversea’s loyalty program is the easiest of the three simply because each night sailed adds 1 VS Day to your account. It doesn’t matter what class of room you stay in. However, earning status could potentially take the longest with the program despite its simplicity. You’ll earn additional benefits at each of the following thresholds:

• 1 VS Day
• 100 VS Days
• 250 VS Days
• 350 VS Days
• 500 VS Days

After 500 VS Days, you’ll earn a complimentary seven-day cruise for each 150 VS Days.

How Points Choice works

Are you ready to be overwhelmed? It would have certainly been easier if there was just one chart to rule them all. Instead, we’ve got three tables to share depending on which cruise line you’re sailing with.

We’ll share all three tables and then provide our observations and thoughts.

Here is the chart showing credit for Royal Caribbean sailings:

Next up are sailings on Celebrity Cruises, which use the following chart:

And then there are Silversea sailings, with points earning levels defined by the following:

Royal Caribbean Crown & Anchor Observations

Royal Caribbean works as you’d expect, which at least makes it easy to understand. Across all sailings, the logic remains the same: non-suites are 1 point/night and suites are 2 points/night. Silversea considers all its rooms to be suites, and so logically you would earn 2 points/night in all rooms on Silversea sailings.

Of the three programs, this one is the easiest to figure out. And if you’re trying to earn Crown & Anchor credit at the cheapest rate, you’re probably best off sticking to Royal Caribbean cruises. Logically, that’s because Royal Caribbean cruises are generally the cheapest of the three.

Celebrity Cruises Captain’s Club Observations

In general, you can make the argument that if you have interest in staying in specialty suites and top-of-the-line rooms, this is the program that benefits you the most. You’ll earn anywhere from 2 points/night at the cheapest rooms to 24 points/night at the top end. On Silversea cruises, that starts at 8 points/night given Silversea’s higher price point.

Frankly, that seems a bit more reasonable for earning on Silversea than with Royal Caribbean’s program. At 8 points/night with the cheapest Silversea rooms, that’s the same credit as Celebrity’s own Panoramic or Sky Suites. Which one is cheaper is going to depend on the specific cruise you’re on, but they’re within spitting distance of each other.

And with Celebrity awarding 2 points/night even in the base Royal Caribbean room, this program feels like the best one to get started with if you don’t already have credit elsewhere.

One last thing: this only applies to cruises. That means the free webinar credit from Celebrity Cruises will not credit to other programs and exclusively remains a benefit to Captain’s Club members. Another reason to focus on Celebrity Cruises.

Silversea Venetian Society Observations

Let’s start this by saying it probably had to be done; they needed to award partial credit. The program always offered 1 VS Day/night on its own cruises. But with both Royal Caribbean and Celebrity offering far cheaper rates than Silversea, it would have been super easy to earn Silversea status by taking the cheapest Royal Caribbean rates. Thus, they introduced fractional credit going all the way down to 1 VS Day credit for every four nights on Royal Caribbean.

But here’s the real kicker: you cannot transfer partial credit to Silversea Venetian Society. Have a 3-night cruise on Royal Caribbean? That’s worth 0 VS Days with Venetian Society per their terms. A 7-night cruise on Royal Caribbean only gives 1 VS Day. Ouch. Venetian Society seems to not have the ability to record partial nights, which drastically limits its usefulness.

Frankly, we’d steer clear of crediting to Silversea strictly because of this restriction. How annoying it will be to find the cruise you want on the two cheaper cruise lines that’s the exact length to not leave any credit behind. They should have adjusted this more knowing that some credit will be forfeited, but here we are.

Other things you need to know with Points Choice

One important thing to note is they may be introducing an update annually. All of their program materials specifically note this is how it works for 2026. Will it change in future years? There’s no guarantee, but it’s still something to be aware of, especially as cruises can be booked for 2027 already. Will you get what you think you get?

To register for Points Choice, you can submit your request anytime before your sailing up to 14 days after your cruise. This can be found either in your cruise app or via the cruise line’s website.

Importantly, Points Choice seems to avoid following in Carnival’s footsteps

In the FAQs linked above, there’s an important line from the Royal Caribbean family: “Benefits will remain the same for Crown & Anchor, Captain’s Club, and Venetian Society program.” This is significant, especially in light of what Carnival is doing.

As a reminder, Carnival is in the middle of significant changes to its loyalty program to be called Carnival Rewards that only recognizes what guests have done for them lately. Gone is the lifetime of status recognition to be replaced by a biannual qualification period that angered many customers. Carnival later took some customer feedback into account, but really only for those at the Diamond level.

It would have been easy for Royal Caribbean and family to follow what Carnival did and revolutionize the cruising loyalty industry. Instead, they seem to have placed an important note to customers that the changes they’re looking to make with Points Choice are meant to be strictly positive. That’s awesome, and I’m glad Royal Caribbean is being forthright with this program update by clearly indicating there is no immediate change imminent with the launch.

That doesn’t mean we’re forever out of the woods from Royal Caribbean making negative changes to its program, but we seem to be safe for now.

What do you think of the Points Choice program?

Suggested reading:

• Review: Celebrity Solstice Alaska Cruise – Part 1 – Booking and Room
• PSA: Do Not Waste Money on Celebrity Cruises Drink Packages
• Is Carnival’s Faster to the Fun Worth Your Money?