Find Carnival Cruise Line Australia Deals

Purpose

Return the list of promotional cruise deals currently advertised on Carnival Cruise Line Australia's deals page (carnival.com.au/cruise-deals). Each deal is a marketing bundle (a named offer with a rate code, an "average from" per-person AUD price, a set of perks, and a book-by date), not an individual sailing. The skill optionally drills into any deal to surface the concrete sailings (ship, itinerary, nights, sail date, per-person price) that the deal applies to, via the cruise-search page. Read-only — it never books, holds, or proceeds to checkout.

When to Use

"What cruise deals is Carnival Australia running right now?"
Monitoring promotional offers (reduced deposits, onboard credit, room upgrades) and their book-by deadlines.
As a first step before a price-comparison flow: get the deal's rate code, then drill into cruise-search for actual sailing prices.
Any flow that needs the current named offers + "from" prices without committing to a booking.

Workflow

The deals page is a client-rendered Next.js app. Its server payload (pageProps.data inside __NEXT_DATA__) is CryptoJS-AES encrypted (U2FsdGVkX1... = "Salted__"), and the /cruise-search results page encrypts its payload the same way — so there is no clean JSON/API path. The recommended method is to render the page in a browser and read the deal cards from the DOM. A bare Browserbase session (no proxies, no stealth) is sufficient — see Gotchas.

Open the deals page (a plain session is fine):

sid=$(browse cloud sessions create --keep-alive | node -e "let s='';process.stdin.on('data',c=>s+=c).on('end',()=>process.stdout.write(JSON.parse(s).id))")
browse open "https://www.carnival.com.au/cruise-deals" --remote --session "$sid"

carnival.com.au/cruise-deals 301-redirects to carnival.com.au/cruise-deals-2025?&dest=tp,nz,o,u,x. Don't fight the redirect — follow it.

Wait for the React deal cards to render (~3–5s after load fires):

browse wait load --remote --session "$sid"
browse wait timeout 5000 --remote --session "$sid"

Read the cards with browse get text body (and browse snapshot for refs / anchor hrefs). The page header reads "N Deals" (currently 4 Deals, excluding the locked VIFP member tile). For each deal card extract:
- title — e.g. "Fun-believable Deals", "Escape With Carnival", "Choice Plus", "Fun Select".
- price_from_aud — the "Average price $NNN* pp" figure (per person, twin-share, AUD; the * denotes "starting price, taxes & fees included").
- perks — the bulleted benefits (reduced/half-price deposits, onboard spending money, category upgrades, refundable deposits).
- book_by / sailing window — the "Available on … through {month year} — Book by {date}" line (not present on every card).
- rate_code & shop_url — from the card's "SHOP NOW" anchor href (see step 5). The rate code also appears in the icid.
Handle the VIFP member tile. One tile is a locked "Log in to unlock member-only deals" card (VIFP Club loyalty). It shows no price unless logged in. Emit it with member_only: true and a null price rather than dropping it.
(Optional) Drill into concrete sailings. Each deal's "SHOP NOW" button links to cruise-search with the deal's rate code, e.g.:
```
https://www.carnival.com.au/cruise-search?cruisedeals=funbelievabledeals&rateCodes=k3p&dest=U,X,NZ,O,TP&sort=fromprice&showBest=true&pagenumber=1&pagesize=8
```
Open it, browse wait timeout 7000, and read the results. The page shows a "SALES RATE APPLIED" badge, an "N Cruise Results" count (72 at capture time), and individual sailing cards: itinerary title (e.g. "2-Day Getaway from Melbourne, Australia"), ship (e.g. "Carnival Adventure"), and an "average per person" AUD price. Do NOT click a sailing's book/select control — stop at the results list.

Release the session:

browse cloud sessions update "$sid" --status REQUEST_RELEASE

Notes on inputs / assumptions

Prices render in AUD and are per-person twin-share "from" figures. Assumed the user wants the advertised deal bundles (the page's own "Deals"); concrete sailing prices are provided via the optional drill-down.
dest=U,X,NZ,O,TP is the default destination filter the deals page applies (Australia / South Pacific / New Zealand / Asia / Transpacific). The deals themselves are not destination-specific bundles.

Site-Specific Gotchas

No usable API — payloads are AES-encrypted. Both /cruise-deals-2025 and /cruise-search are Next.js SSR apps whose __NEXT_DATA__ → props.pageProps.data is a CryptoJS-AES "Salted__" blob, decrypted client-side by main.min.js with an embedded key. Don't waste time fetching /cruise-deals-2025/_next/data/{buildId}/index.json or trying to parse pageProps.data directly — confirmed encrypted across iterations. Read the rendered DOM instead.
/cruisesearch/api/targetedOffers/get is NOT the deals feed. It is the personalized "Targeted Offers" (TGO) endpoint and requires a PastGuestNumber (VIFP loyalty number) — a bare GET returns HTTP 400 {"errors":{"PastGuestNumber":["The PastGuestNumber field is required."]}}. It powers the logged-in member tile, not the public deal cards.
Stealth/proxies are NOT required. The site is fronted by Akamai (sets ak_bmsc, akacd_*, AKA_A2 cookies), but a bare Browserbase session (no --proxies, no --verified) loaded and rendered the deals page cleanly. The pre-run probe agreed (likelyNeedsVerified:false, likelyNeedsProxies:false). browse cloud fetch also returns 200 on the homepage and deals page without proxies. Don't pay for stealth here unless behavior changes.
/cruise-deals redirects → /cruise-deals-2025?&dest=tp,nz,o,u,x (301), and the assetPrefix/publicPath is /cruise-deals-2025 (so static chunks live under that path). Navigate to /cruise-deals and follow it.
Deal cards render late. A browse snapshot immediately after wait load can miss cards — always add browse wait timeout 5000 (deals) / 7000 (cruise-search) before reading.
The "N Deals" count excludes the locked VIFP tile. The header said "4 Deals" while 5 tiles were visible (the 5th being the member-only login tile). Count the public ones; flag the member tile separately.
Rate codes live in the SHOP NOW href and the icid. Observed mapping at capture: Fun-believable Deals=k3p, Escape With Carnival=keh, Choice Plus=qcp, Fun Select=KNS. These rotate with promotions and book-by dates — re-read them each run, don't hardcode.
Prices and book-by dates are time-sensitive promotions. The "$316/$320/$400/$520" figures and "Book by 30 May 2026 / 2 June 2026" deadlines were current at capture (2026-05-30) and will change. Treat every field as live data to re-extract, not a constant.
Read-only. Never click a sailing's select/book control or a "SHOP NOW → checkout" flow. Stop at the deal cards (or the cruise-search results list on drill-down).

Expected Output

{
  "success": true,
  "source_url": "https://www.carnival.com.au/cruise-deals",
  "currency": "AUD",
  "deal_count": 4,
  "deals": [
    {
      "title": "Fun-believable Deals",
      "price_from_aud": 316,
      "member_only": false,
      "perks": ["Great rates - limited time only", "Reduced deposits $50 pp/twin"],
      "book_by": "30 May 2026",
      "sailing_window": "Select sailings through May 2027",
      "rate_code": "k3p",
      "shop_url": "https://www.carnival.com.au/cruise-search?cruisedeals=funbelievabledeals&rateCodes=k3p&dest=U,X,NZ,O,TP&sort=fromprice&showBest=true&pagenumber=1&pagesize=8"
    },
    {
      "title": "Escape With Carnival",
      "price_from_aud": 320,
      "member_only": false,
      "perks": ["2 Category room upgrades", "Reduced deposits from $50pp"],
      "book_by": "2 June 2026",
      "sailing_window": "Select Carnival Australia sailings through July 2028",
      "rate_code": "keh",
      "shop_url": "https://www.carnival.com.au/cruise-search?cruisedeals=escapewithcarnival&rateCodes=keh&dest=U,X,NZ,O,TP&sort=fromprice&showBest=true&pagenumber=1&pagesize=8"
    },
    {
      "title": "Choice Plus",
      "price_from_aud": 400,
      "member_only": false,
      "perks": ["Half Price Deposits", "Up to $400 Onboard Spending Money per room"],
      "book_by": null,
      "sailing_window": null,
      "rate_code": "qcp",
      "shop_url": "https://www.carnival.com.au/cruise-search?cruisedeals=choiceplus&rateCodes=qcp&dest=U,X,NZ,O,TP&sort=fromprice&showBest=true&pagenumber=1&pagesize=8"
    },
    {
      "title": "Fun Select",
      "price_from_aud": 520,
      "member_only": false,
      "perks": ["Refundable deposits", "2-Category Upgrade"],
      "book_by": null,
      "sailing_window": null,
      "rate_code": "KNS",
      "shop_url": "https://www.carnival.com.au/cruise-search?cruisedeals=funselect&rateCodes=KNS&dest=U,X,NZ,O,TP&sort=fromprice&showBest=true&pagenumber=1&pagesize=8"
    },
    {
      "title": "VIFP Club",
      "price_from_aud": null,
      "member_only": true,
      "perks": ["Member-only deals — log in to unlock"],
      "book_by": null,
      "sailing_window": null,
      "rate_code": null,
      "shop_url": null
    }
  ],
  "error_reasoning": null
}

Optional cruise-search drill-down shape (when step 5 is performed for a single deal):

{
  "deal": "Fun-believable Deals",
  "rate_code": "k3p",
  "result_count": 72,
  "sailings": [
    {
      "title": "2-Day Getaway from Melbourne, Australia",
      "ship": "Carnival Adventure",
      "price_from_aud": 316,
      "sale_rate_applied": true
    }
  ]
}

Failure / blocked shape:

{
  "success": false,
  "source_url": "https://www.carnival.com.au/cruise-deals",
  "deal_count": 0,
  "deals": [],
  "error_reasoning": "Deal cards did not render within timeout / page returned an anti-bot challenge."
}

find-deals