Ooh-la-la cruises that don’t cost oodles

“LET me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me,” novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote. And so are the luxurious vessels on which they sail.

The ships of Regent Seven Seas Cruises, SeaDream Yacht Clubs, Crystal Cruises, Seabourn Cruises and Silversea Cruises resemble the cruise ships built for the rest of us, but the prices they usually charge are on an entirely different level.

Average cabins sometimes sell for $1,000 a day. But savvy travelers can find deals if they look hard.

All these cruise lines have occasional soft spots in their booking patterns -- unoccupied cabins that they must discount to fill. And yet no cruise broker, to my knowledge, has ever promoted the reduced-rate bargains of one of the luxury lines to the extent that occurred last month.

In May, a California travel agent offered the site www.discount-seabourn-cruises.com to promote discounts aboard Seabourn Cruises, one of the chicest of the chic. The Seabourn line consists of three elegant vessels -- the Seabourn Legend, the Seabourn Spirit and the Seabourn Pride -- each carrying only 200 passengers, all in suites.

The website www.discount-seabourn-cruises.com is subtle in unveiling its upscale bargains. If a Seabourn departure is not available at a discount, it is listed at its standard price, which can be as much as $800 per person per day.

But if the departure is selling slowly and has been reduced for clearance, it carries the statement “call for price.” For these, you make a toll-free call to Vacation Discounters at (888) 655-6141 to learn the bargain rate, which apparently can be revealed over the phone but not on the Internet.

I made a test call and snared 25% off the regular rate. Suddenly, the price of a luxury ship seemed more reasonable.

My success with Seabourn caused me to look, for the first time in my life, at the website of SeaDream Yacht Clubs, a cruise line that calls itself a “club.” Carrying only 110 passengers on each of its two “mega-yachts,” it features champagne and caviar parties, Balinese Dreambeds on open decks (actual double beds on which to recline outdoors), “golf simulators” for playing 30 championship courses, overnight stays in St. Tropez (summer) and St. Bart’s (winter) and other luxuries.

SeaDream’s cruises often start at $1,000 per person per day minimum. Yet if you carefully scan its website (www.seadreamyachtclub.com), you’ll find slow-selling sailings in which a $4,900 minimum price is listed for a weeklong cruise -- savings of more than $2,000 per person.

So, if you’re determined to lord it at sea, take heart. Even the fanciest ships face hard times marketing themselves. A careful search of the Internet will find bargains even in the world of sheer luxury. Scan the offerings of the major cruise brokers, but also go directly to the websites of the five luxury lines listed above.