Thinking of taking a cruise? Then you picked the right time — and you’re reading the right story.

Wave season — the time of year when most cruises are booked — is just ahead. It runs from January to about mid-March, and because everyone’s out there buying a floating vacation, there are lots of deals to be had.

But the wave season promises to be a little different than past ones. Coming off a year in which the industry trade group Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) expected to welcome a record 13.2 million cruise passengers, an increase of about a half-million guests over 2008, there’s trouble on the horizon.

The biggest, as far as passengers are concerned, are a pesky and probably illegal fuel surcharge on cruises. It’s no secret that fuel prices have risen recently, but the cruise industry appears to have taken the Gordon Gekko approach to paying its energy bills. Many have retroactively charged customers who already paid for their cruises in full, offering a piece of the action to travel agents who helped them collect.

Forget, for a moment, that some cruise lines have hedged their fuel costs, which means they aren’t really paying more for energy. And forget that those same cruise lines also agreed in 1997 to not charge any fees in addition to the advertised initial ticket price, except those actually passed on by the company to a government agency.

Apparently, greed is good.

Did You know....

“If you buy 100 shares of Carnival or Royal Caribbean shares, you’ll get between $50 and $200 of free cabin credit on every cruise,” says George Smart, a consultant in Research Triangle Park, NC. Note: Carnival and Royal Caribbean own most of the cruise lines out there, so this is a pretty decent deal.'