An offshoot of this thread: Cruise ships: Why does the ship gather your bags and then deliver to your room? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board
How much do you have to drink to make them worth the cost, and is it true that everyone in the group has to be in on it?
For someone like me or my wife who has one or two alcoholic drinks a night (at most) and rarely drink soda, the drink packages definitely aren’t worth it. At home we almost always drink water or tea/coffee and that’s what we drink (for free) on a cruise. If we want an overpriced beer or glass of wine with dinner, we just buy it a la carte.
It depends - on NCL, the package is included in the price for the advertised package ( although I’m sure you can get a reduction if you have it taken off ) and the additional fee is the gratuity on the retail price of the package ( which is about $27 per day. If you drink 1 alcoholic drink a day and no soda, it’s not worth it but anything more and it probably is.
Different cruise lines have different rules. Some require everyone listed in the state room to have a package - and I say listed for a reason. They don’t know who is actually sleeping where and people find all kinds of way to try to share. Others allow just one person to have the drink package - but you can’t order two drinks at once and you have to wait 15 minutes between drinks.
As said, the answer varies dramatically by cruise line. And cabin class. etc.
On Virgin, all drinks are ala carte, period. Except basic tea, coffee, & soda. You want a cappucino, a beer, or …? Gonna cost you. Their “package” is that you can prepay $X, and get $X + some spiff worth of drinks. So in effect, you’re pre-buying a 10 to 25% discount off the drinks you will eventually buy onboard. You can use your pre-pay to buy for you, your cabin mates, or anyone you want. And at the end of the cruise if you haven’t used up your pre-pay+spiff, you lose it. If you spend the whole pre-pay and spend the whole spiff then it’s all used up and now you’re paying full price thereafter. For me, that’s a deal worth taking. Virgin is also a young person’s, or young-at-heart person’s nonstop party sort of place. With lots of cheap stuff for the proles, but also lots of topshelf stuff for those of discerning palate. We’re not having prosecco Mimosas with breakfast; we’re having good French Champagne.
On Viking everything costs by the drink too. The drinks package amounts to pre-paying a fixed amount to buy into a ~30% discount on a lot of midrange drinks. For me that’s not a deal worth taking. Viking is also an old-person oriented sober sort of experience, not a grown-up frat party. None of their wine or booze is bad, but none is excellent either. It is priced reasonably though.
Other lines are different yet again. There are some that do the “pre-pay $X, drink all you want (but not the topshelf stuff)”. But I have no direct experience with that.
Overall IMO/IMO the package can save you some money if you’re an aggressive drinker. If one glass of wine at dinner is you, they’re a waste. It also depends a bit on whether you like Budweiser or $200+ / bottle wine with your meals.
Everyone in the same cabin has to buy the same drink package. Otherwise, one person buys the package for “free” (or discounted) drinks and then just keeps getting enough for everyone.
Also, the ship I was on had a liquor store selling nice bottles of various kinds of booze that were tax-free BUT you could not take the booze to your room. They’d hold it for you till the end of the trip when you’d collect it from them. They very much want you buying their over-priced booze.
I disagree with “overpriced”.
Wine in the restaurants is much the same price or cheaper than wine in a restaurant at home. The so-called duty-free alcohol in the shops is more expensive than the supermarkets, but not all that much.
We use the NCL package. From what I heard NCL is the only drink package worth it.
I’ve already cited two cruise lines where that’s not true. Which line(s) are you talking about? I’m not doubting that’s your experience, but if we’re each bringing a piece of the whole mosaic, let’s label our pieces.
That’s duty-free shopping. Same as the stores in the airports. It’s law they can’t let you take possession until you debark.
It’s totally unrelated to any desire to force you to pay for their “overpriced” drinks.
That’s been my experience on my two lines. The drinks prices are ordinary restaurant prices. And for the meal options that are extra-cost, they’re also in line with corresponding restaurant prices at home.
Admittedly, I’m used to living in a high cost area and living a fairly comfy lifestyle. Someone from a low-cost area may have very different ideas of what a glass of decent wine (or swill) “should” cost when eating out.
Cunard. They said everyone in the same room had to have the same drinks package (assuming they were adults). In fact, it is explicitly stated on their website.
Each adult assigned to the same stateroom must purchase the same Drinks Option. Sharing is not permitted. - SOURCE
Whose law? I thought that is why ships would sail beyond the 12-mile limit so people could gamble (or drink during prohibition) because US law didn’t apply anymore. Is it the country where the ship is registered? Are all countries in the world on the same page with that law (that would seem unlikely but I do not know)?
I may have misunderstood but I thought you said those two lines were a la carte only for drinks? I wouldn’t really consider that to be “ everyone in the room doesn’t have to buy the same package” if there really aren’t any packages and prepaying for a discount on each drink isn’t really what anyone thinks of as a “package”
They both offer what they call a “drinks package”. But it’s not an all-you-can-drink-for-one-flat-fee buffet-like arrangement.
The larger point is that “drinks package” means something different to everyone. Including the OP. And to every cruise line.
So let’s define our terms & qualify our experiences. If someone, e.g. OP, wants to qualify that they’re only interested in “drinks packages” defined as “flat-fee-all-you-can-drink”, well, let them do that.
YMMV, but that’s how it looks to me.
Cheers!! 
hiccup, stagger, pass out! 
Don’t forget rebroadcasting Major League Baseball with implied oral consent.
Can you help me understand this? Serious question!
Which “this”?
How does it work in airports? My understanding was that if I bought at duty-free shop in the airport, my purchases would be delivered at boarding , so I would have them on the plane. I’m not allowed to open the alcohol but I do have it.
Anyway, the idea of duty-free is that you don’t pay various taxes in the country where you buy them. On my first cruise (nearly 40 years ago) anything I wanted to buy duty-free in Bermuda had to be delivered to the ship. Now, if I buy a bottle of rum or whatever, the store hands it to me and when I get on board, the ship takes it and stores it - sometimes. If I have a small bottle, they say it’s a souvenir and I can keep it. And of course they deliver anything I buy in the on-board store But anything else I buy, from cigarettes in the on-board duty free shop (which are much less expensive than buying in the US) to packaged food items I buy at the destination, I can bring to my room.
Given that NCL allows me to bring my own wine when I first board ( but I will have to pay a corkage fee if I don’t pay for the unlimited beverage package) and won’t allow me to bring beer, water, soda or any other drinks on-board , I have to assume that it’s because they want to sell me those drinks. I actually don’t understand why they allow wine - their explanation is that they allow wine because very few guests bring wine so screening it requires fewer resources. It can’t really be a law regarding alcohol for a cruise leaving the US if they allow wine and again, I can take other duty free purchases to my stateroom.
It should be easy to calculate. You can get bar menus from sites like profcruise, here’s Princess for example. The a la carte prices for drinks is quite reasonable at around $11 per cocktail.
To use princess as an example, their free drinks package is not just drinks but also wifi and some other stuff (free premium coffee, desserts from the bakeries and gelato shops, ship-board delivery so they’ll bring you a drink in the hot tub or a burger on the sundeck) and it pays off your daily mandatory grauity of $17 too (which you’d have to pay yourself if you didn’t have the package) so it’s essentially $60-17=$43 per day for all that stuff. If you say that wifi/other benefits is worth half of it, you’re looking at $21.50 per day for drinks – you break even at 2 drinks. I’d say that’s easily worth it.
NCL has “free” booze 90%+ of the time (they’re always running the more at sea promo but putting a clock on it to make you think it’s a special deal) but you end up paying $27ish in gratuities. Their drinks are more like $15, so you end up coming ahead of you have two drinks a day, and it comes with other benefits like a specialty dinner and limited wifi package, so easily worth it there too.
Every line varies significantly so some won’t be worth it. Figure out how many drinks you’ll think you may have per day, figure out what the other package benefits are, and do the math. They’re usually worth it though IMO because the boats have a lot of bars which are often very nice places to hang out, you’re on vacation, you can have a drink anytime you want through the day, it’s really easy to have 4 or 5 drinks per day and that usually costs more than the package, and the drinks packages often include other benefits.
Some cruise lines often have a premium drink tier where you can order specific high end booze and more expensive cocktails – those usually aren’t worth it unless you’re very particular about your booze. To use Princess as an example again, the drink package covers drinks up to $11 which is only about 70% of their cocktails, and you can have to get a more expensive package to have more expensive drinks covered. Though generally if you do order a more expensive drink, your package still kicks in most of the value and you have to pay the extra value (usually plus tip) – so for example a $13 drink on Princess with the normal drink package will only cost you the extra $2 above the $11 the package covers, plus 18% tip, so you’d pay $2.38 for one of the $13 cocktails. On NCL it’s the same deal but IIRC they cover all cocktails unless you specify a higher end grade of booze. They do different wine lists for the regular drink package and the premium one.
It’s never been worth it for me, who might drink one soda a week in a hot climate and 0-2 drinks per cruise. If you drink a bottle of wine with your partner every night, or each have two mixed drinks and feed your kid soda (like the people at the next table on our most recent cruise), it might, especially if you also have a cocktail before or a nightcap after.
Sorry to disagree with my erstwhile shipmate @LSLGuy, but that’s not my understanding of the deal. Here’s the Viking site’s FAQ:
Can I upgrade the complimentary beverages?
Yes. Viking offers complimentary inclusive wines, beers and soft drinks with onboard lunches and dinners, plus specialty coffees and assorted hot teas that are available 24 hours a day.
For those who would like to upgrade, we offer the Silver Spirits beverage package. For only $27 USD per night, enjoy unlimited beverages in all onboard venues, bars and lounges anytime throughout the duration of your voyage. The package includes our house champagne, wine and beers by the glass, plus select wines by the glass, cocktails, aperitifs, well drinks, mixers/long drinks, a selection of upgraded whiskeys and soft drinks, up to $18 USD each. Silver Spirits also includes the Chef’s Table premium wine pairing, complimentary access to standard tasting events, a 50% discount for premium tasting events and a 30% discount on premium beverages, including bottles of wine.
There’s also this:
Can I bring alcoholic and other beverages on board?
Guests may bring alcohol and beverages with them, purchase alcohol ashore at destinations that sell alcohol, or purchase them from the onboard shop. Alcohol can be consumed in the guest’s stateroom or in public spaces, including the restaurants. There is no corkage fee.
We agree about that! My wife drinks a glass of wine with lunch and dinner (included on Viking at no cost) but I only have a drink or two a week. So $54 per day ($648 total for our last cruise) was definitely not worth it. The two of us would have had to drink four premium drinks a day to break even. Not gonna happen with us.
If you were asserting that Viking doesn’t require both people to buy the package, you are mistaken. From the FAQ above:
Both guests in a stateroom must purchase the package for the full length of the voyage in order for it to be valid.
I always end up having at least 4 drinks a day , starting with a mimosa in the morning. Also, when you try to decide whether it’s worth it, you have to take into account where you will be- as far as I know every cruise line has some free drinks such as iced tea and lemonade but those are generally only available at the buffet and restaurants. On NCL some of the outside bars ( only near the pool I think) have a self service water dispenser - but if you are elsewhere on the ship , the bars will have alcohol, soda and mocktails all of which you have to pay for without a drink package.
That was my experience on a Viking river cruise. Free beer, wine and soda at meals. Drink package available for the bar or for hard alcohol at meals I assume. We don’t drink enough to make it worth it.