On the cruise I took (Carnival, many years ago) the drink packages seemed overpriced, but they had two redeeming features:
Convenience. I just had to show the card to the bartender, and I could get all the drinks I wanted. I didn’t have to sign a chit every time I ordered something.
It was all paid for in advance. People who bought their drinks one at a time had to settle their tabs on the last day of the voyage. I was sitting at a table just down the hall from the cashier’s desk, and I heard several people screaming at their spouses when they saw the bills.
(I am a teetotaler, so I only bought the soft drink package. I think the booze package worked similarly.)
As an aside, did you see NCL very recently went through a shit storm of bad press? Apparently they changed their itinerary on an Antarctica cruise (so, no Antarctica) but for no reason anyone can discern (not weather). The passengers almost revolted while on the ship. Lots of drama.
I hadn’t - but that reminds me of something that probably doesn’t apply to your cruise but you should never book a cruise for a specific port. There are all sorts of reasons the itinerary might change and while a Caribbean cruise won’t usually end up in Canada, it might end up on St Thomas rather than St Martin.
I looked a bit more and it seems the NCL ship is not going where it was supposed to go because word came from the corporation that the ship was “speed limited” to 19 knots. No explanation on why but it seems that means the ship could not make it to Antarctica and back within its 14-day cruise.
Here is a short (12 minutes) YouTuber talking about it. Maybe things have changed. I dunno but it is of interest to me since I will be on my first cruise in a few months (although, I am not too worried…my ship kinda has to make its destination…I guess they would cancel the cruise if a hurricane was in the way).
That’s kind of exactly what I’m talking about. I don’t know why the itinerary got changed (and they did apparently go to Antarctica, just a different port) and NCL absolutely should have provided them with information - but she’s 100% wrong when she says they paid to go to Antarctica. They wanted to go to Antarctica, they expected to go to Antarctica but I guarantee the cruise contract gave the company the right to change the itinerary with no notice and the only refund will be port taxes, excursions and possibly a small goodwill credit. Sometimes it’s up to the cruise ship and sometimes not ( Bar Harbor passed a law that only 1000 people a day can disembark total and a sometime in the last few days judge upheld it - not sure how that’s going to work but the cruises start in May ) but they absolutely wrote the contract to protect themselves and not get sued when they go to Canada instead of the Caribbean to avoid a hurricane or keep people onboard an extra day or two because of a possible cholera outbreak. That’s why you shouldn’t book a cruise for a particular port - it’s not like a plane trip where you are paying for transportation from one place to another and a lot of people either don’t know that or don’t fully understand what it means.
Missed stops happened to me twice. On our Panama Canal cruise we couldn’t go to the Holland America resort island because the seas were so choppy that the shuttle boats couldn’t dock with the ship safely. I guess they didn’t want to lose any passengers trying to board them. No great loss. We missed one stop due to being stuck on a sand bar up the Orinoco. That was a lot more fun, actually.
FWIW, Viking Cruises (ocean) takes the opposite approach. There is no upselling at all. No casino, no art shows, no photographers, and the specialty restaurants and the spa are free. You’re hard-pressed to find anything on the ship to buy (other than in the jewelry and souvenir shops). But they are on the pricey end.
Balcony: I love having a balcony, even when we’re at sea and there’s nothing to look at. Just sitting outside, sipping a coffee and watching the ship’s wake is wonderful. (We took a 5 day cruise on Disney on an interior cabin just to see how it felt. The consensus was that it was OK for 5 days but not much longer.)
Drink package: As others have said, you have to drink a lot to make it worthwhile. On the other hand, you have the intangible benefit of not giving any thought at all to what a drink costs and whether or not it’s worth it. Do you feel like having a nice single malt before dinner? Sure, why not…it’s “free”.
Our resume: cruises on Princess, Holland America, Celebrity, Disney and Viking.
Re: drinks package, on the last couple of cruises, we figured you’d need 5 drinks per day to break even. That might sound like a lot but it’s for the entire day. So if you have a drink at lunch, a drink before dinner, and a couple of drinks with dinner, and something after dinner, you’ll easily make it to 5. (Assuming you like to drink.)
I did the math for my cruise and realized buying one drink at a time (no package) came with an automatic 15% gratuity tacked on. That really changes the math and gets me to about 4.5 drinks/day to money out (assuming I max the price of each of those drinks within the package).
I’ll probably have two glasses of wine with dinner and probably another at a show or whatever in the evening. That’s three. I am sure I can get another 1.5 drinks in the rest of the day (not necessarily alcohol but the alcohol package includes soft drinks and specialty hot drinks and smoothies and whatnot). While less expensive I will drink a lot more of that. I am thinking I can come close to breaking even and not having to worry about what each drink costs and not getting a big bill at the end is worthwhile.
There are a lot of things onboard a large liner (bars, boutiques, hair salons, spas) where they say, “Oh, just sign here, and we will settle up at the end of the cruise.”
If traveling with a spouse, it is advisable to check the account frequently, and make sure you and your spouse both know what each other are buying.
If traveling with teenagers, check your account every g##d### day, and make g##d#### sure you keep track of what they are buying!
I watched a video this morning where the couple was trying to figure out if the drink package was worth it. They noted that they have heard more than a few people squeal in horror when handed their bill at the end of a cruise and couples getting into fights over WTF did they do!
I only have to answer to myself but I don’t want to squeal in horror at my bill at the end. I’d rather have it all up front and owe nothing (or very little) at the end.
I went on a Royal Caribbean cruise once, to the Mediterranean, and your thread is making me remember how pleasant it was.
I want to go to the Caribbean.
Dude, will you share pix of your trip? I’d love to see the Queen Mary 2!
On the river cruises they don’t even have a jewelry store. At least not one that I ever saw. It was great. Plus free soft drinks and table wine with dinner.
Viking is very different than what’s being described in most of the posts here. Everything is already paid for except for extended excursions and specialty drinks. The ships are also smaller; about 900 passengers. My wife and I are embarking on a Viking northern lights cruise up the coast of Norway next week.
