Cruise Drinks Packages. 8 Reasons Not To Buy One

Cruise drinks packages are becoming increasingly popular. Most cruise lines offer them, and actively promote and encourage cruising passengers to buy one. However, is a drinks package right for you? I explore 8 reasons and times that a drinks package on a cruise ship is probably not worth buying. Cruise lines often have different levels and types of drinks packages, such as lines like Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Norwegian Cruise Line and Celebrity, and what should you be thinking about if deciding between these. Discover if a drinks package is right for you, and the watch-outs and things to consider.

Gary Bembridge's Tips For Travellers aims to help you make more of your precious travel time and money on land and when cruising the oceans or rivers of the world. To help you, in every video I draw on my first-hand tips and advice from travelling every month for over 20 years and 60+ cruises.

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[stevenmcauley]

"to make it worth it you need to drink 12 beers a day or 6-7 cocktails" challenge accepted.

[charlessteventrenholme]

Hi Gary, two things that you did not mention but may want to if and when you update this video on drinks packages are: 1.) Some cruise lines (HAL and Celebrity to name two) offer 2 for 1 Happy Hours at various bars throughout the day. 2.) Some cruise lines will let a passenger bring on wine after paying a corkage charge (on HAL its $18 US), the passenger can the enjoy the wine in their cabins or take it to the dining room. I did this regularly on a cruise around South America. When I was in port I bought some wine and brought the wine onboard. In this way I was able to enjoy the wines of Argentina, Uruguay and Chile during the cruise as HAL has a good wine list but it is a collection if international wines some of which can be very expensive

[tuvia]

I love your content, it’s concise. If a person needs to drink in excess, then they need to smuggle some. The up charge of drinking in a land based establishment is more than five times the cost of just going to a local store and buying the equivalent, so if you’re on a ship, you’re a captive. Drink less, have fun, real fun.

[sharischmidt]

My husband and I only have drink packages when it comes as a free perk!!😊🍁

[lisamorice]

Well said and some really good points for people to consider. All cruise lines are different so it pays to check. I've looked into the packages for each of our cruises on different lines and decided they would not be good value for us. The only one we did buy was a water package for our stateroom - 6 large bottles for a ten day P&O cruise, which we kept in our little fridge. That one was well priced and for us convenient.

[JBass]

Just took a Rhine River cruise. I am not a big drinker of alcohol (usually one to two drinks a day) but I drink several Diet Cokes a day, I compared prices and the $22/day drink package was cheaper than buying individual alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. Plus, the package did not limit the brands that were available so I was able to try some premium brands of alcohol that would normally be out of my price range. One of those drinks was Bundaberg Rum from Australia, which is very expensive. Having two Bundaberg’s with Diet Coke a day more than paid for the drink package and I could have a Diet Coke whenever I wanted one. You just have to know your drinking habits, see what brands and mixers are available, and do the numbers.

[bobr]

buy the drink package so when you get off the ship you can join AA meetings

[kayew]

I've seen some that break up the alcohol, soft drinks, coffees and water. We are not big drinkers, but I drink a lot of water and enjoy a couple of coffees a day, - cruising seems to have turned into a need for a degree in cruising to work it all out, we gave up trying and went driving around our own state instead.

[hunsadersrockinranch]

12 beers a day? 7 cocktails? lol. I can do that before lunch!

[Glock]

My wife and I are fairly new to cruising and we have talked about that someday we might get to the point where we do not get the beverage package and only have a drink by the pool during the day and one with dinner but we are not at that point yet so the beverage package is worth it for us. Even on port days you are usually back to the ship by 4:00 or before so providing you stay up to at least 10:00 a drink an hour is 6 drinks and unless it is NCL who charges $90 pp/pd but is usually offered as a perk when you book it is definitely worth it. It is not much at all to drink 6 or 7 drinks on port days and easy to be in double digits on sea days.

[postmodernrecycler]

We're monsters. We start up at the first bar open at 11 a.m. and get all-day buzzed until after dinner. Drinks package is a big money loss for the ship when we show up.

[sharonedwards]

We are trying the drink package on next cruise in January. We drink at least 100oz of water daily, at least 3 to 4 specialty coffees, Gatorade/powerade and some cocktails( maybe 2 or 3) in afternoon and evening. Then we will try a milkshake and a mimosa at breakfast. We plan to keep up with expenses to see if it's worth it for us...we usually carry sodas, buy water and drinks and bring a bottle of wine....that costs us about 400 on a 7 day cruise and we watch our expenses and decline things to stay on budget. So we'll see😋

[MumACE]

Except for my first time cruising, I have always been able to get the classic drink package included as a perk (Celebrity). Since I don’t have to pay for the classic package, I upgrade the package for about $12/day to the Premium package. This gets me speciality coffees, canned soft drinks, and top shelf brands of alcohol.

If you like to drink, look for the free drink packages. Totally worth it, and it includes the 18% service fee.

[johndittmer]

Another reason for not having the drink package is that you're paying for both the first and last days too when you're probably not going to be drinking that much. Face it, if you're not getting on the ship until the middle of the afternoon, so most of that day is wasted. Then, on the last day, you're porbably may have time only for one drink with breakfast because you're getting off your ship by 10 am at the latest. A better deal is to buy the refreshment package such as that from RCCL which is only $30 per day then buy the alcoholic drinks individually.

[NeighborofKT]

We got free drinks packages on a cruise once. Being a light weight, I was not able to drink more than 3 alcoholic drinks in a day, then the next day I couldn’t look at a drink! I did get some tasty non-alcoholic drinks on the cruise, but they were really high in calories, so I only had a couple of those.

[MrJimmy-oxfq]

Greetings and thank you for these helpful and informative videos! We all appreciate it! "Free Drink Packages" (like I had on NCL) are very convenient but never cost effective; the price is already built into the cruise fare (example: like "free" appliance delivery)...meaning the cost is already added into whatever you're buying...but "Free Drink Package" sure sounds great! Also, I like to drink but I don't like to feel like crap either. Anyway, everyone is entitled to spend their hard earned money any way they like. Thanx again for posting!

[bluemx]

We were on a Caribbean cruise.
Many stops.
We loved visiting the tiki bars that were always near the cruise ports . Pina Coladas were about 5 dollars.

[bobjordan]

Unless you’re a heavy drinker, ‘drinks packages’ are of no value at all.

[SuperKenndog]

Of course, do the math to make sure it checks out but based on my experience, there are so many disclaimers to "unlimited" drink packages to where it's not worth it

[twist]

If you drink enough to justify the cost, how much of the cruise do you actually remember? Especially on port days where you may only have a few hours waking time on the ship. The always seemed nuts to me.