1st time cruise. Drinks package worth it?

[addsvrs]

So off to the norweigen fjords with Carnival in a couple of weeks, my first time cruise but the wife has been on a few before ( med and Caribbean). Quite excited as its somewhere I've always wanted to go.
The only thing we are yet to decide on is the drinks package. The full on alcohol one is something like $60 a day per person. So over 9 days adds up to a fair chunk to pay before going. We aren't big drinkers but we on holiday after all. We do drink lots of coffee tea etc which is included and the missus does like her cocktails.
A good night out for us alcohol wise is about 4/5 beers for me and 2/3 cocktails for the missus. So you can see not exactly heavy drinkers lol.
Suppose the question is how easy is it to rack up a big drinks bill over the 9 day cruise.
On one hand I'm tempted with the fk it attitude and just get it bought and enjoy it, but the Yorkshire man in me means I will be annoyed if I don't get value for money
Other points worth mentioning its 7 ports in 9 days so not sure how much time actually spent on the boat.
Also the cruise was a complete bargain and the drinks package for 2 works out more expensive than the cruise !
Any other hints or tips appreciated aswell.

[jonamv8]

I did £2.5k on Cunard in a week for 2, but we drank a fair bit more than you are estimating, had some nice bottles of red with dinner, circa £50-£85 a bottle and I think i put a little Casino spend on the room bill as well.

Guessing Cunard are more expensive than Carnival but I’m no cruise expert so could be wrong.

$120 a day should cover your spend. You only need a couple of none drinking days to be well out in front by not taking the package.

Or you get swept up in the cruise spirit and go abbit harder than you thought, then the package would probably make sense!

[Jamescrs]

Apologies but I'm.not clear on if sorftdrinks and tea and coffee are free or charged as extra without a drinks package?

I can see if you drank the amount of alcohol you consider a good night every night it's going to be fairly break even give or take a little.

If you need a drinks package to avoid paying per drink on softdrinks it's probably a no brainer

[addsvrs]

I'm led to believe specialist coffees like cappuccino espresso etc are included, standard tea and coffee are free anyway, soft drinks juices energy drinks are also included in the package but again we don't drink alot of fizzy pop type stuff.
It's borderline for us.

[ecsrobin]

Jamescrs said:

Apologies but I'm.not clear on if sorftdrinks and tea and coffee are free or charged as extra without a drinks package?

Soft drinks and tea/coffee are an additional cost per person without a drinks package. There is a fizzy drinks package but that doesn’t include tea and coffee / bottled water.

[Supernova190188]

Personally I’ve never thought them worth it, especially if you’re going to get off the ship 7/9 days, different story perhaps if at sea a lot on a transatlantic etc.
but also the drinks packages are limited in what you can have

[Supernova190188]

Personally I’ve never thought them worth it, especially if you’re going to get off the ship 7/9 days, different story perhaps if at sea a lot on a transatlantic etc.
but also the drinks packages are limited in what you can have

[ruwokeenuff]

You'd have to get near pissed EVERY night wont you?

[addsvrs]

For me I'm tipsy on 4 ! And I defo couldn't do that for 9 nights on the bounce. Them days are well gone. Reading the replies I think I will go with my original choice and not have it.

[snuffy]

jonamv8 said:

I did £2.5k on Cunard in a week for 2, but we drank a fair bit more than you are estimating, had some nice bottles of red with dinner, circa £50-£85 a bottle

We went transatlantic with Cunard on the QM2 a few years ago now, there and back. I think the bar bill was around $2500 for the fortnight. Bonkers really when the cruise was £2000 for both of us in mole class.

[DodgyGeezer]

this may be interesting (or not)

https://www.cruisecritic.co.uk/articles.cfm?ID=357...

https://www.cruisecritic.co.uk/articles.cfm?ID=202...

[Hoofy]

ruwokeenuff said:

You'd have to get near pissed EVERY night wont you?

I was thinking that. I just couldn't drink that much every night (day!) in alcoholic drinks. Can't imagine my mood by the end of it either.

[ruwokeenuff]

Agree Hoofs. We have booked the Ruby princess for Nov. They have a drinks package, a wifi one and who know what else......As we are cruising the carib, I will buy a bottle of nice rum here n there as a pre dinner snifter and maybe a late night drink with a coffee. i am sure my phone will pick up wifi somewhere when about...tea and coffee is free but "speciality" ones arent....

Maybe a glass or two of wine with every other meal....., but we wont be sitting down all tarted up everynight.....maybe 1 in 3. Rest of the time a beer in one of the casual diners.....

[snuffy]

ruwokeenuff said:

Agree Hoofs. We have booked the Ruby princess for Nov. They have a drinks package, a wifi one and who know what else...

Wi-fi packages always get abused on cruise forums, mainly be people who say "It's free and really fast in Starbucks at home, so why do they charge $1/minute and it's really slow ?". If only they bothered to look over the side to see if they can spot that 1000 mile long wire connecting to ship to land.

[nellystew]

You can use this link to estimate if a drinks package is worth it.
https://www.cruisemummy.co.uk/cruise-drinks-packag...

I’ve just done a Norway cruise with P&O, my main complaint was the water in the cabin was ok to drink, but over the cruise it went from unpalatable to undrinkable.
You could get free water from the machine in the buffet, there was a sign saying not to fill up your own bottles due to “health reasons”, but I think it was more for “buy water from the bar reasons”.

Don’t bother with the wifi package unless it’s essential for the sea days to & from Norway, get a roaming deal on your mobile.
We had excellent 4 and 5G signal in the fjords and along the coast when cruising between ports.

[Nexus Icon]

We've done a few as they're quite a convenient way of seeing lots of places. Our rule of thumb has always been that if your sea days equal a third of your off-ship days the drinks package will easily pay for itself. It gets more touch and go the more time you spend off ship, however. The thing is. it's easy to make yourself spend the 40-60 quid a day these things usually are. Speciality coffees, long mixers, cocktails and mocktails all day/evening, wine with dinner, and a few in the nightclub or bar before bed and it's easy to rack up double that without ever getting p*ssed.

[the-norseman]

I reckon you could easily spend $60 a night on alcohol if you have 4/5 beers and she has 2/3 cocktails. Never been on a cruise but I bet beers are $7-8 each and cocktails $10+ each.

[Siko]

Never been on a cruise but was speaking about this subject recently with a guy at work who does quite a few of them. He always does the drinks packages because he always got his moneys worth from them, both him and his wife were party animals and usually went with friends so lots of social drinking. He said to me that if you were a moderate/light drinker it just wasn't worth it.

[dundarach]

Include it, get it booked, get pissed and don't give two hoots and go and enjoy yourselves.

You're paying not to give a st and enjoy yourselves.

Do it!

[stevemcs]

We paid £40 pp last year on Anthem of the seas, for that it was worth it, it covered water, soft drinks, coffee as well as alcoholic ones. on average beer/wine/cocktails were around $8 each, at the price we paid it was worth it. At the current price of £70 pp I would probably go without and just buy what I wanted. Its easy to break even if you have a couple of coffees, 2-3 bottles of water, 4-5 beers and a couple of glasses of wine a day. You only get rue value if you try and pickle your liver.