Are you wondering if you should purchase a Royal Caribbean drink package? Well
you're not alone. It's a question we get quite often from fellow cruisers. Luckily,
we routinely test out these packages when cruising with Royal Caribbean, so if
you want to know if the Royal Caribbean drink package is a good value you're in
luck. I'm DB from EatSleepCruise.com and we
cover everything you need to know about the Royal Caribbean drink package. There
are a few basic things you need to know about the drink package before you dive
into the details. For a drink package, do you know that all of them are priced per
day, per person and they must be purchased for the entire duration of the
cruise. Along with the stated price, there's going to be an additional 18%
gratuity charge added to the total amount of the package. Now, you can
purchase a drink package online pre- cruise or once you board the ship during
the first few days of the sailing. However, we always recommend you purchase
pre-cruise and we'll talk about that a little bit later.
Unfortunately, beverage packages are non-refundable and non-transferable.
Now, Royal Caribbean has just changed their policies requiring all adults in a
stateroom to purchase a drink package. The drink package covers purchases in
onboard restaurants. Those include both the complimentary and specialty
restaurants. Of course, the Royal Caribbean drink package works in all the
bars and lounges throughout the ship as well as entertainment venues like the
main theater. It also works on the cruise line's two private islands, Perfect Day at
CocoCay and Labadee. When redeeming the drink package, you're only allowed to get
one drink at a time whether it's an alcoholic drink or non alcoholic drink. In
addition, you must show your Seapass card or your Wow band every time you order a
beverage. So, if you're going to the bar to get a beverage for you and your
spouse, make sure you have both Seapass cards with you. Now, the Royal Caribbean
drink package is an unlimited package during the duration of your cruise.
Although, do consume alcohol responsibly as the cruise line does have the right
to deny you service if you are intoxicated. Now, Royal Caribbean actually
has two non-alcoholic drink packages, a soda package and what they call the
Royal Refreshment package; however, we're pretty certain you are really interested
in what's known as the deluxe drink package. Recently, the cruise line has
reduced the number of alcoholic drink packages to this one premium offering. This
most inclusive package covers a variety of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.
Speaking of non-alcoholic beverages, the deluxe drink package encompasses all of
the beverages available in the Royal Refreshment and soda package. So along
with getting soda from bars or the coke freestyle machines, those with the deluxe
drink package also get additional non-alcoholic beverages such as bottles
of water both sparkling and still, freshly squeezed orange juice, and specialty
coffees which include espresso based drinks like lattes and cappuccinos.
Most of these drinks vary between $2.50 to $5 per serving, and they can quickly add
up throughout your cruise especially if you're in the Caribbean or have several
early-morning ports of call. Now, when it comes to alcoholic beverages, the deluxe
drink package covers all drinks up to $13 per serving. Now, this essentially
covers all 16-ounce beers which are priced usually between six and eight
dollars. Occasionally, they'll be like a Foster's Oil Can or another beer that's
beyond this value. The $13 allotment also covers a variety of different
glasses of wine. Now, neither one of us are wine connoisseurs, but we have always
found a glass of wine that we've enjoyed that's covered in the package. For those that
have very particular tastes, the package includes most liquors and premium spirits
brands such as Grey Goose, Tito's vodka, Patron, Johnnie Walker Black Label,
and Dewar's Scotch are all included in the package.
On Royal Caribbean's standard drink menu, you'll see different drinks labeled as
premium and classic cocktails. Most o these cocktails cost between ten and twelve
dollars, so of course they're included in that $13 allotment. Think of drinks such
as pina coladas or mai tais, those would be considered either classic or premium
drinks. Many of these premium drinks are also
found at some of the other bars such as the specialty martinis you find at the
schooner bar, the different mojitos and margaritas you can get boleros, or
drinks found at the R bar or the rising tide. Now, unfortunately Royal
Caribbean has recently also released some beverages they call signature
cocktails. These often cost more. They're usually around fourteen or fifteen
dollars, sometimes even higher. So what would happen is if you order one of
these drinks you would get a $13 credit and then need to pay the difference plus
the 18% gratuity. On our recent Navigator of the Seas cruise, we enjoyed a couple of
these signature cocktails at the new bamboo room and were charged an extra
$1.18 each to enjoy these cocktails. So, this brings us back to the
original question. Are Royal Caribbean drink packages a good value? Well,
according to the cruise line, the Royal Caribbean deluxe drink package has a
price starting between 63 and 70 dollars. Now, we can attest that onboard you will
see those prices. In fact on our most recent cruise in June of 2019, the onboard price
was $70 plus the 18% gratuity. Now at those prices, it would probably be
difficult to say that the drink package is a good value; however, we've never paid
onboard prices. In fact, we always check our pre-cruise planner to take advantage
of the multiple sales that Royal Caribbean runs all the time. Depending how far in
advance your cruise is, the biggest savings you're going to get is about 30%
off, which is typically listed around $48 per person, per day plus the 18% gratuity.
Now, on our last couple of cruises, we weren't able to take advantage of that
much savings, but we did book the package with a 25% off special which
results in a total of 52 dollars per person, per day. So, adding that together
for two adults, the total for the drink package was just over $792
Now, you might be thinking there's no way two adults are
gonna drink 792 dollars worth of drinks. Well on a recent seven-day cruise,
which included three port days and three sea days including embarkation day, we
tracked all our drinks to do a complete breakdown and analysis of the cost of
the drink package. During that cruise, we consumed a total of 140
different drinks combined. Now, 64 of those drinks or roughly 45
percent were actually non-alcoholic- those bottled water, specialty coffees,
soda, and other premium non-alcoholic beverages. So for alcoholic beverages, we
averaged about 5.5 alcoholic drinks a day per person ,which when you
think about it that's really not that hard to do if you have a couple of
drinks poolside during the day, a couple of cocktails at dinner, and then a few
drinks later on in the evening. Now if we would have paid out of pocket for all
those drinks, the total would have been $1233
Now that's a lot of money! So by taking advantage of that pre-sale
and booking the drink package at $52 per person, we saved over
33 percent if we had bought all those drinks a la carte. Now some
may argue that if you weren't on the drink package maybe you wouldn't drink
as many drinks, but honestly, at no point did we ever feel like we were drinking
too much nor did we feel that we were ever really intoxicated on the ship. Now
of course, you need to know your own habits and your preferred type of
beverage. The wife and I prefer to drink the premium and specialty drinks
and those are on the higher end of the dollar allotment costing between 10 and
13 dollars. Now if you're a beer or a wine drinker, it's probably
going to take more drinks for you to get the value of the drink package given that
most beers are around seven dollars. Even if you have a deal, you have to drink
more like eight beverages a day. That of course doesn't account for
any of the specialty coffees or the other non-alcoholic beverage you might
get, but overall this example demonstrates that the Royal Caribbean
drink packages can be a good value for certain cruisers. Other things to
consider too is what's your ports of call and itinerary look like? During
our cruise, I already mentioned that we did have three ports of call, but one of them
was actually Royal Caribbean's private island.
Now, the drink package actually works on the private islands, so all the drinks we
consumed that day were part of the extra value. As our analysis also shows, we
drink a lot of bottled water and coffee. If those types of beverages don't
matter to you, you might not get as much value as we did from the Royal Caribbean drink
package. Overall, the Royal Caribbean drink package can be a good value. We
also like the convenience of knowing that we prepaid for all our beverages, and
once we're on board, there's little additional cost. And there you have it,
that's our look at the Royal Caribbean drink package, but of course we'd love to
hear from you. Let us know in the comments below if you've purchased a
Royal Caribbean drink package and you thought it was a good deal. I'm DB from
EatSleepCruise.com, and if you enjoyed this video, we'd really appreciate it if
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