Are Cruise Drink Packages Worth It? Do the Math Honestly

The drink package isn't a deal or a ripoff. It's a math problem — and most people refuse to do the math honestly.

By Joey Boleslawski — founder of Seabound Journeys, CLIA-affiliated travel advisor, and Florida Seller of Travel (Ref. No. ST15578).

Ask ten cruisers about drink packages and you'll get a holy war.

Half will tell you it's the best money they spend on any cruise. The other half will tell you it's the cruise line's single greatest profit machine, engineered to fleece the optimistic.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: they're both right — about themselves.

The drink package isn't inherently a deal, and it isn't inherently a ripoff. It's a math problem. The package has a daily price. Drinks have individual prices. You will drink some number of drinks. That's the whole equation. The reason the debate never ends is that almost nobody does the math honestly — they do it optimistically, which is a very different thing.

So let's do it honestly.

The Only Equation That Matters

Every drink package decision comes down to one line of arithmetic:

Package price per day ÷ average cost of the drinks you actually order = your break-even number.

That's it. If a package runs, say, $85 a day and your drinks average $10–$12 each, you need roughly 7–9 drinks a day — every day, including port days — to break even. Not to win. To tie.

A few things people forget to put into that equation:

• It's every day, not your best day. Most lines require the package for the full length of the cruise. Your big sea day doesn't carry your 7am-excursion day. The package doesn't care that you were in Cozumel until 4pm.
• Gratuities. On many lines, an automatic gratuity (often in the 18–20% neighborhood) is added to the package price, or baked into it — check which, because it changes your real daily cost.
• The whole-cabin rule. Some lines require every adult in the stateroom to buy the same package. If your spouse drinks two glasses of wine a day, their package math has to survive on its own — you can't average the two of you together. (Some lines offer exceptions or non-alcoholic alternatives for the second guest; ask before assuming either way.)
• What's already free. Basic coffee, tea, water, and juice at breakfast are included on virtually every ship. If your "ten drinks a day" count includes things the ship already gives you, your math is lying to you.

Count Your Drinks Like an Accountant, Not a Vacationer

Here's where honesty gets hard.

On booking day, everyone is a vacation version of themselves: "We'll have mimosas at breakfast, a couple by the pool, wine with dinner, cocktails at the show…" That imaginary person drinks nine drinks a day and never gets a headache.

Then reality boards the ship. You sleep in one day. You spend eight hours at a beach in port where the package doesn't work. One night you're full from dinner and just want water. Real vacation drinking is spikier and lower than booking-day drinking, almost every time.

So do this instead: think about your last vacation — not your ideal one — and count what you actually drank per day. Include the port days. Include the tired days. That number, not the fantasy, goes into the equation.

And here's the part nobody tells you: it's okay for the answer to be no. Paying à la carte for four drinks a day isn't losing. It's just... paying for four drinks. The package isn't a status symbol; it's a prepayment plan that only makes sense at a certain volume.

The Variable Nobody Counts: What You Drink, and Where

Here's the flaw in every "how many drinks per day" calculator on the internet: they treat all drinks — and all ships — as interchangeable. They're not. Two more variables quietly decide the math, and they matter as much as the count.

First: what your drinks cost. Break-even isn't a fixed number of drinks — it's a fixed number of dollars, and drink prices vary enormously by line. On a ship where cocktails run $9, you need a lot of them. On a line where a properly made cocktail runs toward $19, three drinks nearly closes the gap by themselves. Same package logic, wildly different arithmetic.

Second: everything in the package that isn't alcohol. Premium packages typically cover far more than the bar — and that coverage does silent work all day long.

Here's my own real version of this math. On Celebrity, I buy the premium drink package when it's under $70 a day per person — the sweet spot is around $65. Why does that number work for me? Because Celebrity's cocktails are genuinely excellent and genuinely expensive — the premium package currently covers drinks up to around $19 — so a couple of cocktails during the day and wine at dinner nearly gets there on its own. But the alcohol is only half my math. I get fresh-squeezed juices and smoothies at the Spa Café. Specialty coffees at Café al Bacio. A bottle of water with every single drink I order. None of that is a cocktail, and all of it is money I'd have spent anyway.

At $65 a day, the package pencils out for me without being a heavy drinker at all — that's the point. The question was never "do you drink enough?" It's "does the package cover enough of what you'd actually buy, at the prices your ship actually charges?" On Celebrity, for how I cruise, the answer is yes below my number. On a different line, with cheaper drinks and a thinner package, the same daily rate might be a clear no.

Find your number for your line. Then the sale banners stop being noise and start being signals.

When to Buy: The Part That Changes the Whole Answer

Everything in Part 1 applies here at full strength, because drink packages might be the single most sale-driven item in the entire cruise planner.

The same package on the same sailing can swing dramatically in price between the everyday rate and a genuine sale — which means a package that's a clear "no" at full price can become a clear "yes" at the bottom of its range. The math problem has two variables, and the price is the one you can actually do something about.

The playbook, same as always:

1. Watch your sailing's planner for a few weeks and learn the package's normal range.
2. Ignore the discount percentage — sale banners are permanent decoration. Compare final daily prices to what you've seen before.
3. Buy at the bottom, not at the pier. Pre-cruise pricing nearly always beats onboard pricing, and the bottom of the pre-cruise range beats everything.
4. Buy, watch, cancel, rebuy. On many lines, pre-cruise purchases are refundable until a cutoff before sailing — so if the price drops after you buy, cancel and rebuy at the lower rate. And if you catch a truly exceptional sale, remember the Part 1 rule: the bottom of the dip doesn't get lower. Buy decisively.

This is exactly how the drink package ended up in our $1,200 all-in Oasis of the Seas trip — the full story is in Part 1: Cruise Add-Ons — What's Actually Worth Buying? — it went into the cart during a genuine 55%-off Cruise Planner sale, at a final price that made the math easy, alongside everything else we might want. Cancellable, so the risk was zero. The price was the trigger, not the banner.

The Middle Options Everyone Forgets

The debate always gets framed as "unlimited package vs. paying full price per drink," as if those are the only two doors. There are usually more:

• Refreshment / non-alcoholic packages. Specialty coffee, fresh juice, mocktails, premium water, soda — for a lot of travelers (and anyone who doesn't drink alcohol), this is the package with genuinely easy math.
• Soda packages. If your only real vice is Diet Coke at volume, this tiny package might be the highest-value purchase on the ship.
• Bring-aboard allowances. Many lines let each adult carry on a limited amount of wine or champagne at embarkation. Policies vary widely by line — check yours — but a bottle of your own wine at dinner can quietly replace a chunk of package math. (Corkage fees may apply in dining rooms on some lines.)
• À la carte with a budget. Radical idea: decide what you'd have spent on the package, put that number in your head as the bar tab ceiling, and order freely under it. Half the value of the package is psychological — "it's already paid for" — and you can manufacture that feeling for free.

What I Actually Do

I don't have one permanent answer — I have a number per line, and the price either hits it or it doesn't.

On Celebrity, that number is under $70 a day, ideally around $65, for the reasons above: expensive cocktails, and a package that covers my coffees, juices, and water all day long. When a sale puts the package below my number, it goes in the cart decisively. When it doesn't, I don't negotiate with myself — the number already did the deciding.

Want to see the rule in action? As I write this, Celebrity's premium package is listing around $110 a day, with a 10% discount running — call it $99. That's nowhere near my number. So the answer is no. Not "hmm, maybe," not "well, it is on sale" — just no. That's the entire luxury of having a number: days like this require zero thought. The banner says sale; the math says wait.

And here's what "no" actually looks like in practice, because skipping the package doesn't mean going thirsty. On our last three-night Celebrity sailing, the package never dropped below $70 — so we never bought it. Instead, we worked the middle options. We had two staterooms, so we carried on four bottles of wine between them. We were in a Concierge Class room, which came with a bottle of champagne waiting in the cabin — plus champagne at boarding, champagne at the returning-guests event, and champagne at the Concierge sailaway on the helicopter pad. And before the cruise, I ordered a case of large bottles of Evian — or Acqua Panna, honestly I can't remember which — delivered to the room at half off, about $25 with gratuity.

The result? We didn't finish the wine. We didn't finish the included champagne. We brought bottles home with us — and drank the leftover water in the car on the drive back. The package would have cost us hundreds for a three-night sailing; instead we spent $25 and came home with surplus. That's not deprivation. That's the math winning.

(One honest aside: I haven't been watching Celebrity's planner as closely as I normally would, because my next two Celebrity sailings are in The Retreat, where drinks are already part of the fare. Which is its own lesson — when the package is baked into what you booked, the math disappears entirely, and the smartest move is to stop shopping for something you already own.)

On a port-intensive itinerary where I'm off the ship most days, the math usually collapses no matter the discount, and I'd rather put that money toward specialty dining or a better excursion. And when a bundle is on the table — like NCL's Free at Sea structure, where drinks come packaged with other perks — I run the bundle's total math instead of the package math, because the question is always the same: what does the final number buy, versus what I'd actually have spent?

Count your drinks. Price your drinks. Watch the package. Let the numbers make the decision — not the banner, and not the guy on the pool deck who swears the package is either the best or worst thing ever invented. He hasn't done the math either.

FAQ: Cruise Drink Packages

How many drinks a day do I need for a cruise drink package to be worth it? Divide the package's real daily cost (including gratuities) by the average price of the drinks you actually order — typically that lands somewhere around 6–9 alcoholic drinks per day, every day of the cruise. Count your realistic vacation drinking, port days included, not your best day.

When is the best time to buy a cruise drink package? Before you board, at the bottom of your sailing's price range — commonly during Black Friday, Wave Season (January–March), or planner flash sales. Pre-cruise pricing almost always beats onboard pricing.

Can I cancel a drink package and rebuy it cheaper? On many lines, yes — pre-cruise purchases are typically refundable until a cutoff before sailing, making "buy, watch, cancel, rebuy" a legitimate strategy. Confirm your line's exact cancellation window.

Does everyone in the cabin have to buy the drink package? On some lines, all adults in the stateroom must purchase the same alcoholic package, though exceptions and non-alcoholic alternatives sometimes exist. Check your specific line's policy before you run the math — it can double the real cost of saying yes.

Do drink packages cover non-alcoholic drinks? Premium packages on most lines cover far more than the bar — specialty coffee, fresh juices, smoothies, premium water, and soda are commonly included. For many cruisers, that non-alcoholic coverage quietly closes a big share of the break-even gap, which is why the honest math counts everything you'd buy, not just cocktails.

Are non-alcoholic drink packages worth it? Often, yes — refreshment and soda packages have much lower break-even points, and for heavy coffee, soda, or mocktail drinkers they're some of the easiest value on the ship.

Is it cheaper to buy drinks individually on a cruise? If you drink below the package's break-even number, absolutely. Paying à la carte for a few drinks a day is not losing — it's just paying for what you actually consume.

Conclusion

The drink package debate never ends because people argue about the package when they should be arguing with their own math.

Count your drinks honestly. Learn your sailing's price range. Buy at the bottom or don't buy at all — and be completely at peace with either answer, because both of them can be the right one.

The package was never the decision. The number was.

Chapter 2: Getting the Most From the Cruise You've Booked

• ✅ Part 1 — Cruise add-ons: buy at the right time, at the right price.
• 📍 Part 2 (you're here) — Drink packages: do the math honestly.
• 🔜 Coming soon — Shore excursions: ship vs. independent, the full breakdown.

Want the Math Run for Your Actual Sailing?

Send me your ship, dates, and how you actually vacation — I'll tell you honestly whether the package pencils out, or where that money works harder.

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