The MSC
Add-On Value Evaluator

Yes, and it is the single most important thing to understand about MSC pricing. MSC states plainly that all its pre-paid and onboard beverage packages include gratuities, and its dining packages are sold the same way. The number you see is the number you pay. Royal Caribbean adds 18 percent at checkout and Celebrity, Carnival and Norwegian add 20 percent, so an MSC package at the same headline price is genuinely cheaper than it looks in a side-by-side comparison.

On packages, yes. An $85 MSC package costs $85. The same $85 headline on Celebrity becomes $102 once the 20 percent service charge lands, and on Royal Caribbean it becomes $100.30. Put the other way round: for a line adding 20 percent to match MSC's $85 all-in, it would have to advertise about $70.83. That gap is invisible if you only compare advertised prices, which is why this tool shows it.

In the US market there are three: the Premium Extra Package for alcohol, the Alcohol-Free Package, and the Minors Package for guests aged 3 to 20. The old Easy and Easy Plus packages were retired and are no longer sold for new bookings, so any guide still listing them is out of date. Premium Extra is the only package accepted in the specialty restaurants, and it is included with every Yacht Club booking.

Yes, and MSC's rule is stricter than most. All guests sharing the cabin must buy the same package, and the requirement extends to anyone travelling with you who wants to sit at the same table. Children aged 3 and over must take the Minors Package; under 3 is exempt. If only one of you drinks meaningfully, run the break-even on the whole party rather than one person, because that is where this rule costs money.

Since April 2025 the Premium Extra Package caps alcoholic drinks at 15 per guest per day, measured 6am to 6am. Non-alcoholic drinks stay unlimited. The cap applies to Yacht Club guests too, with no exception. For all but a handful of guests the cap is irrelevant, but it does mean the package is no longer a genuinely open bar.

No, and this is where MSC is not cheap. The Hotel Service Charge is separate from every package and runs $17 per guest per night on Caribbean, Alaska and US sailings, or $23 in the Yacht Club, effective 11 May 2026. Crucially, North American sailings publish no child rate, so a 4-year-old pays the same $17 a night as an adult. Only children under 2 are exempt. On a 7-night sailing for a family of four that is $476 before you buy anything.

You pay only the difference, not the whole drink. The Premium Extra Package covers drinks by the glass up to $16, so a $20 cocktail costs you $4 plus service charge on that $4. Bottles of wine are not included in any package at all and are charged in full, though they do not count toward the 15-drink limit.

Not on its website, but yes inside the app once you have a booking. When we sampled it, one discount ran across the whole internet category at once — 37% off the onboard price for Browse and 35% for Browse & Stream, identical at every device count — so you cannot find a better rate by changing how many devices you buy. Onboard rates ran $28.99 per device per night for one device down to $19.99 each for four, stepping down $3 per device added. The percentage itself is not fixed, though: MSC's pre-cruise discounts on onboard services have been seen between 15% and 45%, and every Voyagers Club tier takes a further 5% off internet packages, with Blue Diamond members getting one Browse package free for a single device.

Partly, and the range matters. MSC prices a whole category with one percentage at a time — in a single app snapshot, Browse Wi-Fi was 37% off the onboard price at every device count, Browse & Stream 35%, and every photo bundle 30%, with no variation by size. So switching bundle or device count will not find you a better rate. But that percentage is not the floor: MSC's pre-cruise discounts run roughly 15% to 45% off onboard depending on the sailing and the promotion, and 45% is where they bottom out. This tool anchors a perfect score to that 45% figure, which is why a typical selling price scores in the Fair to Good band rather than at the top — there is genuinely room below it. Two further discounts stack underneath any advertised rate: all Voyagers Club tiers get 5% off internet packages, and Blue Diamond members get one Browse package free for a single device.

About 45% off the onboard price. That is where MSC's pre-cruise discounting has been observed to bottom out, so this tool treats it as the floor and scores it 100. Working from the onboard rates: roughly $57 a day for Premium Extra against a $104 onboard price, about $16 a day for a single Browse Wi-Fi device against $28.99, and about $110 for a photo bundle listed at $200. Anything at or below those figures is as good as MSC gets, and anything in the 15% to 30% range is an ordinary price rather than a deal — worth knowing, because MSC's app labels every pre-cruise price as a saving.