Should You Get a Drinks Package on Your Cruise?

We’ve been on a few cruises now, and one of the questions we always get from people who have never cruised before is:

“Should I get a drinks package?”

I get it. Once you've finally booked your cruise, the up-sell emails begin. Upgrade your room! Add Wi-Fi! Book specialty dining! And, of course, buy a drinks package! It can be very tempting to think that if you pay for it now, you'll save money later. But is the drinks package actually worth it for you?

Start with what's already included

Before you buy anything, take a beat and check what your cruise fare already covers.

Water, tea, coffee, soft drinks and other beverages can be handled very differently from one cruise line to another. Some fares also bundle drinks with things like Wi-Fi and dining. So don't start with: “How much is the drinks package?” Start with: “What would I actually have to pay for?”

Travel tip

Check what you can carry on board too. Many lines allow you to carry on a bottle of wine on embarkation day 

What will you actually drink?

The easiest way to answer that question is to forget about the package for a moment and think about what you would normally drink on holiday.

When we cruise with Royal Caribbean, we tend to buy a non-alcoholic drinks package because we will happily drink four or five glasses of sparkling water a day each. That's not us trying to make the package worthwhile, that's just what we drink. A few years ago, we were travelling with family and gifted them a specialty coffee package because they are much more serious about their daily caffeine hit than we are. We're tea drinkers, so it wouldn't have been particularly useful for us.

And that's the thing about drinks packages, there isn't one right answer, it depends on what you actually drink. If you’re drinking coffee or two, a few glasses of wine, some bottled water, and after dinner cocktails that can easadd up to $100 a day.

Read the package details

Once you've worked out what you would normally drink, check the rules for the package you're considering. Some have a maximum price per drink. Some have daily limits. Some include specialty coffee or bottled water, while others don't.

There can also be rules about who has to buy the package. On some cruise lines, adults sharing a cabin both much purchase an alcoholic package together, so you can't necessarily buy one and share it.

So, is it worth it?

This is where we've tried to make things a little easier. We've created a Cruise Drinks Calculator in Google sheets to help you work out what you might spend if you simply paid for your drinks as you go.

Download your own copy of the Google spreadsheet using the button below:

Instructions on how to use the calculator are in the second tab.

Choose your cruise line, enter how many beers, cocktails, coffees, waters or other drinks you think you'd have on an average day, and the spreadsheet will calculate your estimated daily and total cruise spend.

We've included typical 2026 US dollar prices for six major cruise lines, and there's an ‘other’ row if you want to enter your own prices. The prices are averages for each cruise line and drink type based on information available in August 2026, so they're intended as a planning tool rather than a guarantee of what you'll pay onboard.

Travel tip

Drinks packages usually cover every day of your cruise, including port days. If you’re spending most of your day ashore, you may not be around to make the most of the package.

Don't calculate based on the person you imagine you'll become once you're sitting beside the pool with unlimited sunshine and a cocktail menu. Calculate based on what you actually drink when you’re on your holiday.

Maybe you'll have three cocktails a day. Great. Maybe you'll have one glass of wine with dinner and spend the rest of the day drinking sparkling water and coffee. Both are perfectly good ways to cruise.

The goal isn't to make the drinks package worth it. The goal is to figure out whether it's worth buying in the first place.