Your cruise fare on a Carnival Cruise Lines (CCL), Royal Caribbean (RCL), or Norwegian Cruise Line (NCLH) cruise includes an awful lot. You, of course, get your cabin, access to pools, shows, the casino, and tons of activities onboard.
You also get to eat three meals a day in the main dining room while also getting access to all sorts of other free dining venues ranging from the buffet to snacks, pizza, and much more. When it comes to beverages, however, a basic cruise fare includes water, select juices in the morning, basic coffee, and usually lemonade and iced tea.
Without paying extra, you don't get access to soda, specialty coffee, milkshakes, smoothies, fresh juices, and, for some most importantly, alcoholic beverages. To get access to adult beverages you can either pay for them as you go (perfect for people who only have a drink, or even a few per day), or get a beverage package.
On Carnival ships, that beverage package, the one that includes (sort of) unlimited alcoholic drinks, is called CHEERS! and it's about to get more expensive, Cruzely reports.
Image source: Carnival.
How Do Cruise Line Drink Packages Work?
Every cruise line does drink packages a little differently. Royal Caribbean, for example has no set price for its high-end package that includes (truly) unlimited adult beverages. The price varies by sailing and it can change based on sales, your sail date, and other factors the company does not share.
Royal Caribbean does allow passengers who buy a drink package before a cruise to cancel and repurchase if the price goes down, but that does involve waiting for a refund for the original payment. In addition, people who buy a Royal Caribbean drink package can literally drink as many alcoholic beverages as they want as long as they're not visibly intoxicated (when that happens, bartenders have the discretion to not serve them).
Carnival does things a little differently. It has a fixed price per day for CHEERS! on cruises that are 3-4 days and another for ones that are five days or longer. The cruise line also does not truly offer unlimited beverages as it cuts customers off after 15 alcoholic drinks.
High-end beverage packages on all cruise lines also offer unlimited soda, water, juice, high-end coffee (except for Starbucks (SBUX) locations on Royal Caribbean ships), and pretty much any other drink.
In general, both cruise lines require that all adults over the age of 21 sharing a cabin buy an alcoholic drink package if one person wants to (because you are strictly not allowed to share). Exceptions are made (sometimes) if you call the cruise lines, which usually require the person not buying a package including adult beverages to buy a water/soda/coffee package.
What Does Carnival's CHEERS! Price Increase Look Like?
Currently, people on 3-4 day cruises pay $54.95 per day for CHEERS! while people on cruises longer than four days pay $51.95 per day if they make the purchase before they sail. Prices increase to $59.95 per day on short cruises and $56.95 per day on longer ones if you wait to buy until you get onboard. In addition, all packages (and this goes for Royal Caribbean) add an 18% gratuity charge.
That's going to change very soon, according to Cruzely.
“Effective May 1, 2022, the pre-cruise price will be $59.95 USD, per person, per day plus 18% service charge and the onboard price will be $64.95 per person, per day plus 18% service charge for all cruise departures," the website reported.
That's an $8 per day increase on cruises five days or longer (a more than 15% increase) and, a similar $8 increase for people buying onboard (a 14% hike). Carnival also appears to no longer be charging more for its drink package on shorter cruises, meaning that the increase will be a lower percentage for people on those sailings.
And, while this seems like a small change, it's a meaningful one as, next to the actual cruise fare, an adult drinks package is usually the most expensive add-on most people normally consider. It does seem unlikely that this change will cause too many (if any) people to not book a cruise with Carnival or to opt out of buying a drink package.
