Cruise lines who offer free drink package perk

I am searching for a Southern Caribbean cruise for 8 - 10 people that offers the free drink package. We love Celebrity, but I don't see that offered anymore. Are there any that still offer this as a perk?

You are mis informed, or perhaps you would like to by a large bridge in NYC...which I will be happy to sell. But seriously, there is no such thing as a free drink package. Many cruise lines will sometimes offer a drink package as a marketing promotion...but they will increase the price of the cruise package to cover some or all of that drink package. So while you might think you are getting something for nothing, you are simply paying a higher price for your cruise. Last year Celebrity changed their entire marketing scheme and now price out their cruises with various options (Go Big, Better, Best). So you can book with Celebrity and get your drink package (and more) but will pay extra. But it was always that way....just not as apparent to those no familiar with the various pricing for cruises.

There is a lesson, many of us learned at a very young age (I am a Senior). "There is no such thing as a free lunch." Or perhaps, "If it seems to good to be true...it probably is. We raised our DD to have a very healthy degree of skepticism...and she has done very well in the business world with that attitude. But many folks are always looking for that pot of gold.

But to answer your actual question, if you look hard enough you will likely find some cruise line that is offering "free drink packages." And if you think that means its really free..I still have that bridge in Brooklyn you can buy for a steal.

Hank

I am searching for a Southern Caribbean cruise for 8 - 10 people that offers the free drink package. We love Celebrity, but I don't see that offered anymore. Are there any that still offer this as a perk?

Do not understand why you cannot find any Celebrity S. Caribbean cruises with beverage perk packages. Celebrity has many out there. Although, as Hank says they are not really "free". If you compare fares with and without 2 perks the price difference is often $300 to $450 per person more for the 2 perks - which usually makes the effective cost of the beverage package discounted rather than free.

As mentioned, Celebrity offers them as part of a selection package with your booking. There usually is a couple of levels of options based on fare base to select two of four, or get all four, and they usually include a beverage package, prepaid gratuities, internet package, and OBC.

But make no mistake, there is a premium included in the stateroom rate that would offset some of the value of these benefits. In doing a mock booking you can select, as an alternative, an option to search for other discounts to the base fare based on the usual resident, age, military, police, and fire personnel criteria to use as comparison to the fare with the other benefit options included.

In our experience the difference in comparing those fare bases has more than offset the value of the benefits included or in other cases, depending on stateroom category, has shown the benefits options to be a good purchase value. It is itinerary dependent.

While the 'free perk' is normally built in to the cruise price, there are sometimes good deals to be had if you search hard enough.

We booked a suite on HAL in May 2016 for the cruise we took this past March. Two months later their Explore 4 program came out that offered the free beverage package and free daily gratuities. It cost me $89 pp to add that promotion...so $9/day. Definitely a great deal for us.

Last year we booked a cruise on HAL -- in July -- just as the Explore4 promotion was announced.

The price seemed high (we had done this cruise just a couple of years ago so I knew what we had paid) so I had our TA ask HAL what the price of the Pinnacle Suite would be without the Signature Beverage Package and the pre-paid gratuities and a couple of other perks. The difference was $5000!!

You have to do your homework on what you might think is a good deal.

Elementary schools should start teaching education again. "Free" means "at no cost". There is no such thing as "free drinks" on cruises. There are, however, drink packages which are sold separately , and inclusive cruise fares, the price of which includes drinks.

While the 'free perk' is normally built in to the cruise price, there are sometimes good deals to be had if you search hard enough.

 

We booked a suite on HAL in May 2016 for the cruise we took this past March. Two months later their Explore 4 program came out that offered the free beverage package and free daily gratuities. It cost me $89 pp to add that promotion...so $9/day. Definitely a great deal for us.

Our HAL drink package experience was really crazy. About 3 years ago we booked a 35 day cruise on the Oosterdam which included a Transpacific journey plus Australia and NZ. Our original booking included what was then, HAL's new drink package. A few months after we booked I noticed a price drop where we could book the same cabin for about $10,000 (that is not a typo) less...if we simply gave up the drink package. So we rebooked, gave up our FREE drink package...and saved $10,000. We did manage to run up a bar bill of around $3000 on that cruise. So that "FREE" beverage package would have cost us a net of $7000 over and above our real drink cost.

Hank

Princess occasionally offers a "Sip & Sail" promotion. :)

Our HAL drink package experience was really crazy. About 3 years ago we booked a 35 day cruise on the Oosterdam which included a Transpacific journey plus Australia and NZ. Our original booking included what was then, HAL's new drink package. A few months after we booked I noticed a price drop where we could book the same cabin for about $10,000 (that is not a typo) less...if we simply gave up the drink package. So we rebooked, gave up our FREE drink package...and saved $10,000. We did manage to run up a bar bill of around $3000 on that cruise. So that "FREE" beverage package would have cost us a net of $7000 over and above our real drink cost.

 

Hank

Wow...that is nuts!

In all honesty we never priced the cruise without the drink package, so not sure how that would have worked out for us. We were already getting a casino discount, though, so our price on the trip was already a good amount less than what HAL was selling the same stateroom category for.

We'd never buy the drink package...it doesn't make sense for us. We kept track of our bar tab on this trip just to verify. If the beverage package was purchased, it would have cost us $1150 for the 10 days. Had we paid for all the drinks we consumed, it would have cost us $800...and that was honestly on the high side than normal. We probably drank more than normal because we had the package. Usually our bar tab runs about $600-650.

Our HAL drink package experience was really crazy. About 3 years ago we booked a 35 day cruise on the Oosterdam which included a Transpacific journey plus Australia and NZ. Our original booking included what was then, HAL's new drink package. A few months after we booked I noticed a price drop where we could book the same cabin for about $10,000 (that is not a typo) less...if we simply gave up the drink package. So we rebooked, gave up our FREE drink package...and saved $10,000. We did manage to run up a bar bill of around $3000 on that cruise. So that "FREE" beverage package would have cost us a net of $7000 over and above our real drink cost.

 

Hank

That's a lot of $$$ saved! It really pays to monitor prices even after booking.