Deluxe drink package possible bargain

[zap99]

21 hours ago, Maamgu74 said:

I totally agree with you Cuatbar58 

2x costas each morning 

2x beers lunch 

2x ciders afternoon 

2x berry coolers

costa 

2x procescos

2x red wines Dinner 

2x Beers

2x cocktails  

4 x bottles water 

then the kids 

4x sodas a day 

2x hotchocs

6x bottled water 

this adds up to more than £40 pp per day 

and you’re getting your extra 7.5% off

making it £ 37 PDPP 

 

great choice Mate !!! 

 

 

Does the package include paracetamol.?.

[Mad4WDW]

On 8/20/2023 at 11:24 PM, terrierjohn said:

I dont think you get the 10% discount on the drinks package, just your loyalty discount.

You get 10% discount for purchasing any drinks package online prior to the cruise. You then get your loyalty discount off the pre purchase price as well. So Baltic tier for instance would get 10% then a further 10% off the discounted price, so 19% total. Not 20% like one of the previous posters thinks. If you want to be really pernickety the rounding down to 2 decimal places is done after the number of days is multiplied by the discounted price per day so there is only one rounding down done.

 

 Re the OPs reasoning. If each kid had 4 soft drinks and each adult had 3 nice glasses of wine, a cocktail and a coffee thats break even point. 

 

I'd go for that personally thats not a bad proposition. YMMV

[terrierjohn]

4 minutes ago, Mad4WDW said:

You get 10% discount for purchasing any drinks package online prior to the cruise. You then get your loyalty discount off the pre purchase price as well. So Baltic tier for instance would get 10% then a further 10% off the discounted price, so 19% total. Not 20% like one of the previous posters thinks. If you want to be really pernickety the rounding down to 2 decimal places is done after the number of days is multiplied by the discounted price per day so there is only one rounding down done.

 

 Re the OPs reasoning. If each kid had 4 soft drinks and each adult had 3 nice glasses of wine, a cocktail and a coffee thats break even point. 

 

I'd go for that personally thats not a bad proposition. YMMV

In that case I would need to do some kidnapping to get full value, somehow I don't think I will bother.

[Mad4WDW]

Just now, terrierjohn said:

In that case I would need to do some kidnapping to get full value, somehow I don't think I will bother.

Cool, its not for you but it's a good deal for other people. 

[snaefell]

For our 19 night cruise back in May the drinks package would have cost us £1500,when you consider that I don't drink alcohol,sodas,coffee or tea it would have been some going for my Wife to make it worth the money on her own!😂

[Cash123]

One thing I need to work out is as we will embark on Arvia late in the evening after our flight to Barbados is it worth pre oredering the DP to receive the 10% discount or wait until the next day to order it onboard, I know we will lose the 10% discount but we would save around £80 as we wouldnt be drinking that much when we embark.

 

Just wondered what others have done in this situation.

[Mad4WDW]

3 hours ago, Cash123 said:

One thing I need to work out is as we will embark on Arvia late in the evening after our flight to Barbados is it worth pre oredering the DP to receive the 10% discount or wait until the next day to order it onboard, I know we will lose the 10% discount but we would save around £80 as we wouldnt be drinking that much when we embark.

 

Just wondered what others have done in this situation.

I'd be inclined to pre pay anyway. The 10% pre cruise discount is worth £125 and you'll only save £80 by skipping that first day.

Edited August 29, 2023 by Mad4WDW

[solentsam]

I think you find that paying on day 2 does not save you anything its the same price as day 1 for the whole cruise. But you do get the day 1 drinks included so not paying for them separably. I maybe wrong.

[Mad4WDW]

24 minutes ago, solentsam said:

I think you find that paying on day 2 does not save you anything its the same price as day 1 for the whole cruise. But you do get the day 1 drinks included so not paying for them separably. I maybe wrong.

When you pay onboard the day after boarding they charge for a day less

[BillieJeanKaraokeKing]

On 8/27/2023 at 9:59 PM, snaefell said:

For our 19 night cruise back in May the drinks package would have cost us £1500,when you consider that I don't drink alcohol,sodas,coffee or tea it would have been some going for my Wife to make it worth the money on her own!😂

Let her have a go! 

Her next holiday afterwards could be at The Priory. 🙂

[snaefell]

2 minutes ago, BillieJeanKaraokeKing said:

Let her have a go! 

Her next holiday afterwards could be at The Priory. 🙂

She did have a good go,we had a great time & ended up paying £300 each which included 2 visits to Sindhu & 3 to the Ocean Grill,quite a difference to £1500 just for drinks!😎

[LA30]

I see that Fred are currently offering a drinks package for £12.50 pppd.  How can they do it?  And why can't P&O?

[Josy1953]

28 minutes ago, LA30 said:

I see that Fred are currently offering a drinks package for £12.50 pppd.  How can they do it?  And why can't P&O?

Is it perhaps because they have looked at the average number and types of drinks that their passengers are having ?

The Fred cruisers are older and I have noticed on our cruises that the older passengers generally appear to drink less than the younger people. If P&O reduced their drinks package to £12.50 I would probably look at it because a couple of speciality coffees and and 2 glasses of wine which is my average daily consumption on holiday is way under the cost of a package on Princess and Celebrity but I would be possibly gain at £12:50.

[July morning]

On Fred in April /May when we were on board it was a choice of four house red we found one we especially liked, four house white don't know if they were any good as we don't drink white three Rosa which we definitely don't drink😂 a prosecco that I quite liked house spirits, pump soft drinks a cocktails of the day that did change daily and alcoholic drinks not on the package were half price.

We had a fun cruise 😆 😂

[Selbourne]

1 hour ago, LA30 said:

I see that Fred are currently offering a drinks package for £12.50 pppd.  How can they do it?  And why can't P&O?

I haven’t looked at Fred since I found out that they allow smoking on balconies, as that makes them a ‘no go’ for us. However, am I right in thinking that their prices are quite a bit more than P&O, yet their ships are quite dated and they don’t offer a particular premium experience in the way that, say, Saga does?
 

If so, with the extra capacity that P&O now has and the keen pricing that they are selling some cruises at, I should imagine that Fred Olsen might be the operator needing to review their pricing the most. This might be a way of doing that with less hit to the bottom line and giving them a point of difference over P&O. Also, they will be competing directly with Ambassador cruises, who do offers on drinks packages. 

Edited September 2, 2023 by Selbourne

[Eglesbrech]

20 minutes ago, July morning said:

On Fred in April /May when we were on board it was a choice of four house red we found one we especially liked, four house white don't know if they were any good as we don't drink white three Rosa which we definitely don't drink😂 a prosecco that I quite liked house spirits, pump soft drinks a cocktails of the day that did change daily and alcoholic drinks not on the package were half price.

We had a fun cruise 😆 😂

The whites were absolutely fine, we particularly liked the Chilean Chardonnay. The reds perfectly acceptable too Shiraz, Cab sav and Merlot

 

Wine by the bottle is also half price (except champagne and the separate really expansive vintage wine list). So one half price bottle of a decent wine with dinner a night paid for itself plus anything else consumed that day. 

[Eglesbrech]

11 minutes ago, Selbourne said:

I haven’t looked at Fred since I found out that they allow smoking on balconies, as that makes them a ‘no go’ for us. However, am I right in thinking that their prices are quite a bit more than P&O, yet their ships are quite dated and they don’t offer a particular premium experience in the way that, say, Saga does?
 

If so, with the extra capacity that P&O now has and the keen pricing that they are selling some cruises at, I should imagine that Fred Olsen might be the operator needing to review their pricing the most. This might be a way of doing that with less hit to the bottom line and giving them a point of difference over P&O. Also, they will be competing directly with Ambassador cruises, who do offers on drinks packages. 

Their big point of difference is the itineraries, they go to some really interesting places. They also offer more and different activities once onboard.

 

The ships are dated and an outside on Fred would get you balcony on P&O for the same cost.

 

The drinks package is good value, particularly if someone in the cabin is teetotal or drinks limited alchol but the other enjoys a glass or three.

[lindylooellalouise]

On 8/29/2023 at 3:24 PM, Mad4WDW said:

I'd be inclined to pre pay anyway. The 10% pre cruise discount is worth £125 and you'll only save £80 by skipping that first day.

Where does it say you get 10% discount if you pre pay for the drinks package I can’t find anywhere.😬

[ovccruiser]

Haven't read all the thread, but big problem with drinks packages is that my wife doesn't drink and I cannot buy a drinks package for one. Why? I don't know. Cruise lines usually mark the boarding card for those who have a drinks package, why that can't just be for one and not both in a cabin seems like hard work for the cruise lines.

[Selbourne]

7 minutes ago, lindylooellalouise said:

Where does it say you get 10% discount if you pre pay for the drinks package I can’t find anywhere.😬

Although it’s not really promoted, the prices on your Cruise Personaliser are discounted by 10% from the on board price, plus you will have any loyalty discount applied at checkout as well. If you buy whilst on board it’s 10% more.

[lindylooellalouise]

Just now, Selbourne said:

Although it’s not really promoted, the prices on your Cruise Personaliser are discounted by 10% from the on board price, plus you will have any loyalty discount applied at checkout as well. If you buy whilst on board it’s 10% more.

Oh I see thanks very much for the info so I think it will be better for me to purchase the package before I board. 👍

[DamianG]

On our recent Arvia cruise we signed up for the Classic Drinks package (for myself, wife and son aged 13) on day 2. It wasn't worth it for us on day 1 as we took some drinks of our own and used the sail away drinks voucher. We didn't have a lot of onboard credit so that wasn't a factor in our calculations.

 

We thought very carefully before taking the package but ultimately it worked out for us paying for 13 days onboard (therefore missing the extra 10% pre-cruise discount) but including our Peninsular Club discount. On a typical sea day we would have teas and coffees from Vistas, wine with our lunch, another drink mid-afternoon, Proseccos in the cabin whilst getting ready for dinner, a pre-dinner drink, something with our dinner then one final drink afterwards. We also had plenty of bottled water. Our son didn't go crazy with his drinks package (included with ours) as it was restricted to Pepsi or lemonade on tap, or hot chocolate. He didn't have the latter and got fed up of the same drinks every day. 

 

Naturally we had less drinks on port days but there were only 6 of those in 14 days. We too made a conscious decision to have less long lunches in port apart from one day. My only criticism of the drinks package was the limitations, both for our son and us. Even we got a little fed up of the restricted choice of the Classic package, not so much the cocktails but more the wine list especially as some included were not available.

 

We have an included drinks package on our next cruise with MSC (a new cruise line for us) which appears to be more inclusive in terms of drinks offered. For our next P&O cruise we have substantially more onboard credit so if the offerings are the same at that time we will probably just pay as you go.

Edited September 3, 2023 by DamianG

[DamianG]

On 8/21/2023 at 12:57 PM, zap99 said:

Does the package include paracetamol.?.

Gavascon is only included in the Deluxe Package 😀

[gsmt47471015]

1 hour ago, DamianG said:

Gavascon is only included in the Deluxe Package 😀

We opted for the drinks package for the first time ever on our fourteen day Azura cruise and we used it to our advantage because we knew the wines we liked were available in the glasshouse and we had three or four port days ,, interestingly we pre booked and received 10% but did not receive our 10% loyalty discount as well ?  We do not drink teas or specialty coffees so our drinks spend was used solely for soft and alcoholic drinks , I would say it appeared as though we were not out of pocket across the whole cruise so would consider it again on a shorter cruise (17 nights or less) but anything longer would be of no benefit to us

[Mad4WDW]

On 9/2/2023 at 4:01 PM, lindylooellalouise said:

Where does it say you get 10% discount if you pre pay for the drinks package I can’t find anywhere.😬

https://www.pocruises.com/onboard-activities/bars-and-lounges