Don Herman Article 8 of 13 in our Cruise Planning Guide — how to plan a cruise, one decision at a time.
Somewhere between “final payment due” and “pack your bags,” every cruiser hits the same screen: a chart of drink packages, wifi tiers, and dining bundles, all priced differently, named differently, and — this is the part that trips people up — structured differently from one cruise line to the next. You’d think comparing Princess to Royal Caribbean to Celebrity would be as simple as lining up the prices. It isn’t. And that’s not an accident, or at least not entirely.
We’ve bought one of these packages on nearly every cruise we’ve taken — eleven Princess sailings and 117 days at sea since 2006, so we’ve watched these tiers evolve in real time. This article walks through what each of the major lines actually offers, why the packages resist a clean side-by-side, and — using a decision we just made on our own upcoming cruise — how to figure out whether paying for the bundle actually beats paying as you go.
[Photo idea: a wide shot from your balcony or the pool deck, drink in hand — something that signals “this is the good part of the vacation,” to run right under the intro. A sail-away sunset shot works well too.]
Why You Can’t Just Compare the Price Tags
Part of this is timing. Package tiers like these are a genuinely new category as cruise-industry features go, so lines are still actively tinkering with what’s inside them. And wifi specifically got scrambled again recently — Starlink’s arrival let several lines jump from throttled satellite internet to real broadband almost overnight, which is why some of last year’s wifi tiers don’t exist anymore (Royal Caribbean’s cheaper “Surf” plan, for instance, got folded away once Starlink made the pricier “Surf + Stream” tier the only option). Some of what follows may already be a little out of date by the time you read it — that’s just where this category is right now.
The rest, we suspect, is by design. A few things make head-to-head comparisons genuinely hard:
The packages aren’t even the same kind of thing, line to line. Celebrity and NCL bake a base package into the fare itself and sell a paid step-up from there (Celebrity’s All Included, NCL’s Free at Sea). Princess, MSC, Carnival, and Holland America sell an optional bundle you add to any fare, usually in two or three preset tiers. Royal Caribbean does neither — it sells separate beverage, dining, and internet packages independently, and you mix and match your own combination.
The “upgrade” tier often isn’t just more of the same — it’s a different thing entirely. Paying more for NCL’s Free at Sea Plus doesn’t just raise your drink budget; it swaps in top-shelf brands, unlimited Starbucks, and switches wifi from a 150-minute cap to unlimited streaming. Carnival’s step up from Essentials to Ultimate isn’t “more alcohol” — Essentials is non-alcoholic only, full stop. MSC’s Premium Extra vs. Alcohol-Free draws the same hard line. Celebrity is the one exception worth noting: its Classic-to-Premium step really is mostly a matter of degree — a higher per-drink ceiling and nicer versions of the same categories.
Even the fine print differs. When you’re allowed to buy varies (Princess lets you add a package any time, even onboard, for a small premium; Celebrity’s All Included is locked in at booking). How it’s priced varies (almost everything is per-person-per-day, except Royal Caribbean’s dining packages, which are one flat price for the whole cruise). Whether gratuities are included varies — and this one’s easy to miss on a receipt. Even “unlimited” doesn’t always mean the same thing: some lines cap you at 15 drinks a day, others don’t cap you at all.
None of this means the packages are a bad deal. It means the question isn’t “which line has the best package” — it’s “does this specific package, on this specific cruise, actually save me money over paying for what I’d buy anyway.”
The Big Lines, at a Glance
Here’s how the top-tier bundled package on each line stacks up. Treat every price here as directional — cruise lines run dynamic, seasonal pricing, and by the time you’re reading this, some of these numbers will have moved.
We’ve left Disney Cruise Line off this list — its model bakes most amenities into the base fare already and doesn’t have a directly comparable tiered add-on package, so a side-by-side wouldn’t really tell you anything useful.
A Quick Word on “Ship Within a Ship” Suites
If you’ve heard about MSC’s Yacht Club, Celebrity’s The Retreat, NCL’s The Haven, or Princess’s Sanctuary and assumed those are just fancier versions of the packages above — they’re not. Those are separate suite classes, not add-on packages: you book into them as a cabin category, and the drink package, wifi, and specialty dining just come with the room. We cover those properly in Article 5, How to Choose a Cruise Cabin: Location, Noise, and Category Explained — for now, just know that if a line’s real top-tier experience is calling to you, look at their suite class, not their drink menu.
Line by Line: What You Actually Get
Princess — Plus vs. Premier. Plus gets you 15 drinks a day (up to $15 each), unlimited coffee/tea, and casual dining. Premier removes the daily drink cap, raises the per-drink ceiling to $20, adds unlimited specialty dining, bumps you to 4 wifi devices, and throws in a shore excursion credit, unlimited photos, and reserved theater seating. Both tiers include gratuities. You can add either one any time up to sailing, or even onboard for a small daily premium.
NCL — Free at Sea vs. Free at Sea Plus. Free at Sea now comes standard with every fare: open bar, a handful of specialty dinners scaled to cruise length, and 150 minutes of wifi. Free at Sea Plus, for about $50/day more, doesn’t just raise the ceiling — it unlocks top-shelf spirits, a real wine list, unlimited Starbucks, unlimited streaming wifi, and — the one that matters most on paper — prepaid gratuities, which the base tier doesn’t include at all.
Celebrity — All Included, Classic, and Premium. Most Celebrity fares now bundle a Classic drink package (drinks up to $12 each), Basic wifi, and drink gratuities right into the price, with a Premium upgrade available for about $20/day more. If you’re on a cruise-only fare without All Included, the same Classic/Premium packages (plus a Non-Alcoholic option) can be bought standalone — but expect to create an account on Celebrity’s site to see pricing, which tends to invite a follow-up sales call. Gratuities here are added at checkout on top of the package price, not baked in.
MSC — Premium Extra, Alcohol-Free, and Minors. MSC’s three tiers draw a clean line at alcohol: Premium Extra is the only one that includes beer, cocktails, spirits, and wine; Alcohol-Free and Minors get everything else (specialty coffee, soda, juice, even 0.0% beer and wine) without it. Gratuities are included on all three. Worth knowing: MSC doesn’t sell a standalone wifi or dining package the way some other lines do — those are separate purchases entirely.
Carnival — Essentials, Ultimate, and Kids & Teens. This is the one where the tier names can mislead you: Essentials isn’t a cheaper Ultimate, it’s a different package — Essentials’ drink package (Cheers! Zero Proof) is non-alcoholic only. If you want Carnival’s real drink package, Cheers!, you need Ultimate, which also gets you the fastest wifi tier and a few pre-cruise discounts on spa and photos. Gratuity is a 20% service charge added to the drink package specifically.
Holland America — Have It All. One bundle, scaled by cruise length: a shore excursion credit, one to three specialty dining nights, a capped drink package (15/day), and Surf-level wifi. The one thing to flag clearly here: Have It All makes no mention of prepaid gratuities anywhere in its own materials, so budget for tipping as a separate cost on this line.
Royal Caribbean — build your own. RC skips the single bundle entirely and sells three independent package categories: Beverage (Classic Soda, Refreshment, or Deluxe), Dining (a 3-restaurant package or unlimited, both priced as one flat total for the whole cruise, not per day), and Internet (VOOM — now just one Starlink-powered tier since the cheaper throttled option was discontinued). You buy exactly what you want and skip the rest.
Do the Math Before You Upgrade
Here’s where this got real for us. On our upcoming 21-night Trans-Atlantic crossing on the Sun Princess, we did what we’ve done on every cruise since 2006 — picked a package. We went with Plus, assuming it would include the specialty dining we’ve always gotten with it in the past.
It doesn’t anymore. Princess quietly moved specialty dining to Premier-only on Sun-class ships, and Plus now covers casual dining alone.
So the question became: upgrade the whole reservation to Premier just to get specialty dining back, or find another way? Premier costs $35 more per person, per day than Plus. Over 21 nights, that’s $735 per person — about $1,470 for the two of us — just to recover the one perk we actually missed, while also paying for a bunch of things (unlimited casual dining, four wifi devices, a $300 excursion credit) we didn’t specifically need.
Instead, we kept Plus and decided to just buy the specialty dinners à la carte, which Princess always allows regardless of package. Cover charges on Sun Princess run $60 per person, plus 18% gratuity — $70.80 per person, per dinner. Two dinners, the same number Premier would have covered automatically, came to $141.60 per person — a little over $280 for the two of us, against $1,470 to upgrade the whole package.
We came out roughly $1,190 ahead as a couple, and we still got exactly the dining experience we wanted. That’s the whole lesson of this article in one example: don’t reflexively upgrade an entire package tier to recover a single lost perk. Price out buying that one thing separately first — especially on longer cruises, where a daily-rate gap compounds fast.
So — Are They Worth It?
It depends less on the cruise line and more on how you actually cruise:
If you drink two or more cocktails, glasses of wine, or specialty coffees a day, a drink package usually pencils out in your favor — do the rough math against your line’s per-drink price before you decide. If you’re a one-drink-with-dinner kind of traveler, skip it and pay as you go; you’ll almost certainly spend less. If you need to work or stay reachable, unlimited wifi is worth the money on any line — a single device’s worth of decent streaming-capable wifi, bought standalone, usually costs less than the full bundle if drinks aren’t your priority. And if what you actually miss is one or two specialty dinners, buy those individually before you upgrade an entire package tier to get them back — that’s exactly the mistake the Sun Princess math above helped us avoid.
The packages aren’t a trap, and they’re not a scam — they’re just not designed to be compared at a glance. A few minutes of doing the actual math, the way we did above, tells you more than any comparison table ever will.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are cruise drink packages worth it on a short cruise? Usually less so than on a longer one — most packages are priced per day, so the break-even point (how many drinks you need to have to beat paying à la carte) stays the same, but you have fewer days to use it, and less room to make up for a light day by drinking more the next.
Can I buy a package after I’ve already booked? It depends on the line. Princess lets you add a package any time up to sailing, even onboard. Celebrity’s All Included is chosen at booking and isn’t easily added after the fact, though its standalone drink packages can be added or changed up to 48 hours before departure.
Are gratuities included in cruise packages? Not always, and it’s easy to miss. Princess and NCL’s Free at Sea Plus include them. MSC includes them on its drink packages. Celebrity and Carnival add a service charge on top of the package price at checkout. Holland America’s Have It All doesn’t mention gratuities at all, so budget for tipping separately.
What’s the cheapest way to get decent wifi on a cruise? Look at each line’s entry-level or single-device wifi tier rather than the full bundle — Royal Caribbean’s VOOM and Celebrity’s standalone wifi can both be bought without a drink package attached, if internet is your only priority.
Next up in the guide: Article 9 — Build Your Shore Excursion Plan. Or head back to the full Cruise Planning Guide to pick up wherever you left off.
