Is it worth getting a drinks package on a cruise ship?

We paid £1,384.40 for two premium drinks & WiFi packages on a 10 night Celebrity cruise around Europe this May. That works out at £69 each per day, and I genuinely don’t want to think about what we’d have spent on drinks without it. So here’s the full maths, plus the thing that catches a lot of people out when they’re booking.

The price keeps moving, and that’s the annoying part

The most frustrating part of booking a drinks package is that most cruise lines don’t sell these at a fixed price. Celebrity for example is constantly running different sales, promotions, packages & dynamic pricing for everything they sell, which includes drinks packages & excursions.

The good news is if you don’t mind putting in 30 seconds a day you can check these price changes daily, then cancel & rebook at a better price an unlimited amount of times. The one hard deadline is that packages can only be modified up to 48 hours before you sail, and after that they’re non-refundable, so the window closes two days out rather than at the gangway.

The bad news is it’s a bit of a pain to track. Once we rebooked 4 times in a week, which meant we had a big hold on our credit card while we waited for the refunds to process. It was fine for us because it didn’t push us over our credit limit & it cleared before the bill came in, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Top tip: check the price every morning while the kettle’s on. Thirty seconds, and rebooking is free and unlimited until the 48 hour cut off, so there’s no reason to sit on a bad price. Set yourself a reminder for three days before you sail, because that’s your last proper chance to grab a drop.

What we actually paid

£69 per person per day for the premium drinks & WiFi package.

That’s a pretty good deal, & it actually only worked out at an extra £3 each per day over the premium drinks package on its own. Which is exactly why you have to keep an eye on those sale (or should I say sail..) prices!

What you get, and what’s free anyway

Worth knowing before you spend anything: you can get fountain water, juices, tea & coffee free from the buffet & dining room even without a package. The coffee is plain black, but there’s milk, sugar and the rest to add yourself.

What you pay for is the good stuff. Premium coffees like lattes, teas, fresh juices, smoothies and bottled water all cost extra, or come free with a drinks package.

The packages work on a price ceiling rather than a list. On Celebrity’s 2025 list the Classic package covers drinks up to $12 and Premium takes that to $19, rising to $14 and $23 on sailings out of UK and Australian ports. Everyone of drinking age in the same stateroom has to buy the same package unless you have a genuine reason not to, for example a medical reason you don’t drink (don’t worry, they don’t need proof), which is worth knowing if only one of you drinks.

Celebrity’s own comparison, which lays the ceilings out more clearly than I can.

Another thing we love about Celebrity’s packages is that you can pay the difference on the more premium options. So if there’s a fancy wine or a whiskey you’ve got your eye on trying, you might only have to hand over a few extra dollars for it!

Not everything on a drinks package has to be a cocktail.

Okay, maths time

We’re going to have to swap to dollars here, because that’s what they use onboard. Our premium drinks AND WiFi package came to about $94 each a day.

Against that, here’s what a drinks menu actually looks like. These are the prices we saw onboard:

• Beer and cider: about $8 to $13, so a Red Stripe at the cheap end and a Stella or a Guinness at the top
• Standard and frozen cocktails: $12 to $15, with a piña colada or a frozen daiquiri sitting around $12
• The fancier cocktails: $17 to $19 for an espresso martini or an old fashioned
• Spirits: $12 to $17, depending on how snobby you’re being about the gin
• Wine by the glass: $11 to $20, though most house pours land around $12 to $15
• Premium coffees and smoothies: $5 to $10

One number that matters more than any of those: they auto charge a 20% gratuity on every single drink. Your package price already has that baked in, but a drink you buy without one doesn’t. So mentally add a fifth to every price above.

So, how much do you drink?

Say you’re having a proper day of it.

You start by grabbing a cappuccino ($6) at the cafe & a couple of bottles of water ($8) to take into port. You get back onboard and grab a vitamin water or a cold diet coke ($5) to rehydrate, then head to the pool bar for a nice cold beer ($9).

Back to your room, shower, then down for dinner, where you have two glasses of wine ($30) with your meal. After that you head out for the evening’s entertainment, have 3 cocktails ($54) across the night and grab a bottle of water ($12) with every drink.

That would cost you $124. Which is actually $148.80, because of that 20% gratuity.

Or maybe you’re really sensible.

You take the free coffee from the buffet & fill up a reusable bottle of water while you’re there, so that’s $0 spent so far. You spend your day in port and enjoy a couple of glasses of Aperol, maybe some local wine, and you can’t use your drinks package for that anyway so you’ve saved $0.

You get back on the ship and head to the dining room, where you drink tap water with your meal, so your spend is still $0. You brought your two bottles of wine onboard, so you have a glass on your balcony and call it a night.

You frugal little raccoon. The drinks package is not worth it for you.

What you’d need to drink to break even

Let’s treat the water, coffees & smoothies as bonus items and just look at the alcohol. Every count below has the 20% gratuity in it already, because that’s what would actually land on your bill:

• On the cheaper beers at $9 a go, you’d need 9 a day
• Sticking to wine at $15 a glass, 6 a day
• On the cocktails, 5 a day of the fancier ones, or 6 if you stay on the standard list
• Spirits, with or without a mixer, also lands you at 6 a day

Wine is the tightest of those. Six glasses at $15 is where it breaks even, but five already gets you to $90, so if you’re drinking the nicer end of the list at $16 a glass or more it drops to five.

Nine beers is a big day by anyone’s standards, but throw in a couple of cocktails or a wine and the numbers quickly add up.

Remember you’ll probably drink a bit more on a sea day, so how many sea days are on your voyage will play a part in these maths too. A port-heavy itinerary where you’re off the ship from 8am is a very different sum to a transatlantic.

We got fed up doing this on the back of an envelope, so we built the drinks package calculator. Put in your nights, your sea days and what you’d actually drink, and it’ll tell you the most your package should cost before it stops being worth it. The 20% gratuity and the per-drink cap are already in there.

Where we landed

Personally, I’m drinking at least one beer at some point each day, a glass of wine with every dinner (or two, let’s be honest, but I’m using one for my maths here), at least 2 cocktails in the evening and a whiskey nightcap.

Call that a $9 beer, a $15 glass of wine, two $18 cocktails and a $19 old fashioned to finish. That’s $79, which becomes $94.80 once the gratuity goes on. My drinks package cost $94. So I break even before I’ve grabbed a single bottled water, coffee or fresh juice, and I grab plenty of all three.

The bigger thing for me though, is that I’m on holiday. I don’t want to be doing maths, or worrying about how big my tab is getting, or talking myself out of trying a cucumber martini (spoiler, yes, yes you should). I want to relax and enjoy myself, which for me a bar tab definitely encourages.

Elderflower spritz in the sunshine by the pool, don’t mind if I do.

Quick answers

Is a cruise drinks package worth it? If you drink around 5 cocktails, 6 glasses of wine or 6 spirits a day, yes, comfortably. We paid £69 each per day for Celebrity’s premium drinks & WiFi package and broke even on alcohol alone, before the coffees, bottled water and fresh juices that also come with it. If you mostly drink in port, stick to tap water at dinner and bring your own wine onboard, it isn’t.

How much is a drinks package on Celebrity Cruises? There’s no fixed price, which is the frustrating bit. We paid £1,384.40 for two premium drinks & WiFi packages on a 10 night European sailing in May 2026, so £69 per person per day. Celebrity run near-constant sales and dynamic pricing, so the same package can be a very different number a week later.

Can you cancel and rebook a cruise drinks package at a lower price? Yes, as many times as you like, up until 48 hours before you sail. After that the package is locked in and non-refundable. We did it 4 times in one week. The catch is that each rebooking puts a fresh hold on your card while the refund processes, so you can have quite a bit of money tied up at once.

What’s included in a Celebrity drinks package? Cocktails, spirits, beer and wine by the glass up to a price ceiling, plus premium coffees and teas, sodas, non-alcoholic cocktails and bottled water. On the 2025 list that ceiling is $12 on Classic and $19 on Premium, rising to $14 and $23 out of UK and Australian ports. Go above it and you pay the difference rather than the full price.

What drinks are free on a cruise without a package? Fountain water, juices, and plain tea and coffee from the buffet and the dining room. Premium coffees, fresh juices, smoothies and bottled water all cost extra.

Final verdict

Worth it, if you drink like we do.

The honest version is that this is one of the few holiday decisions where you can actually do the sums beforehand, so do them — or let the calculator do them. Five cocktails a day sounds like a lot written down and doesn’t feel like a lot on a sea day, and that’s the whole calculation in one sentence.

The genuine downside isn’t the package, it’s the buying of it. Dynamic pricing means the same thing costs wildly different amounts depending on the day you look, and there’s something slightly annoying about a holiday purchase that rewards you for checking a website every morning for three months. We still did it, and it saved us a good chunk, but it’s not exactly relaxing.

Would we buy it again? We already have. Have a look at why we moved from Virgin Voyages to Celebrity, because the drinks package is why we made the move.

Prices are what we paid in August 2026. Things move, so check before you book.