It all depends on your taste and how important a particular cabin is to you. Most on cruisecritic say that HAL prices these packages (and more) into the fare and that nothing comes free.
I've sailed HAL twice on longer voyages (intercontinental repos) and learned a few things:
The only wine eligible is pretty much the cheap house wine. Santa Carolina or something (Chile) where a bottle in the U.S. is less than a glass onboard. Most cocktails in that price range are with generic/lower-cost spirits except for the Tanqueray 1010.
So the question is whether you can stomach that much or not.
On our cruises, my wife and I were pretty happy drinking the made-from-syrup coffee at breakfast, water for lunch, the odd happy hour cocktail (+$1 for the 2nd drink of the same type), and water + BYOB wine for dinner.
We like good wines and never bought anything onboard except one night in 2 cruises for a total of 37 nights. For those with low or no HAL status, buying a good wine for up to $25 in California where it is cheap and bringing onboard (paying $18 corkage) is better than what you buy onboard at $40 (the same $3-5 house wine they sell for $7-8 a glass), + 18% gratuity.
As for when it starts, when you board and when you disembark (so they only charge you 17 days gratuities for a 17 night cruise). If you board early and have sailed with HAL before, you can have boarding lunch in the dining room as long as you're seated from 12 to either 1300 or 1330.
You can search on CC for pictures of the drinks/price list.
If you PM the cruise, I can give you my less-than-educated guess as to whether it is worth it or not.