Drinks on Carnival
 

Getting ready to go on my first cruise - will be sharing a room with someone. I could tolerate the cheer$ package for myself, but they say they require everyone in the room to purchase it. If the other person doesn't want to, are there any other options besides paying per drink?

Where there's a will...

http://www.instructables.com/id/Powdered-Alcohol/

Well I guess I asked for options and got one.. very interesting.

not worth it IMO unless you are a really heavy drinker. Figure a mixed drink is going to run you $10 a pop so you will need to drink 5 per day just to break even. That gets really hard to do esp. on shore days. You might only be on the boat in morning and getting back on in the evening.

5 per day isn't an issue for me on vacation. But, it looks like my options are to either pay, or get creative.

If you are a heavy drinker, they limit you to 15, then they cut you off. Paying per drink, there is no limit. All day at sea this can be accomplished

You could always sneak on your alcohol, I did that for my first cruise and had 3 rum runners strategically placed in my bags,

I've seen those - curious about how well they worked (and more importantly, how reliable they are in keeping my clothes dry)

They worked very well. I followed some ideas from the youtube videos i saw and what works best is it you hide them in your pant legs and roll up the pants and if you have a big enough toiletry bag, you can put it in there.

That's what I did and my clothes were dry.

The one Carnival Cruise to the Caribbean I took out of Miami about 5 years ago allowed a bottle of booze and a bottle of wine per person at embarkation. I don't recall if we had to present the bottles or not. That alone defrays the cost of what you spend on board & we drank a lot.

Cruising again on NCL in Janauary and the booze is included in the fare. May be unique to Bahamian itinerary though -

The days of being able to bring booze on Carnival, and most other non all-inclusive cruise lines for that matter, are gone. You can still bring one bottle of wine per adult passenger on board for cabin consumption for free and only at the initial embarkation port. Any additional bottles of wine require a corkage fee of $15 - $20 depending on the line. The NCL Bahamian itinerary is unique and is not standard across all their cruises. In fact, NCL is one of the more restrictive lines and has recently announced a passenger cannot bring any liquid consumable on board including water, soda, etc. All supposedly done in the name of security but leaves at least me to wonder about profit.

Royal Caribbean is also super restrictive.

I do see that RCL doesn't have the option to pay a corkage fee and confiscates all wine beyond the two bottles allowed at initial boarding per stateroom. That certainly is more restrictive than Holland America as far as wine goes. RCL doesn't appear to have gone to NCL's total liquid ban. Considering the popularity of wine and given the general tendency for cruise lines to mark up fairly pedestrian wines 300%-400% it can potentially add up.

I found the Cheers package very much worth it.
Break-over is like 5 drinks true. Never seemed to be much of a problem. Mimossa in morning. Cocktails all day. Wine by the glass at dinner.

However- tips are figured in - so you never have figure any tips. All drinks on the cruise are included - coffee - espresso - etc. etc. Water bottles even the big 500ml. Just seemed like a hassle free way to drink.

Also it was kind of nice to demand top-shelf liquor in all my drinks lol. Anyway I will purchase again.

Cheers

Kevin

NCL runs free booze promos often and it sometimes includes some unique itineraries.
Carnival recently revised their policy to include NO WATER being allowed to be brought onboard during embarkation.