Are their limitations on cruise lines drinks packages?

More and more cruise lines are offering the chance to pay a daily charge for all inclusive drinks packages. It seems to be the way forward as most customers are asking for them now so they can go on holiday and not worry about the final bill at the end of the cruise.

After all its easy to get carried away when you are just signing for drinks and not carryng cash to pay for them as you go.

I was speaking to a regular customer a few weeks ago who had just come back from a cruise with Royal Caribbean. They had purchased the drinks package but at $45 per person per day they didn’t feel they got the full benefit of this and have decided not to take this up on their next cruise. However what they did say was that there were a large group of people all travelling together who had also purchased the package and were obviously taking full advantage of the unlimited alcohol. Apparently Royal Caribbean decided they were drinking too much and as it was proving too costly to them as a company limited them to the amount of drinks they could have each day.

If the people concerned were rowdy and causing a distrubance to other passengers then Royal Caribbean would be right to limit their alcohol but I am told they were just enjoying themselves and were very well behaved.

If this is true this is not acceptable. What Royal Caribbean are saying is you can drink as much as you like as long as we aren’t out of pocket. It doesn’t work like that i’m afraid and if they continue along these lines they will lose out eventually because people won’t stand for it.

At the end of the day some people may just about break even or even lose out on the deal but others will really benefit but for anyone who has purchased this package it takes away any worry and allows you to budget for your overall holiday cost. I assume Royal Caribbean didn’t refund any of the people who did not fully use the $45 per day.

I cruised recently with MSC and found their drinks package to be excellent value for money, it is about the cheapest on the market and i can honestly say there were no limitations. In fact the bar staff were telling us to order doubles instead of single measures.

I am sure they were going home to make a very strong complaint and quite rightly so.

Has anyone else had a similar experience ? If so please let me know