The Royal Caribbean tweak that will make your cruise cost $60 more

• Royal Caribbean is lifting the price of its cocktails from USD$14 to USD$15.
• However, drinks packages will now also cover drinks up to $15, not $14 as it was previously.
• As Royal Caribbean uses dynamic pricing, this could alter the cost of your cocktail prices.

Royal Caribbean general cocktail prices look to be jumping from $14 to $15. 

Royal Caribbean Blog reported seeing the prices jump up, with many of the cruise line’s signature cocktails, which were previously $14, now coming out to $15.

The good news is that drinks packages will be adjusted to cover this change, with packages now to cover drinks purchases up to $15, more than the previous limit of $14. 

Therefore, unless drink package prices rise, this change won’t affect cruisers who purchase a drinks package on their Royal Caribbean cruise. However, it will affect those who opt out of the drinks package. 

For example, if someone took a 10-day cruise with Royal Caribbean and averaged four cocktails a day, this would now come out to USD$40 extra, which is around AUD$61. 

This change means a Royal Caribbean cocktail costs AUD$23.

Royal Caribbean’s drink packages use dynamic pricing. This means that, unlike most other cruise lines with a fixed price for drinks packages that apply to every sailing, the price for a Royal Caribbean drinks package can move around.

Cruisers have reported seeing prices for packages on Aussie cruises as low as AUD$90 and right up to AUD$190. 

This particular method of pricing means two things. 

The first is that it makes it very difficult to determine when the Royal Caribbean drinks package is becoming more expensive. Whereas other lines have to announce official changes when their drinks package rises in price, it is unclear what the true cost of an alcoholic drink is on Royal Caribbean.

This means that it’s impossible to say whether this latest change will mean more expensive beverage packages, but it is, of course, likely that the cruise line will factor in the higher cocktail rates when pricing their packages.

The second is that the decision on whether you should get a drinks package for your Royal Caribbean cruise should be concerned with not only how much you drink, but also on the particular price quoted for your cruise, and if there are any sales or promotions available. 

Royal Caribbean drinks package tips 

• If you book a drinks package and later see that it is being sold at a lower rate for your cruise, you can simply cancel your package and rebook it at the same rate, often saving hundreds.
  
• When booking a drinks package online, it will make you buy a package for everyone of drinking age in your cabin, however, if one person in your travel party wants the package and another one doesn’t, there is a way to make this happen. You have to call Royal Caribbean and inform them that someone in your travel party doesn’t drink, or doesn’t want the package, and they will change it for you. 
  
• Don’t be afraid to do the math. Stories like this one show that rather than trying to estimate or guess whether the drinks package is worth it to you by calculating how much you plan on drinking and how much the drinks package will cost you.