Cruising in style

My wife and I recently returned form our very first cruise together. We went on the Royal Caribbean ship, Grandeur of the Seas and the experience was amazing. No dishes, no laundry, no kids, no responsibilities for an entire week! Just relaxing, dining, drinking, etc.

One thing everyone told us about before sailing is make sure you get the drink package! Well, the drink package was going to be something like $800 dollars and a quick glance gave me some info that the average drink onboard this ship is about $15.00. That means, we would have had to consume about 53 drinks between my wife and I to make it worth our while. That's 10 per day, 5 per person per day. There is no way we were going to do that much drinking.

Although we did partake in several rum runners while on board and a few glasses of wine, we are not big drinkers so the total came to about $360 or so for our drinks - way below the 800 dollars the ship would have charged us for the package. However, where we did get caught and I didn't realize this, the daily gratuity of $18.00 per person was not in fact a daily gratuity. It was a per item gratuity so we ended up paying $18.00 every time we ordered a drink! in the end, our total bar tab with the daily gratuities came to about $750 dollars so ... almost the same amount.

However, I found out after the fact that the daily $18.00 gratuities can be disputed at the front desk while on board. Since we ended up tipping everyone ourselves in cash anyway, I will know for next time to dispute at least some of the gratuities.

But overall, the experience was great, RC does a fantastic job of taking care of their guests and we got our money's worth in the relaxation currency and can't wait to go cruising again!

Las