Here are a few things one should know before embarkation.
O
n my first night aboard our six-day Caribbean cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas, I had a dream that my boyfriend went to get us coffee but didn’t bring the pre-paid punch card. In the dream, I was furious.
These were clear reverberations from the previous evening’s treasure hunt for said card around the 18-deck city at sea, discovering the prices of things on board, and a dinner spent trying to connect six phones to an exorbitantly expensive internet service determined to kick us off the network each time someone else logged on.
The start of our trip wasn’t exactly how I had imagined this all-inclusive, no-fuss experience planned to accommodate seniors and seven-year-olds alike. We had spent so much time attempting to set everything up in advance, thanks to near-daily emails from Royal Caribbean reminding us how much we were saving by paying for everything upfront. Now, rather than leaning into vacation mode, the day had become an exercise in figuring out what exactly we’d paid for.
As a first-time cruiser, the deluge of material on the internet is overwhelming. When you don’t know what questions to ask, it is even harder to find answers. Here are a few things one should know before embarkation.
Do the Math
Let’s start with the drinks package. On our cruise, after arbitrary discounts, a Deluxe Beverage Package costs around $115 per adult per day. If you buy one for yourself, the person you are sharing a cabin with is obligated to buy one as well for all six days. That is a lot of cocktails–or so you think.
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In reality, six poolside piña coladas a day will pay for itself because for every beverage you purchase onboard, an additional 18.75% service charge is added, plus tax. In short, that $14 dollar cocktail ends up costing nearly $18. The drinks package also allows you access to the soda machine, whereas the rest get water, lemonade, and all the filtered coffee they can muster. In the end, our combined alcohol consumption for six adults barely exceeded the price of a single week-long drinks package, but, as they say, knowledge is power.
Then there is the specialty coffee. If you do not have a Deluxe Drinks Package, you can purchase punch cards in advance to save approximately 20% on lattes, cappuccinos, and anything else espresso-based. It was by far the best pre-purchase we made, even if it required a slight learning curve.
These cards are valid in a few different locations aboard the ship: the main dining room, the Café Promenade, Park Café, or Vitality Café by the spa. It is not, however, valid at the Starbucks onboard. This is where it gets fun, though: these other cafés serve Starbucks coffee, made with the same beans, using exact terms used by Starbucks. The drinks even have Starbucks sleeves.
I would order a tall caramel macchiato every morning–but if you want it iced, that same coffee now costs double. My brothers decided to be resourceful by bringing their own ice from a soda machine. “That’s not usually how we do it,” they were told. Nevertheless, the coffee was poured over the ice, and no one appeared to feel too uneasy about the situation.
INSIDER TIPThe card itself, if not found inside your stateroom, can likely be found at one of the cafés that accept it as payment. Think of finding it as a fun onboard activity.
To Tip or Not to Tip
The staff onboard the Oasis is the kindest, most accommodating group I have encountered in the service industry. Each night, the wait staff was more than eager to make this the best dinner we’d had, making sure the kids were as satisfied with their dining experience as the adults. So, at the end of each meal, when presented with a zero-dollar check acknowledging our presence, we were all conflicted about what to do with the tip line.
One of the pre-purchases we had made was a “tip package”–hundreds of dollars in prepaid gratuities for services we had not yet received. If you choose not to pre-pay, the ship adds $18.50 per guest per day to your bill anyway. As part of a specialty dining package, each passenger has also pre-paid around $8, per meal in tips.
Now, imagine the end of a great dinner. Do you not tip your waiter, explaining you already paid Royal Caribbean? Do you figure that the 18.75% added to your bottles of wine counts as enough gratuity for the service? How do you determine the monetary value of a bundled meal? The amount suggested by various blogs ranges from $5 to $25 per meal, which seems like a way of saying, “Nobody knows.”
The bottom line is there is no way of not feeling like a jerk in this situation. In the end, we tipped our servers varying amounts at every dinner, wishing we had walked into this situation with more of a strategy.
Bring Some Cash and Have Your Papers in Order
Much is made of the fact that the ship itself is cashless. Everything you purchase is charged to your room. What we didn’t think about was carrying cash on our excursions, especially since our ports were all owned by Royal Caribbean. Even if your excursions are already paid for, your key card—and sometimes even your credit card—is cold comfort when it comes to onshore cocktails, food, souvenirs, and tips. You also never know if you need a taxi, so it is never a bad idea to carry some cash with you.
It is also sensible to have your passport and other paperwork handy. If you are traveling from Europe, the cruise liner will want to see your ESTA when you check in, even if you are already inside the U.S. We were told we didn’t need our passports on port days, but every passenger is responsible for knowing their own entry requirements into a country, so whatever awaits onshore, especially if you deviate from cruise excursions, it is good to be prepared.
INSIDER TIPCheck those charge amounts periodically, as what you pay and what gets charged to your credit card don’t always correspond.
Consider Skipping the Excursions
I’d read that one should read the fine print before taking any cruise excursion. The truth is, at the time of booking, there wasn’t much print to read, fine or otherwise. Every excursion is brief in description and intentionally vague.
In Falmouth, Jamaica, I had chosen rum tastings for our group, assuming they were trips to a local distillery. In the end, based on my count of blue towels from the boat, it seemed like many of the ship’s excursions ended up at the same beach club, where we had four shots of different store-bought rums under a tarp before spending exactly one hour drinking rum punch on the beach and bobbing in the ocean before being driven back to the ship.
In Labadee, Haiti, we spent our morning on a sports fishing excursion, where, in part, because the captains didn’t have access to live bait that day, we caught nothing. Because of the unusual location and its complex circumstances, we had some beers on a boat and chalked it up to the fishing gods. But had we taken the same $600 trip elsewhere, the lack of preparation would have made us livid.
Were any of these a painful experience? Absolutely not. Was it worth the money compared to a free day onboard the ship or lounging on a nearby beach? Debatable. Am I discouraging anyone from helping stimulate the local economy? I think any tourist economy would be better stimulated by trips that are better in quality and could genuinely reflect that in their pricing.
In the end, the highlight of our port days was time spent on some of the island beaches. Royal Caribbean’s private resorts, Coco Cay and Labadee, have plenty of these available–with no additional spending required for either food or deck chairs.
Find What Works for You
Those who love cruising seem to have hacked the experience. “Get breakfast delivered to your room,” said a friend when I asked how they make the most of their trips. Having continental breakfast, for free, on our balcony was a true highlight.
Speaking to other passengers onboard, whichever dining package you had chosen, everyone seemed satisfied with their food options. The guests in the main dining room made friends with their servers, who brought them bonus dishes. Everyone quickly figured out which restaurants had a fresh omelet station (Windjammers!), and an average buffet experience was elevated by the serene surroundings of an adults-only terrace at the Solarium.
The entertainment onboard gave our group, ranging from seven to 75 in age, something exciting to do every night, from the splashy Aqua80 water acrobatics show to the death-defying ice-skating extravaganza on a rink the size of a postage stamp.
What there isn’t onboard the Oasis–or at least wasn’t on our trip–is any kind of nightlife past 10 p.m. (Elton John covers on the Promenade deck do not a party make). During the day, though, there is never a shortage of things to do. Despite slides, pools, climbing walls, a mini-golf court, and enough food to nourish a small country, holiday heaven was, in our case, finding a quiet spot in the Caribbean sun, either sipping a cocktail from a miniature bucket or some of the rosé we were allowed to carry onboard. By the end, even I was wondering how I’d survive not being spoon-fed every hour. When it comes to vacationing, what can be more relaxing than that?
