Beverage Plan

Dearest Rachel –

You might remember that we never concerned ourselves with a drinks package when we went cruising back in the day. It was quite sufficient to stick with lemonade, iced tea and (in Daniel’s case) milk while in the dining room, since we didn’t drink alcohol– and as far as soft drinks go, a week or two without cola would do us no harm. If we really wanted something along those lines, we usually would pick something up at the shops in ports along the way; Coca-Cola is available worldwide, but Goombay Punch we only ever could find in the Bahamas.

To be sure, on our last cruise as a complete family, we discovered that, like with airplanes, we weren’t allowed to bring beverages on board with us. Presumably, it interfered with the cruise line’s theoretical ability to sell us on their beverage plan – if we didn’t want to buy drinks from them, so the reasoning went, we shouldn’t be allowed to bring our own (to be fair, a lot of restaurants operate like that as well). It was a nuisance to have to get rid of what we had (although Logan had to jettison more than the three of us had to, since he drank – and still drinks – more of the stuff that the three of us put together), but we learned our lesson about not trying to bring stuff like that aboard any more. Then again, that was a different cruise line than we usually patronize, so it may have been a different set of rules than we were used to.

The funny thing is, now that last year’s trip propelled me into the second highest tier for brand loyalty, I get amenities from our regular cruise line that render the idea of a drinks package irrelevant. As a benefit of being such a regular customer, I’m allowed to order five beverages from the bars every day, and as long as none of them cost more than $14 or $15 (depending on the sailing), they cost me nothing.

I’ve almost never been able to take advantage of this benefit, especially since I don’t generally drink. The one thing I would normally get that would be suitably pricey would be one of the coffee drinks offered at the shop on the fifth deck – but quite honestly, I’d do better just getting something from the machine in the Crown Lounge:

Then again, considering the vast amount of mixers they have on hand, I’ve been able to get… creative in making the odd request (and you can interpret that description however you want; it’s quite appropriate however you look at it) from one bartender or another.

For the most part, though, it’s been a matter of taking advantage of the plan with something in the morning – like the fresh-squeezed orange juice – and in the evening – like a Coke Zero with a jigger of lime juice for flavoring, while getting one or another of the mocktails for Daniel, who has developed a taste for several concoctions in particular.

Actually, the menu at the King & Country actually got us chasing around from bar to bar, trying to see what differences there were between them. Unfortunately, it seems that most of them had pretty much the same offerings, at least in terms of what they call their “zero-proof” offerings.

One other thing has come to light on this, our last day of the trip; I’ve been rationing our special beverages out each day, with two apiece as mentioned before, even though that doesn’t actually manage to take advantage of my entire quota, so that I don’t go over it. However, I’d just remembered that Daniel has a loyalty rank just below mine, and is allowed four free drinks of his own; he didn’t need to rely on me for this. Between the two of us, we could have splashed out and had nine beverages every single day. It’s kind of embarrassing to realize this, but as Daniel pointed out, we don’t imbibe like this at home – except in terms of drinking water, which we can find here for free.

So yeah, we’re probably going to bear this in mind on a future such trip – and never bother with an actual package, no matter how many emails I get advertising it – but even so, we’ll probably never be able to take full advantage of all of the perks of membership. We can but try, though.

And with that in mind, I’ll ask that you continue to keep an eye on us, and wish us luck; I’m sure we’re going to need it yet.