Marella Drinks Package Guide

This is a sponsored post by Marella Cruises.

One of the best things about Marella Cruises is the way they keep things simple – cruise fares aren’t a complicated web of add-ons or extra fees.

As standard, their cruises are ‘All Inclusive’, but you might be wondering how inclusive they really are, especially when it comes to drinks.

Can you really drink as much as you want on a Marella cruise without paying extra?

In this guide, I’ll take you through the Marella Cruises All Inclusive cruise fare, and explain what’s different with the Premium All Inclusive package.

A lot of drinks are included as standard with Marella!

Marella Cruises are ‘All Inclusive’ as standard but this doesn’t include all drinks. It does include a decent range of hot drinks, soft drinks, beers, wines, cocktails and mocktails in the standard fare, but some premium options are charged as extra.

Cruise lines will always have some level of free drink on their cruise but it’s often limited to a very small selection – free fountain water, juices and basic tea and coffee served at breakfast – that sort of thing.

Marella Cruises offers so much more. Your standard cruise fare includes a wide range of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks and you don’t need to pay any extra – if you stick to those drinks.

But it’s important to point out – the ‘All Inclusive’ fare isn’t really “all” inclusive because there are some drinks that aren’t included. Of course, otherwise, we could all be drinking Champagne all day long!

For some premium drinks, you can either pay for them individually or pay for the Premium All Inclusive drinks package. This is truly all-inclusive when it comes to drinks – with the exception of wines by the bottle. You can have a wide variety of wines the glass, though.

It’s also worth noting that the standard All Inclusive fare only applies between the hours of 10 am and 2 am. You’ll be able to get tea and coffee at breakfast and in your cabin, or water from the fountains, but for the full range of drinks, you’ll need to wait until 10 am.

Here’s everything included as standard…

The drinks included on the standard All Inclusive fare with Marella Cruises include selected draught and bottle beers and ciders, selected sparkling, white, red and rose wines (and some non-alcoholic wines), selected cocktails and spirits, and fountain sodas.

Draught beers may vary between European and Caribbean sailings, and included drinks are subject to change due to global supplies – if they don’t have the drink you want, they’ll offer you an alternative.

Here’s a full breakdown of what’s included for free with your Marella Cruises drinks package:

It doesn’t cost much to upgrade…

Upgrading to Marella’s Premium All Inclusive cruise fare costs £12-14 per person, per night, depending on your cruise. Everyone in the cabin needs to upgrade, and so for a typical couple cruising the total cost is £170-190 per cabin for a 7-night cruise.

That’s a lot cheaper than many other cruise lines’ drinks packages, which can start from around £10 per person, per day just for fountain sodas. It’s not uncommon to find cruise drinks packages that cost around £50-70 per person, per day.

And circling back around to the point that Marella Cruises aren’t really “all” inclusive since you need to pay extra for the drinks package, bear in mind how low that cost is. Cruise lines that are really “all” inclusive with their drinks tend to cost a significant amount more than a Marella fare!

Going Premium unlocks even more options!

The Marella Premium All Inclusive package includes almost all drinks on the ship. The only exclusion is wine by the bottle, but you can order wines by the glass without having to pay.

The full list of premium drinks is below, although again it’s subject to supplies – but you’ll always be offered an alternative if the one you want isn’t available.

You don’t have to upgrade to get these, you can just pay individually for what you want.

Drinks prices

The premium drinks on Marella are actually very reasonably priced – they’re very similar to what you’d pay at a bar or pub in the UK. In fact, a lot of the prices are cheaper than what you’d pay at some pubs these days!

Taking your own drinks

It used to be that you could take your own alcohol onto your Marella cruise, but that’s no longer the case. Now, you may only drink alcohol served to you by the crew – but this does include your outgoing flight as well.

This means that if you buy any drinks on your flight to your cruise, you can bring those onboard. However, expect to be asked for proof of purchase to show that you did buy it on the flight.

If you don’t produce proof of purchase, the alcohol will be confiscated and returned to you when you disembark. That’s the same with any alcohol you buy during any port visits too. You get to keep it – it isn’t permanently confiscated – but you’ll only get it back at the end of your cruise, ready to take home.

Upgrading to Premium – worth it?

With some cruise lines, it can be difficult to work out whether the drinks package is worth it. The costs are so high, and the drinks prices are high too, so doing the maths before you sail can be tricky – but worth doing!

I think that Marella’s drinks pricing and package prices are the simplest of any cruise line, and so it should be really easy to work out whether or not you want to pay for the Premium All Inclusive package.

If you’re happy drinking the drinks that are included with the standard All Inclusive fare, there’s no need to pay for the upgrade.

Most drinks cost between £2.50 and £3.50, so if you would only have at most three of those per day, then don’t pay for the upgrade – buy the drinks separately.

But if you think you would prefer to drink from the Premium list of drinks, and you know you’ll have four or more every day, or most days, then it’s worth paying the upgrade price.

There are a lot of drinks already available on the All Inclusive fare, but I can see why some people would prefer to pay for the Premium one too.

The choices of beer and especially cider are definitely a higher quality on the Premium tier, and you get a lot more choice with spirits too. There are some great cocktails at that level, or you might just be someone who likes premium coffees.

You don’t have to drink alcohol to get your money’s worth from the Premium tier, especially if you’re a fan of bottled water, J2Os or you just prefer bottled and canned sodas to drinking them from a fountain machine.

The cola for example, isn’t always the best. By the pool it comes from a two-litre bottle of Pepsi or Pepsi Max, but from the pump in the bars and the buffet, it seems to be a cheaper non-branded cola.

Is the Premium drinks upgrade worth it for everyone? No – it very much depends on your individual preferences and tastes. But it will be worth it for some people.

Final word

I honestly love the drinks prices and packages on Marella ships – it’s so much easier to understand than when you’re dealing with drinks that cost £8 to £10, or packages that cost as much for one day as Marella’s Premium package costs for a whole week.

It also makes it really simple to work out whether or not the upgrade is right for you, and that’s largely because the drinks all cost a similar amount. By pricing them in that range, you can quickly work out whether you’ll average fewer than four drinks a day from the Premium tier or not, and if you’ll have more than that, the upgrade is the way to go.

With Marella expanding its fleet, creating new dining options and this excellent drinks pricing, it’s definitely a cruise line worth considering for your next holiday.

Related posts:

• 13 Things To Love About Marella Cruises
• Meet The Newest Marella Cruise Ship – Marella Voyager
• What’s Included in Marella Cruises?