Everything You Need To Know About NCL’s Free At Sea – Is It Good Value?

Whenever you book an NCL cruise, you’ll be asked whether you want to upgrade to Free at Sea – and honestly, it can be a little tricky working out whether it’s worth it.

Booking a cruise can sometimes be a little complicated, especially if you’re new to cruising. There’s a lot to consider and work out, including what type of room to book, when to sail, and more.

You’ll also need to check what’s included, and see whether your cruise line offers additional packages to cover things the basic fare normally wouldn’t.

NCL offers Free at Sea – though it’s a little complicated as they’ve changed offers a couple of times. Let’s dive in and I’ll explain.

Free at Sea explained

Free at Sea is a package that guests can book alongside their NCL cruise to give them a more included fare. It gives guests a free drinks package, a set number of speciality dining meals to enjoy, free WiFi minutes and shore excursion credit too!

NCL has changed how these perks work over the years. For a long time it was known as Free at Sea. It used to be that you could book and choose one of the benefits for your cruise without paying extra, or pay more to get all the packages included.

Then in late 2024 they changed it to More at Sea, which enhanced some perks but also made things a little more complicated – the included perks depending on the length of your cruise AND the stateroom you were booking.

It could be a little confusing, but things have been simplified a little now that the cruise line has switched back to Free at Sea at the end of 2025. And the option is always there to just choose a cruise-only fare if you like, and then pay for the different parts of your cruise individually. However, you may find that Free at Sea offers much better value, depending on how much you’ll use the perks.

What you actually get with Free at Sea

Here’s a quick guide to what you get with Free at Sea:

Package	Free at Sea	Who gets the perk?
Beverages	Unlimited Open Bar Package including a range of drinks options, including premium brands	Guests 1-8 on the booking
Speciality Dining	Up to 4 included meals depending on cruise length and cabin category	Guests 1 & 2 on the booking
Shore Excursion Credit	$50 per tour	Guest 1
WiFi	150 minutes free	All guests on the booking

To really understand the range of benefits, you need to delve a little deeper, so let’s look at what each package gives you in more detail.

A little more detail on what’s included with Free at Sea

1. Drinks

The Free at Sea cruise package includes NCL’s Unlimited Open Bar Package. Despite the name, this isn’t completely unlimited, because there are restrictions on which drinks you’re allowed.

What you get is:

• A wide range of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks options, including some premium brands
• 20% off all bottles of Champagne and wine
• Unlimited soft drinks and juices

2. Speciality Dining

NCL ships have a range of speciality dining restaurants onboard which come with an additional fee. But with Free at Sea, you’ll be able to enjoy at least one free meal in one of these restaurants.

The amount of free speciality dining meals you get will depend on which cabin type you book, and how long your cruise is:

• Cruises of 2-4 nights – 1 meal
• Cruises of 5-6 nights  – 2 meals
• Cruises of 7-8 nights  – 3 meals
• Cruises of 9+ nights – 4 meals

However, it’s important to know that these free speciality meals are for first and second guests only – anyone else dining with you will need to pay the regular cover charge.

Read more: NCL Free At Sea Specialty Dining Explained

3. Shore Excursions

With the Free at Sea package, you get a $50 credit to use against shore excursions, but it’s $50 against each tour. Essentially, this means you’re getting a $50 discount at each port of call you visit.

It only applies to the first guest though, so if you have a shore excursion costing less than $50 per person, one guest will get it free but the other guests will have to pay full price.

4. WiFi

You get a limited amount of free WiFi with the Free at Sea package, but all guests in your stateroom can take advantage. You get 150 minutes as standard. Under More at Sea, guests on shorter cruises would only get 75 mins.

It’s not a huge amount – around 15-20 minutes per day on average, enough time to check a few emails and send a few messages, but it’s better than having to pay for a WiFi package if you don’t plan on using the internet much.

Free at Sea costs

One of the biggest deciding factors for whether or not you should upgrade your cruise is the cost of the package. 

In the UK, the cost of upgrading to Free at Sea is very clearly explained. You’ll pay between £99 and £619 per person, depending on the length of your cruise.

• 2-day cruises: £99 per person
• 3 – 4 days: £129
• 5 – 6 days: £199
• 7 – 8 days: £249
• 9 – 10 days: £309
• 11 – 12 days: £359
• 13 – 14 days: £409
• 15 – 16 days: £459
• 17 – 18 days: £519
• 19 – 20 days: £569
• 21+ days: £619

In the US, you don’t actually pay for Free at Sea, but you are charged gratuities on the speciality dining and drinks package. So it’ll cost you $28.50 per person, per day for the drinks package, and then $20 per person, per speciality meal. So on a 9-night cruise, you’d pay $28.50 x 9 for the drinks ($256.50) plus $80 for the 4 speciality meals, so the total Free at Sea package actually costs $336.50 per person for that cruise.

Deciding whether to book Free at Sea or choose a standard cruise fare

Whether you should book a Free at Sea fare for your NCL cruise will depend on your budget for your cruise, and how much you’ll use each element.

Let’s use the working example of a 7-day cruise to demonstrate the value of each package.

In the UK you’ll pay £249 per person for Free at Sea. In the US you would pay $259.50 per person.

Here’s the value of each element, broken down:

Drinks

With Free at Sea, your Unlimited Open Bar would normally cost you $109 per person, per day – so that’s $763 per person, which is around £600.

Immediately, it’s worth buying Free at Sea if you want the drinks package. That’s easy.

But if you’re only drinking a few drinks each day? Maybe you could save without the upgrade.

Speciality Dining

For this example of a 7-night cruise, you’d get 3 meals with Free at Sea. You could expect to pay around $50 per meal on average, so that’s $150 or around £120.

Shore Excursions

Remember you get either $50 credit depending with Free at Sea, but that’s against every tour.

For the sake of this example, let’s say you book 3 tours on your 7-night cruise. That means a total value of $150 for the Free at Sea package (approximately £120).

WiFi

It gets a little trickier to place a value against WiFi on the Free at Sea package, because you can’t normally pay for WiFi by the minute. So for Free at Sea, we have to value it at £0, and just give the minutes as bonus time.

This means that booking Free at Sea gets you £840 of value per person for a cost of £249, meaning a saving of almost £600.

So, should you book it?

There’s no easy answer sorry and this one rests with you. You’ll need to work out whether you’d want the drinks package, and how often you’d want to enjoy speciality dining meals and shore excursions, and then see if the cost justifies the savings.

I can confidently say that, for most people, it’s worth the upgrade. You’ll feel much better knowing that your drinks are paid for, and you might be nudged towards trying more excursions or different dining options.

However if you like to keep your cruises on a tight budget, don’t be afraid to book a cruise-only fare.

Final word

I wish there was an easy answer to tell you whether Free at Sea was right for you, but it entirely depends on how much you like to drink (and what you drink), how many excursions you take, how valuable WiFi is to you and whether you prefer to dine in speciality restaurants or the complimentary ones.

For a lot of people, it might make sense to book a cruise-only fare and then pay just for a soda package or even buy drinks individually.

But for anyone who likes to drink premium spirits and Starbucks coffees, dine in the speciality restaurants, or get online during their cruise, choosing Free at Sea could be a better choice.

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