25 RIDICULOUS Money Mistakes All Cruisers MUST Avoid!

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I think they need to be more flexible with the drink package. When they make the entire room pay for a drink package, but some people in that room don’t drink alcohol. It’s a waste of money. They should offer the drink package and let each person choose which package from that room they want.

I always put a reminder on my phone calendar at 3pm the day of embarkation. Put phone on airplane mode. I swear, it's a lifesaver.

One way to avoid ATM fees is to go to the casino. Use your card to withdraw money from your account. Print the ticket and go to the cashier and cash it out. No fees, and if you used your credit card for your account, no cash advance fees. I learned this from a crew member.

This is our third cruise. This time, it's not with extended family and my siblings. Just the two of us. We're going premium rate because it's a once-in-a-lifetime probably due to my wife's health. This means WiFi and drinks, plus special dining included, the latter just once. Sometimes, just the once, you splurge and make it memorable.

If you like snacks. Bring little baggies from home. Then go to the buffet and get cookies, gapes etc then you will have snacks for later

Travel insurance is NEVER an unnecessary expense. Spend the money!!!

Don’t forget you smart watches with cellular, need to be put in airplane mode as well!

I’m just going to live on ship water and the included food, no specialty restaurants. I travel dull. All I need is a deck chair to use while reading. That’s all I really plan on doing. Nothing fancy at all.

I was charged for photographs that weren’t mine on NCL. When I went to the desk to clear it up, the cruise employee was very arrogant and insisted he had a receipt that I signed. When I asked to see it, I found it was a name that wasn’t even close to mine. They immediately removed the charge. I was glad I consistently checked my cruise charges.

One of my things to do right before a cruise is to go to my bank, withdraw $100 inside, and get it all in fives. that pretty much covers cash tips, porters, small purchases at ports, etc.

Another mistake is not buying discounted gift cards if they’re offered for your cruise line. For our latest cruise we bought Carnival gift cards from AARP and saved 10% on just about our entire cruise cost: cruise fare, specialty dining, wifi, in-room beverages, excursions, and even estimated what our bar bill would be and purchased extra gift cards to put on our S&S cards when we boarded the ship. We saved about $450.

Bring snack bags and sandwich boxes to raid the buffet for foods to eat off the ship or at night in the room. Bring your own bottle to fill with ice and juice.

Check reviews before signing up for excursions...

As for the ATMs, you can avoid that altogether on most cruise lines. I haven’t tried this, but Emma Cruises mentioned it in a video a long time ago. Instead of using the ATM, go to the casino, load the amount you want to take out onto a slot machine, cash it out, and take it to the cages. Free withdrawal.

If you forget to bring things like sunscreen or over the counter medicines, or run out during your cruise, you can often be better off buying it at your next port... even the convenience store right next to the port is going to be cheaper than buying on board... but if you can make into the the port town itself you'll find regular shops that are far far cheaper eg local supermarket or chemist

We didn’t check our account on one cruise because we didn’t do anything that we thought was adding charges. Turned out that the sommelier at dinner had been charging us for bottles of wine despite that same wine being included in our drink package when served by the glass. Pretty shady but we learned our lesson.

Not only putting phone on airplane mode - also other devices having SIM card or E-SIM like laptop, ipad etc.

Good afternoon, Ilana. We never buy any of the packages - drink, internet, specialty dining. We cruise to unwind, so internet is not important to us. We don't drink specialty coffees, and fresh squeezed juice is not important, the free stuff suits us fine. We are ocassional drinkers, so paying al a carte for alcohol works for us. Just returned from an 11 day cruise to Alaska and our bar bill was $64 for 5 drinks. Even with Princess' Plus package @ $60/day/person, we wouldnt have gotten our value from the package, and they have some of the best pricing. On our upcoming RCL cruise in January, we've been getting drink package offers of buy 1 get 1 half off, but that's still $128/day just for drinks. We did take advantage of a Princess offer on this past cruise where we could pre-order bottled water for $7 for 12 bottles to be in your cabin when you arrived ($0.85/bottle). We felt the pricing was good and convenient to take on our shore excursions. They had a similar package for soda that worked out to $1.35/can when pre ordered. Agree with all your other suggestions, especially using the "convenience" store on the ship. If we do find we forgot something, unless it's an emergency, it's usually cheaper to pick it up in your next port.

I learned the tip about discounts at spa from my sister ! Great idea on embarkation day. No one is there and there is a discount!!