Does Virgin Voyages Offer Drink Packages on Their Cruises?
Summary: Virgin Voyages does not offer drink packages on their cruises. In this post, I’m outlining what they do instead and revealing how to get free on-board credit to put toward drinks.
If you’re an avid cruiser or if you’ve been to all-inclusive resorts, you’re probably very familiar with the concept of a drink package. If not, they can vary place-to-place, but a drink package is usually a flat fee that you pay at an all-inclusive resort, or on a cruise and you can order as many drinks as you’d like “for free.” Of course, it’s not actually free, but it feels like it when you’ve paid ahead of time (girl math!).
Does Virgin Voyages Offer Drink Packages?
Unlike most cruises, Virgin Voyages does not offer drink packages. Water, soda, and coffee are included, but you’ll have to pay extra for alcoholic drinks or espresso drinks. This includes any wine, champagne, beer, cocktails, lattes, cappuccinos, etc.
How Much Are Drinks on Virgin Voyages Cruises?
Now that we know Virgin Voyages doesn’t offer drink packages, I’m anticipating this as your next question.
To my surprise and delight, the drinks weren’t overpriced on the ship. For a few examples, a glass of cheaper champagne was $7, a glass of Moet was $25, fancier cocktails were $12-15, and beer was around $8 for a bottle.
The best part: tip is included in these prices!
In my opinion, these are very reasonably priced. Keep reading for more information about how to get free drinks and free bar credit!
How to Pay for Drinks (and Everything Else) on Virgin Voyages
When you check in at the cruise terminal, you’ll get a Virgin Voyages adjustable bracelet. This bracelet has a scanner on it that you’ll use to pay for anything on board your cruise. You’ll need to hook up a credit card to your account in the Virgin Voyages app before you go, or at Sailor Services on the ship.
You’ll probably want to wear this bracelet at all times while you’re cruising. In addition to using it to pay for drinks and souvenirs, you also have to scan it every time you get on and off the ship, so they know who left the boat and who came back (hopefully the same number of people!).
When you go to a bar on the ship, you’ll order your drinks like you usually would. If you’re with multiple people, everyone can pay separately, or one person can pay for everyone.
Opportunities for Free Drinks On Board
There are a couple opportunities for free drinks on Virgin Voyages cruises. The first is the Welcome Party. They give out free rose brut champagne to celebrate leaving the port. This champagne was actually pretty good and it’s usually $7 per glass. We were each able to get a few glasses during this party!
Eating at Gunbae (one of the best restaurants on board) is another way to get free drinks. They gave our table a free bottle of plum wine to play drinking games with while we waited for our food to come out. It was delicious and the drinking games made the whole experience fun!
The last way I saw people get free drinks was participating in the Ship Show (one of the many shows on board). During the show, the host asked a couple people to come on stage for a game and those people each got a free frozen tropical cocktail as a “thank you.”
How to Get Free Bar Tab Credit
If participating in game shows isn’t your thing, don’t worry! Anyone who books a cruise with Virgin Voyages usually gets a certain amount of bar credit. They advertise this right on the homepage of their website. The amount you get depends on the length of your cruise. For our 4-night cruise leaving out of Miami, each cabin got $300 of bar credit. Since we had two people per cabin, each person got $150.
However, most times, if you book your cruise through a travel agent, you’ll get additional credit to use on-board. This is technically “Sailor Loot” which is even more valuable than bar credit because it can be used on anything, including a bar tab, souvenirs, or anything else you might want to buy on the ship.
There are a ton of travel agents out there that specialize in cruises. We used Cruise Planners because they came recommended from a family friend. The booking and payment process was very smooth and they were able to answer all of our questions, so I would recommend them if you’re looking for one!
Lastly, if you add up all the bar credit you’ll have on your cruise and you think you’ll need more, you can always pay per drink after it’s used up. However, if you buy additional bar credit before your cruise in the Virgin Voyages app, they’ll add some for free. Before our cruise, I saw that if you bought $100 of bar tab through the app, they’d give you an additional $10 on top of that.
I’ll also add that while you’re on your Virgin cruise, you’ll have a chance pay a deposit on another Virgin cruise and get even more Sailor Loot and bar tab added for your future cruise. You don’t even have to book the cruise at that point. You just put the deposit down and then you can decide later when you want to actually book. There is a “Future Cruises” spot on each ship which is where you can set this up.
My Thoughts on Virgin Voyages Not Having Drink Packages
In short, I love it!
The all-inclusive style vacations I’ve been on have all had one thing in common: the food and drinks kinda sucked. It felt like since we already paid, the resorts weren’t worried about giving us quality, delicious food and drinks. Fortunately, Virgin is nothing like this.
Since Virgin Voyages doesn’t do drink packages, their drinks are very similar to ones you’d get at an upscale bar or restaurant.
I also liked that I didn’t feel the pressure to drink alcohol just because I bought a drink package. If I didn’t want to drink one night, I didn’t have to feel “guilty” about “wasting” the money.
Read More About Virgin Voyages
I hope this post helped explain why Virgin Voyages doesn’t have drink packages and how to book your cruise to get the most free bar tab possible! While you’re here, I have a few more posts you should check out:
