Hui C Stanek

Thanks everyone! Very helpful!

On 3/25/2023 at 8:55 PM, BirdTravels said:

Welcome to Cruise Critic.

 

The $20/day is essentially the same thing as the Celebrity pre-paid tips. 

Thank you!

On 3/25/2023 at 8:20 PM, shof515 said:

the 20 day per day is the daily gratuities charge like what other cruise lines call it. this is for the room steward and dinning staff. this is separate then the drink package gratuities that you pay for on the drink packages

Thank you so much!

Apologies, searched through the boards and couldn't find an answer. We are first time cruises and have booked an upcoming cruise on Celebrity and NCL. With Celebrity, they let you pre-pay tips, which I assume goes for room and restaurant staff?? Meanwhile, NCL adds tips to Drink Packages for bartenders but doesn't otherwise have a pre-pay tip option, however, they do have an $20/day/person service charge, which is $600 on our cruise. Is this service charge a "tip" for room/restaurant staff??? Or will there be an end of the cruise tip option> Thank you!

Wow, all these are FREE at meal time????? That's amazing. Thank you! That'll save us a bundle, we don't drink and that $690 just in tips seems a crazy amount for something we wouldn't use, and they already said something about $600 in tips at the end of the cruise. 

4 minutes ago, Alakegirl said:

Coffee, tea, milk, hot chocolate packets, juice blends (from dispenser) lemonade, iced tea,

 

no bottled water, soft drinks, sparkling water, cappuccino, caffee latte, etc.

First, apologies, I know the question about drink packages comes up often, but I've asked Celebrity Cruises on the phone and looked through the posts here ad infinitum... My question isn't about the packages it's about what comes free to drink with meals if you have no package at all? Celebrity Cruises told me to look at the menu when we board which wasn't helpful at all. We don't drink alcohol, and can't see how we'd get out money back on the $30 coffee/tea/water/soda plan as with tax and tip its $36 per person per day.

I have the same question for Norwegian Cruises Lines as we've book a cruise on each. We're first timers obviously but couldn't pass on the recent sales. With NCL, the Unlimited Package will costs us $690 in tips to keep so we plan to drop it even though it's "free". We don't drink and NCL doesn't include water, coffee or tea in the Unlimited Package--we'd have to upgrade to plus which would cost us another $950.

Thank you so much for the help!