Royal Caribbean Cruise Tips

Prepay your onboard tips.

Set aside $50-100 in cash for your room stewards. Pay the head steward on the last night of the trip; he or she will distribute to the team. Make friends with your head room steward and they will bend over backwards for you.

Have the same dining time? Put aside $50 for your head waiter. Tip on the last night. Anytime dining? Bring $10 for your head waiter and tip if the service is good.

Buy repatriation/intl health insurance with UHC Safe Trip. It’s usually pretty cheap.

Since it’s your first cruise, book excursions through RCCL so you’re guaranteed not to get left behind.

Pay for the evening kids club one night and take the Mrs. to an upscale specialty restaurant.

Treat yourself & the Mrs. to a spa treatment. It’s pricey, but top of the line.

Set aside a little money to gamble. Table games. Not slots. Payouts on slots are not regulated at sea. (You just might win. I won $500 and a 7 night cruise on my first trip.)

You won’t get to do everything on a 5 night trip. Don’t try to squeeze everything on the ship in. You’ll just end up feeling exhausted.

Don’t let long lines or other passengers ruin your good time. You’re on a floating resort headed to the Caribbean. There aren’t many better places to be.

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Stopping in Costa Maya and Cozumel.

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If you are good at managing your time, use trip advisor/review sites and find your own excursions. You will save a frick ton of money and have much better excursion than if you book through the cruise. Only issue is if you don't manage your time or have issues and don't make it back on time, then the cruise won't wait for you.

To me it's always worth the risk because I get to have a private tour guide without massive groups you get in ship excursions which often time suck hard and you get a much better experience. Combing trip advisor for excursions and looking for legit reviews helps a lot.

If you don't want to manage your time or bad at it, just use RCCL excursions and deal with the masses.

Both of those ports have a ton of thoroughly reviewed excursions offered by RCCL and 3rd party vendors on youtube. Just type in the excursion you want and the port and you will find plenty of recommendations.

What excursions do you like?

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I did search before I posted and saw your reply to that thread. We will be on Voyager. Not sure how similar all the ships are. Trying to decide on drink packages for adults and kids and seeing if it is worth the money. Mrs's had surgery a while back so shes a 1 maybe 2 drinks type of gal now. Is it worth paying $800+ for the deluxe drink package especially with 2 days not even being on the ship for most of the day. Ever been on stops to costa maya/Cozumel on RC? Any excursion suggestions.

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RCCL makes their drink packages not really worth it unless every adult you are with can down a shite ton of drinks, talking like 10-12 drinks a day to break even. However, the first day you get on the ship, they will most likely offer half price single day drink packages. We usually take that time to buy the package for just the at sea days when we know we will come out on top. Other days we drink the drink special some and pay per drink because we both don't drink that much to come close to the ridiculous price of the drink package on RCCL. We also don't drink soda and can live off water, juice, and lemonade that are free. If you need soda, that might sway your opinion on the drink package too. There is other ways to get around drink package once you get more cruise rewards or if you work the casino and get on their free drink program. Casino rewards are different than the ship rewards, that's a whole other conversation.

Voyager of the seas out of Galveston?

ETA: I read further down the thread for my question. Lets check knuckles at the swim up bar.

1st cruise with my family too. We booked the trip on the fury catamaran boat that takes you to a private beach with inflatables in the water for my 2 boys and a short offshore fishing trip in Costa Maya so they can hopefully catch something. Just planning to make the most of the trip. We got the drink package as well