Carnival Drink Package Price: Why It Never Changes
Buy Cheers early to lock the price is the most repeated Carnival tip online. We checked the price every day for five months. There has never been anything to lock.
"Buy Cheers early to lock in the price before Carnival raises it" shows up in every Carnival planning thread, usually with a confident nod. We checked the Carnival drink package price every day for five months. It has never moved.
Since April 14 we have tracked Carnival's entire online add-on catalog — 3,054 products and 355,000+ daily price checks. The drink packages, the Wi-Fi plans and all 44 specialty dining products did not change price once. Shore excursions did, and about one in five of them moved.
This post covers what Cheers actually costs, why "buy early" is borrowed advice from a different cruise line, and which Carnival add-on actually rewards checking back.
Quick Answer — Does the Carnival Drink Package Price Change?
TL;DR| Add-on | Price (per person) | Daily checks | Price changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cheers! drink package | $69.95/day | 151 | 0 |
| Cheers! Zero Proof | $29.99/day | 151 | 0 |
| Premium Wi-Fi plan | $25.50/day | 151 | 0 |
| Steakhouse dinner | $52 | 150 | 0 |
| Shore excursions (2,766 tours) | ~$120 typical | ~150 each | 21% moved |
- There is no price to lock. Cheers has listed at $69.95 every day since April 14. Buying six months out and buying the night before cost exactly the same.
- The pre-cruise discount is the only timing edge. Carnival's own listing says you save $5 a day versus buying onboard — and that applies any day before you sail.
- Excursions are where prices move. One in five Carnival tours changed price since spring, with a typical cut of 13% and a typical hike of 7%.
The Carnival Drink Package Price Has Not Moved Since April
Cheers is $69.95 per person, per day — and it has been on every one of the 151 days we checked.
That number is the pre-cruise price on Carnival's site, and Carnival's listing notes it already includes the 20% service charge. State and local taxes still get added per drink in US waters. Here is every drink package Carnival sells online, and how often each one changed.
| Package | Price (per person) | First seen | Last seen | Daily checks | Price changes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cheers! | $69.95/day | Apr 14, 2026 | Sep 15, 2026 | 151 | 0 |
| Cheers! Zero Proof | $29.99/day | Apr 14, 2026 | Sep 15, 2026 | 151 | 0 |
| Bottomless Bubbles | $11.99/day | Apr 14, 2026 | Sep 15, 2026 | 151 | 0 |
| Cruise the Vineyard wine package | $81 | Apr 14, 2026 | Sep 15, 2026 | 151 | 0 |
| Cruise the Vineyard Premium | $124 | Apr 14, 2026 | Sep 15, 2026 | 151 | 0 |
Five packages, 755 price checks, zero changes. That is not a quiet stretch we happened to catch — it spans the end of spring break season, the whole summer and the start of fall.
The number that actually matters is the cabin total. Carnival requires every adult in the same stateroom to buy Cheers if one does, so the real Carnival Cheers package price is per person, per day, times everyone over 21 in the room.
| Cruise length | Cheers for one adult | Cheers for two adults |
|---|---|---|
| 6 nights | $420 | $839 |
| 7 nights | $490 | $979 |
| 8 nights | $560 | $1,119 |
Why "Buy Early" Is Bad Advice on Carnival
The tip is borrowed from a cruise line that runs a completely different playbook.
On Royal Caribbean, the Deluxe Beverage Package is repriced constantly — it shows as "on sale" on almost every ship, every day, and the price moves on its own midweek cycle. We covered that in when Royal Caribbean drink packages go on sale. On Royal, buying on the right day is worth real money, and "watch it, then buy" is sound advice.
Carnival does not do that with packages. There is one list price, and in five months we have not seen it dip or spike once. Advice built for a dynamic price is useless against a flat one.
The one real timing edge is before versus onboard. Carnival's own Cheers listing says you "save $5 per day by purchasing before you sail," and pre-purchase closes at 11:59 PM the day before embarkation. That $5 is the same whether you buy six months out or the evening before.
So the Cheers decision is not a timing decision at all. It is a drinking decision — whether you will use enough of the 15-drink daily allowance to beat paying per glass — and no amount of calendar-watching changes the answer.
Wi-Fi and Specialty Dining Are Frozen Too
Every Carnival Wi-Fi plan and all 44 specialty dining products held one price through roughly 150 daily checks.
The same pattern holds across the rest of the pre-cruise storefront. If you are budgeting internet or a steakhouse night, these are the numbers, and they have not been anything else since spring.
| Add-on | Price (per person) | Daily checks | Price changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Social Wi-Fi plan | $20.40/day | 151 | 0 |
| Value Wi-Fi plan | $23.80/day | 151 | 0 |
| Premium Wi-Fi plan | $25.50/day | 151 | 0 |
| Multi-device Premium Wi-Fi (4 devices) | $90 | 151 | 0 |
| Cucina del Capitano | $24 | 149 | 0 |
| JiJi Asian Kitchen | $24 | 149 | 0 |
| Il Viaggio | $42 | 148 | 0 |
| Bonsai Teppanyaki | $49 | 149 | 0 |
| Steakhouse | $52 | 150 | 0 |
| Rudi's Seagrill | $52 | 150 | 0 |
| The Chef's Table | $95 | 150 | 0 |
Carnival's Wi-Fi listing makes the same pre-cruise pitch as Cheers — "up to 25% per device versus onboard pricing" — and the same logic applies. Buy before you sail, and stop worrying about which week.
The one add-on that budged upward was Faster to the Fun, Carnival's priority-boarding pass. Three of its 14 sailing-length tiers rose since April, and none fell.
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Carnival Excursions Are Where the Price Actually Moves
One in five Carnival shore excursions changed price since April — and most of those moves were hikes, not cuts.
Carnival excursions are the only add-on in this catalog that behaves like a live price. A typical tour lists at about $120, and 582 of the 2,766 we track moved at least once in five months.
| Carnival excursions, Apr 14 – Sep 15, 2026 | Count |
|---|---|
| Tours tracked | 2,766 across 166 ports |
| Changed price at least once | 582 (21%) |
| Price cuts | 280 |
| Price hikes | 421 |
| Typical cut | -13% (about $20) |
| Typical hike | +7% (about $10) |
| Moves of 20% or more | 170 |
Hikes outnumber cuts three to two, but the cuts are nearly twice as deep. That asymmetry is why a tour you priced in June can look very different in August.
The biggest cuts were real money, mostly on European and Asia-Pacific ports.
| Port | Tour | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kavala, Greece | Kalamitsa Beach Transfer | $64.99 | $39.99 | -38% |
| Katakolon (Olympia), Greece | Olympia Scenic Overlook & Countryside Drive | $104.99 | $64.99 | -38% |
| Tenerife, Canary Islands | Puerto de la Cruz on Your Own | $79.99 | $49.99 | -37% |
| Katakolon (Olympia), Greece | Kourouta Beach Day | $94.99 | $59.99 | -37% |
| Tenerife, Canary Islands | Las Teresitas Beach | $82.99 | $52.99 | -36% |
| Singapore | Behind The Fun Ultimate Tour | $195.00 | $130.00 | -33% |
| Cairns, Australia | Skyrail, Kuranda Village and Scenic Train | $254.99 | $179.99 | -29% |
One Iceland whale-watching listing dropped from $299.99 to $31.99 in June. We treat that as a relisted product rather than a discount and left it out of the table.
Cuts Land on a Whole Port at Once
When Carnival cuts excursion prices, it usually reprices every tour in the port on the same day.
| Date | Port | Tours cut | Average cut |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 13 | Cairns, Australia | 16 | -26% |
| May 13 | Airlie Beach, Australia | 11 | -25% |
| Aug 8 | Helsinki, Finland | 11 | -16% |
| Aug 22 | Malaga, Spain | 10 | -17% |
| Jul 12 | Tenerife, Canary Islands | 7 | -27% |
| Aug 19 | Katakolon (Olympia), Greece | 7 | -26% |
Hikes batch the same way. Ketchikan saw 21 tours go up on a single day in early September. Cobh, Ireland saw 19 rise together in late August.
The cuts are not always permanent, either. Panoramic Helsinki jumped from $74.99 to $104.99 in July, then fell back to its old price less than three weeks later. Of the 280 cuts we logged, 33 were followed by a later increase on the same tour.
What This Means for Your Carnival Budget
Spend your attention where the price moves — the excursions and the fare — not on the packages.
Where Timing Matters on Carnival — and Where It Doesn't
The Carnival drink package price is the easiest line in your budget because it is the one that will not surprise you. Put $69.95 a day per adult in the spreadsheet, decide whether you drink enough to justify it, and buy it whenever you get around to it before sailing.
The fare is the opposite. In our Carnival Jubilee pricing guide, the same balcony swings by hundreds of dollars per person depending on season and how close to sailing you book. Getting that number right saves more than every package on this page combined.
How We Track This Data
- We check Carnival's online pre-cruise add-on catalog every day, and have since April 14, 2026. That is 3,054 products and 355,354 price checks over 150 days, all in US dollars.
- A "price change" means a product listed at a different price than it did the day before. We do not count products that appeared or disappeared from the catalog.
- Coverage is five months, not a full year. We cannot yet say what Cheers did during last Wave Season or Black Friday, and we will update this post as the window grows.
- Two smaller categories did move: cabin-decor gifts (mostly cuts) and a couple of in-room food items (up). Neither is a line most people budget for, so they are not in the tables above.
- This add-on tracking sits alongside our fare data — 12M+ fare snapshots across 17 cruise lines and 226 ships — and 10.4M+ onboard add-on price records across the lines we follow.
Cruise Price Tracker for Carnival scores every Carnival fare 0-100 against its own price history — so you know the cabin price is fair before you spend a dollar on Cheers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Graham H — Founder, All Aboard Deals
Graham has been cruising for over a decade and has sailed on 15+ cruises across Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Norwegian, and Virgin.
He built All Aboard Deals to track cruise prices the same way traders track charts — monitoring 29,000+ sailings and spotting fares that fall well below their recent averages.
Editorial Standards
All guides are based on real pricing data, live fare checks, and historical trends. Content is updated as ships launch and prices change. Questions or corrections? Contact us