Getting back to the cruising part
Drinking on a cruise ship....
Most cruise lines allow passengers to bring/take two bottles of wine on board. A typical bottle yields 4-5 glasses of wine or maybe 2 days worth if all you do is have a glass of wine before dinner. My wife and I typically have a glass or two before dinner, sometimes we have a glass before dinner and take another glass to dinner with us. So that's 3-4 glasses/day which means a bottle lasts us 2 days or 2 bottles x2 days = 4 days. Not enough for a 7 day cruise.
Alternative #2 is pay by the glass. Mixed drinks/shots costs $12-14, wine is $11+/glass.
Alternative 3 is buy a drink package. Drink packages typically costs between $50-65/day per person plus a 18-20% added gratuity. So that's a minimum of $840 for a 7 day cruise. At "by the glass" prices that's only 4 drinks a day so it seems worth it when you consider a drink package is all you can drink. So a bloody mary when you get up, a beer at lunch, maybe a couple frozen foo-foo drinks while laying around the pool in the afternoon, a cocktail or two before dinner, a couple glasses of wine with dinner, maybe an after dinner drink and/or one at the show, maybe a nightcap. Well worth it at the highly inflated prices cruise ships charge. Of course you normally wouldn't drink that much if you had to pay by the glass but what the hell, you're on vacation. Some lines have basic and premium packages. Obviously the premium packages cost more but include (arguably) better booze. Some cruise lines have simply gone with an across the board package. And...most packages include soft drinks, specialty coffees, fresh squeezed orange juice.
The thing is I don't drink sweetened anything. No orange juice, fruit juices, pop/soda, specialty coffees, foo-foo drinks so that stuff isn't worth paying for by me. I like bourbon and scotch on the rocks. My wife likes gin and tonics but will drink scotch and bourbon. So that brings up the next alternative.
Alternative #4 is bring your own booze. A 5th of booze (750 ml) holds 16 shots. Considering a 5th of Jack Daniels cost around $20 near me the cost per shot is about $1.25 by the bottle vs. $12-15 on board. Of course better booze costs more. My go to bourbon and scotch run $1.50-1.85 a shot by the bottle.
If you decide to break the arbitrary rules and BYOB on board there are a couple ways to do it.
1-Buy the little airline sized bottles and hide them in your luggage. The little shot sized bottles (called minis or nips) fit in shoes, pockets of clothes, shaving kits etc. etc. You can sometimes find packs of mini bottles in liquor stores for $1.00 each. Back when I ate carbs we found 12 packs of Wild Turkey Honey minis for $10/pack. Wild Turkey Honey mixes well with orange juice, iced tea, coffee and just about any type of juice or drink you can get free on board. It is/was easy to slip a couple into your pocket while wandering around the ship and pour them in whatever free mixer you found. We refilled them over and over back home and took them for years. It was our go to for the wife for years. BTW, some cruise lines allow you to bring up to a case of pop (mixers) on board as well. You can carry minis on board an airplane in your carry on luggage. They fall under the liquid restrictions.
Remnants of a bygone era...JWR=Johnny Walker Red, SC=Southern Comfort, my wife's
2. Buy "Rum Runners" which are collapsible plastic flasks. Different sizes hold from 8 ozs up to 32 oz. We've been using them for almost 20 years. We wore some out and replaced them with "Cruise Runners" same thing, half the price. They fit in your luggage and have never been found. They are invisible to xrays. I even took an almost full 8 oz on my carry on luggage on the plane coming home from Florida.
I should also note that Cruise Runners are good for smuggling into concerts, football/baseball stadiums and other places. They can also be used as water bottles. I keep a couple in my back pack and use them for hiking. Durable and collapsible.
The last cruise (Celebrity) we took we had a drink package that was included in the overall cost and since we actually bought this cruise 2 years ago the costs was significantly cheaper than booking it this year. It was a good deal then, a great deal now. We didn't bring any wine or booze on board I'll be practicing "dry April" for my liver to recover. Celebrity tends to now include drink packages in the cruise price. We've been looking at NCL which does as well sometimes.
The Celebrity cruise we took in February was a charter so you had to buy a drink package or pay by the glass or...BYOB. I took one 32oz runner of bourbon and one of scotch. I also took an 8 oz of vermouth and a small bottle of bitters for making Manhattans. My wife likes Manhattans as well. It worked out well. Ended up drinking about 3/4s of the bourbon and less than half the scotch. And of course we also took our two bottles of wine. The cruise was the Rock and Romance cruise so we basically took steel insulated mugs filled them with ice and whiskey and sipped on them at the concerts or around the pool. We called them "travelers". Filled with coffee in the morning and whiskey in the evening.
On Royal we get 4 free drinks a day plus you can bring/take 2 bottles of wine per cabin on board. Wine is nice while sitting on your balcony prior to going to dinner, or taking to dinner. Haven't felt the need to buy a drink package on Royal for some time. We think the 4 drinks a day is plenty and don't need to smuggle anymore. You can always buy a specialty drink by the glass if you feel the need.
Alternative 6 is buy booze by the bottle on board or in port stops. You can buy duty/tax free booze by the bottle on board at very good prices. Usually $3-4 a bottle cheaper than back home. In the past you would buy it in the on board store and then they would hold it until the last evening and deliver it to your cabin. Just before the pandemic hit they started delivering in the afternoon before the last day. On our February cruise we bought a couple bottles of bourbon the second day and they let us walk out with it. We could have easily enjoyed it the rest of the cruise if we hadn't brought our own.
In addition, if you bought booze in one of the ports (generally even cheaper than on board) they would confiscate it and hold it for pickup on your way off the ship at the end of the cruise. On our last cruise we bought a couple bottles of special infused vodka in St. Croix. It is only available in certain ports in the Caribbean and was for friends back home. We walked back on board with bottles in hand, easy peasy. Could of opened them and had a party. So it appears the days of smuggling may be over if you can just buy and bring from any port you stop at.
Alternative 7-Don't drink. We tried that on a cruise once. We rarely drink at home, sometimes going weeks or months. There is something about a cruise which entices you to drink.
