Cruisers Love Their Alcohol
Having alcohol on your cruise ship is like having a captain… important. This is according to our recent study into the alcohol consumption on a typical cruise ship.
It seems that once our ship mates ship off, they get ship-faced.
The infographic below shows the average consumption of alcohol during a cruise vacation. On the typical 7-day sailing, 62,000 drinks are consumed! Per passenger, that’s an average of 33 drinks per week, or 4.7 alcoholic drinks per day.
The typical American consumes four drinks per week in his or her normal, daily life. That means that, on average, people drink 8x as much while on a cruise ship than they would normally.
For those that hate reading infographics, here’s a list of the average daily consumed alcoholic beverages while on a 7-day cruise.
Per Cruise Passenger / Per Day
- 0.3 glasses of champagne
- 0.7 beers (I am so abnormal)
- 1.2 glasses of wine
- 2.4 mixed drinks
That’s roughly $34 per day (without tip) spent every day so around $240 spent during the course of seven days, per passenger. And you wonder why you got such a good deal on the cruise!
Note: The average consumption numbers shown above don’t taken into account the amount of booze smuggled onboard! As you can see from that post, it definitely happens.
It’s also fun to look at the cruise ship as a whole. Over the course of a 7-day sailing, the following total amounts of alcohol will be drunken, sipped, shot, chugged, lapped up, etc.
Per Cruise Ship / Per Week
- 1,200 glasses of champagne
- 10,100 beers
- 17,000 glasses of wine
- 32,700 mixed drinks
Serious Beer Money
If we look at the total dollar amount of booze sales for ALL passengers for the ENTIRE week, we’re talking close to $500k. Annualized, this means that over $20 million dollars per year is spent on alcohol, per ship! The Carnival Cruise brand has 24 ships… are you ready for this? Put your drink down first. That accounts for HALF A BILLION DOLLARS in alcohol sales just for Carnival Cruise Line ships!
When considering how many cruise lines Carnival Corporation owns, it’s fair to assume that they see more revenues from alcohol than BevMo (estimated $1B).
Now, drink up this infographic.
Feel free to pin that to your favorite cruise pinterest board using the button above!
* The information above was collected from the Provisioning (cruise ship) page on Wikipedia. The figures were extrapolated and various assumptions were made to the best of our rationale.
Maybe the “all you can drink” package wasn’t a good idea…
Posted by Ship Mate on Monday, December 28, 2015
Do you get shipfaced?
Let us know your thoughts below. Are you disgusted with the amount of alcohol consumed on cruise ships? Or, did you think to yourself, “Pssh, I take that much booze down before the muster drill?
Many of you ship mates will be on opposite ends of the spectrum. We have our assumptions, but we won’t tell you what they are. Please share with us your booze habits while at sea. Leave your comments below.
breakfast
thirsty!
This information is useless unless broken down by cruise line. That would tell the real story.
Strange response – that’s like saying the federal deficit number is useless unless you know the contributions of each sector. The definition of useless is “not fulfilling the intended purpose or desired outcome.” The purpose was to show the consumption of the average cruiser and we accomplished that.
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Ours was broken down, we took the premium package on celebrity, if we didn’t pay For it it would be well over 2000.00 of drinks. So I am staying with packages
Thanks for the information, I was debating if we should get the package or not
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It’s a vacation, I’m in the state who gives a ship, drink on cruiser
The more often we cruise, the less we bring over the allotted amount of alcohol. I don’t drink hard liquor, I’m good with a few Guinness and a bottle or two of wine during the course of our cruises which are the 3 or 4 day Long Beach-Catalina Island-Ensenada itineraries. Hubby takes his Whiskey, along with allotted amount of diet coke. These last few cruises, I have discovered the ease and convenience of pre-ordering on-line from the In-Room Gifts section on the Carnival website. The older I get, the more I enjoy the conveniences in life that we’ve worked so hard for all our lives. In my prime, I would have used the Cheers program, but now, at my age, it would be alcohol poisoning. 🙂 It’s a great deal if you enjoy your drinks on vacation.
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My husband and I don’t drink much , the one and only cruise we went on I think we only had like 4 or 5 drinks all week (7 night ) so we are not going to get the alcohol package when we go on our 9 Night in may we get the refreshment package and will bring on the 2 allotted bottles
Makes sense to us, Brendie! Thanks for the visit and for contributing!
We are Diamond Plus with Royal Caribbean. We enjoy the Diamond lounges and Concierge lounge in the afternoon before dinner. Also we are in the Casino Royal Club and receive complementary drinks in the Casino.
When we are on The High Seas(a half to whole ship charter for Bikers) we will buy the drink package so we can drink with our friends who are not diamond or plus.
We get the drinks package as its cheaper for us when you at all the soft drinks coffees and cocktails in and my husband can’t shout the table
I think the CHEERS package is discriminatory making all passengers in the cabin (over 21) purchase the CHEERS package. (Other cruise lines do not.) In mine and my sisters case, she drinks and I don’t. I’m the designated Diver! The way the drinks are monitored/controlled, that shouldn’t be an issue. (If I still drank, I would be drinking more than 4.7 a day and my sister can put away some beers “on a regular day”!)
Haha, “designated diver” – love it.
I say “shut up liver your fine. Haha.
Just got off a Royal Caribbean Atlantic crossing and we probably drank a bottle of wine each every day the first week. i know how i feel after a few glasses of wine at home and it is not the same. Personally, I think the alcohol content is less in the wines included in the beverage package. I have no way of proving my theory, and I never looked at any of the wine bottles on the ship.
I don/t drink any on my cruise. Just water and one virgin daiquiri. So your numbers are only an average for everyone on the ship and not a true picture of how much the ones that actually drink are drinking. I know I’m not the only one that doesn’t drink so your numbers would actually be higher per drinker. Our son could not afford the inflated prices so he did sneak some on board. not that i condone doing this but try telling a poor 22 yr old college kid he has to pay 50$ a day for drinks.
Thanks for the contribution, Sandra!
I guess I am a real woos when it comes to “cruise drinking”! I have 1, maybe 2, cocktails a day and my husband doesn’t drink!!!
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I disagree – I believe it is different for let’s say Carnival and Holland or NCL
I guess we skew the average also, as neither one of us drink. Sandra, you are condoning your son’s behavior. Just try telling that poor 22-year-old college kid that he can drink less (a couple of beers/drinks a day) or even not at all.
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My friends and I have been on a number of cruises. And yes we drink more than normal. We like a cosmo pre dinner, wine with dinner and less often a post dinner drink. Is it a lot? If we did it normally then yes it would be. But its vaca!!! So we indulge.
My wife and I took our first cruise on carnival in September. We drank 4000.00 worth mixed drinks in 5 days. We bought the cheers package and will continue to do so in the future. Neither of us drink a lot in our normal life. During our cruise life we drank quiet a lot,(never getting falling down drunk). The cheers package cost 600.00 for both of us. If you are going to drink more than 5 mixed drinks in a 24 hr period, the drink package is well worth the money.
I’m just glad they have AA meetings on board 🙂 Not everyone drinks.