Excursions/Food budget

[Mommy2Logan]

Hi, I am considering a 7 day Merrytime Christmas cruise in November with myself and my almost 8 year old son. Just the two of us. I have never been on a DCL and it's been decades since I've cruised with RCL and CCL so I'm not sure what the cost of all the extras are (excursions, extra food, tips). If the cruise is $4,000 for the two of us, should I plan another $2000 for the extras or will it be more? We won't be swimming with dolphins, snorkeling, or scuba diving but will probably do a pirate ship and some paddlebaording, biking, and lighter more low key activities. I am not including any souvenirs in this total. He's honestly pretty happy to just sit around a pool or beach or walk around and explore so we might not do a whole of lot of extras or at least not on every island.

 

[Clarkson U]

$2000 will be a lot. Almost all food is included except for speciality dining (which you can’t do with an 8 year old) alcoholic drinks for you or speciality sweets!

Maybe some
Popcorn for the theaters is also extra charge.

But with no extravagant excursions planned and even including gratuities for two people I would say $2000 would be plenty!

 

[Geomom]

Standard tips that will be added to your bill are $14.50/person/day covering stateroom host, server, assistant server, and head server--that will be $203 total for the 2 of you.

You'll probably get away with closer to $1000 in extra expenses. Our family of 4 on a 7nt Western Caribbean cruise had $450 in onboard credit, added $1000 in Disney rewards $ to our account and spent an additional $200 on top of that, add in $136 for parking at Port Canaveral, and $150 doing Grand Cayman on our own and we were still under your $2000 for 4 people. If you're including any hotel stay/airfare/car rental or transit cost--then I'd budget the $2000.

 

[loislane]

If you know what excursions you want to do, the prices are right on the website. The price listed is what you pay, so you can easily budget from there. So much is already included on DCL so extra spending on the ship would be from specialty dining like Palo, alcoholic/specialty drinks and coffees, (note, this is true even for room service food. Most of it is included already and if there is an extra cost, it's clearly listed), theater snacks, salon/spa services, WiFi if you want it, and of course any merchandise you get in the gift shop.

We just did a 4-night on the Wish. We had preloaded $460 from gift cards to onboard credits. We are pretty simple and stick to the main dining rooms for dinner. I skipped the spa this time. We had a few adult beverages and did have wifi for one device. We ended up spending about $480.

So, depending on what you like to do, $1,000 would probably cover things for a 7-night.