First cruise from a young couple from California,

If you are thinking of choosing to vacation on a cruise after looking at the offers be sure to at least have 2x the budget you expected to spend. We had balcony rooms that were supposed to be around $1500 per person. So we said great for 3k we are going on a cruise. That was just the start of the spending. You need to book your plane ride to get to the sailing port if you don't live near and do hotel and transportation if you don't want to miss the ship because of airline trouble. The closer you get to the cruise date you receive all sorts of new charges including the ship obligatory gratuity which is a way of handing the tips for the crew to you instead of the cruise line paying them for it out of your ticket price. It may be a way for the staff to be motivated but they also expect gratuity on the ship for many services. Charges never stop through the trip so expect to have at least 2x your ticket price added to your vacation in order to get through it. We ended up spending north of 5k so be aware of that and we were mid range frugal. Overall spending was above 6k because of side excursions in Seattle and an extra night there.

The biggest bait and switch of all was what they call the UBP or ultimate beverage package which we got. It couldn't be further from what the name implies. You can't get bottled water, coffee, canned softdrinks or any of the sort. You do get to have non canned softdrinks, water, some wines, beers and other alcoholic and non alcoholic cocktails after you do a voucher every time instead of just swiping your cruise ID card and be done with it. They did not specify on the ship if the cabin faucet water was drinkable so you get killed with water bottle prices in the rooms which are about 7x normal store prices. We did manage to get a couple of bottled waters from a port but then we had to carry them after our excursion which was tiring and not worth it in the end. The alcoholic drinks and coffees/other drinks in the bars have a tax that you also have to pay like local port taxes or whatever they call it. We ended up paying about $50+ on top just on drink taxes and we didn't drink much. If you think you will be zipping a lot expect to be charged a lot more. It also has to be mentioned that bar personnel expect gratuities so drop them a few bucks once in a while or you will be kind of ignored and wait a lot longer for drinks the second time around. That said bar personnel was courteous and good spirited for the most part. Read more