NCL Free At Sea Plus: Is the Pricey Upgrade Worth It?

While planning my upcoming Western Caribbean cruise, I noticed something new—an offer to upgrade to Free at Sea Plus on Norwegian. Curious, I decided to check it out.

Here’s what it looked like:

What Is Free At Sea?

If you’ve sailed on Norwegian before, you should be familiar with their Free at Sea program. It offers an all-inclusive experience via free perks with your cruise. These perks come with caveats, which I’ve listed, and may include up to:

• Free Airfare (for one guest when booking airfare for two)
• Free Unlimited Open Bar (certain selections and up to $15 per drink)
• Free Specialty Dining (from one to three dinners for two cruisers, depending on the length of your cruise)
• Free Excursions ($50 off for one cruiser for each port visited)
• Free Wi-Fi (250 minutes free)
• Free third and fourth guests (in the same cabin)

What Is Free At Sea Plus On Norwegian?

The NCL Free at Sea Plus program is like Free at Sea on steroids. It takes four of the usual perks and maxes them out. These new perks include:

• Premium Plus Beverage Package
• Two additional specialty dining meals
• Unlimited Streaming Wi-Fi
• A $50 credit per tour for the second cruiser in the cabin

Here’s the comparison provided by Norwegian:

Is It Worth The Upgrade?

For our upcoming seven-day cruise, I did the math to decide if the upgrade is worth the $343 per person. To determine that, I took the upgrade cost of the individual items per person and compared the sum to the cost of the Free at Sea Plus upgrade per person. These costs are specific to the cruise I’ve booked, so your numbers will vary.

Here’s how it came out:

• $243.60 – Upgrade to premium beverage package
• $106.80 – Additional two-meal specialty dining package
• $119.93 – Upgrade to unlimited streaming Wi-Fi
• $200.00 – Additional port excursion credits available (our cruise has four ports)

So, the total if upgraded separately would be $670.33 for each of us, we would realize a $327.33 savings if we were going to upgrade these same packages anyway.

What Does The Premium Beverage Package Include?

For many people, this may tip you over to the YES column in this decision. Here’s what the package includes:

• All top-shelf cocktails & spirits (such as Patrón Reposado, Macallan Quest, and more)
• All beer, champagne, and wine by the glass (such as Veuve Clicquot)
• Select premium bottles of champagne and wine with dinner and 40% off all other bottles
• Unlimited soft drinks and juices
• Unlimited still & sparkling bottled water
• All Starbucks coffee & specialty drinks
• Energy drinks

What We Decided

For us, we always upgrade the Wi-Fi to unlimited Wi-Fi because Norwegian forces you to log in and log out if you don’t have an unlimited package. I usually forget at some point, which means my remaining minutes drain away. To save us the hassle because we’re often online, we just do the upgrade. However, this package upgrades you to unlimited streaming Wi-Fi, so I only considered the difference between unlimited Wi-Fi and unlimited streaming Wi-Fi packages.

The additional port excursion credits were a no-brainer since we always book our excursions through Norwegian.

Those two upgrades alone are worth $319.93, very close to the cost of Free at Sea Plus. To get two additional specialty meals, plus the premium drink package, for only an additional $23.07 would be a slam dunk for us.

Or so we thought.

Would We Do It Again?

Once we were on the cruise with the Free at Sea Plus Package, we found we didn’t get as much use from it as we’d hoped.

Here are our savings:

• $40.00 – Estimated actual up-charges for choosing top-shelf liquor or Starbucks drinks
• $106.80 – Additional two-meal specialty dining package
• $0.00 – Upgrade to unlimited streaming Wi-Fi (see below)
• $150.00 – Realized additional port excursion credits for three excursions
• $296.80 – Total savings vs. cost of $635 for two people.

As it turned out, the Wi-Fi was terrible, locking us out frequently, which forced us to go back to the iCafe for help from a pro. Not only didn’t we get streaming Wi-Fi, but we got very little Wi-Fi at all. Zero benefits.

All told the package didn’t end up saving us as much as we’d hoped on that cruise, but your situation may be different.

Cruise #2 – We Decided To Try It Again

Ever the optimists, though, we’ve decided to give Free at Sea Plus on Norwegian one more try, this time on a 12-day cruise to the Caribbean. Hopefully, the Wi-Fi will be better. Since Norwegian is adding Starlink Wi-Fi to all their ships, there’s a chance it might be.

For our 12-day cruise, here are the costs we’d pay to upgrade each benefit:

• $835.20 – Upgrade to premium beverage package
• $237.60 – Additional two-meal specialty dining package
• $551.76 – Upgrade to unlimited Wi-Fi for 2 people, no streaming
• $300.00 – Additional port excursion credits available (our cruise has six ports)

If we upgraded all these items before the cruise separately, we’d pay a total of $1,924.56, which is crazy. What we ended up paying for the Free at Sea Plus upgrade was $1,176, which was only $86 more than what we were planning to upgrade anyway (specialty dining, Wi-Fi, and port excursions).

Final Thoughts On the NCL Free At Sea Plus Package

Of course, your needs may vary. If you don’t drink top-shelf alcohol, or don’t have a Starbucks addiction, or don’t use much Wi-Fi, you probably won’t find this upgrade to be worthwhile.

But if you do, well…you may want to upgrade if it’s within your budget.

Happy cruising!