The Princess
Add-On Value Evaluator

Usually, if you'd drink even a little. Plus costs $65 a person a day on most ships ($70 on Sun Princess and Star Princess) and folds in crew appreciation, drinks up to $15 each, unlimited specialty coffee, one Wi-Fi device and four casual dining meals for the voyage. Priced out, the crew appreciation alone is $18 to $20 of that, so you only need a couple of covered drinks a day on top to clear the rest. Someone who has one drink with dinner and nothing else is the case where paying as you go usually wins — this tool tells you which side of that line your own answers land on.

It depends heavily on cruise length, because the biggest single piece of Premier's extra $35 a day is a shore excursion credit that does not scale with the daily rate: $100 per guest on a 6 to 9 night cruise, $200 on 10 to 20 nights, $300 on 21 nights or more. On a short cruise that credit is real but modest against the extra cost; on a long one it can cover the entire upgrade by itself. Beyond that, Premier raises the drink cap to $20 with no published daily limit, adds three more Wi-Fi devices, and is the only tier that includes any specialty dining at all — Plus includes none. If you would book even one specialty dinner otherwise, that alone is real money back.

Plus covers drinks up to $15 each with a 15-drink daily cap, one Wi-Fi device, four casual dining meals for the whole voyage, and crew appreciation — and nothing else. Premier raises the drink cap to $20 with no published daily limit, adds unlimited casual dining plus one specialty restaurant meal per mealtime per day, four Wi-Fi devices, a shore excursion credit, unlimited digital photos with three prints, and reserved theater seating. The gap that catches people out: Plus includes zero specialty dining. Premier is the only one of the two that gets you into Sabatini's or Crown Grill without paying separately.

Guests 1 and 2 do — Princess requires that if one of you buys Plus or Premier, the other must buy the same tier too. You cannot have one guest on Plus and the other on Standard, or one on Plus and the other on Premier. Guests 3 and 4 in the same stateroom are exempt and can skip the package entirely, which is a real loophole worth knowing about if you're traveling as a family.

You are not refused. On Plus, anything above $15 gets a $15 credit and you pay the difference, plus the 20% service charge on that difference — so a $22 glass of wine costs you about $8.40 out of pocket rather than $22. Princess's own terms spell this out for Plus explicitly. For Premier we could not find the same rule stated for drinks above its $20 cap; we assume the same pay-the-difference logic applies and say so rather than guessing silently.

Yes, measured across a 24-hour period from 6am to 6am, and it counts every alcoholic drink plus every non-alcoholic one except specialty coffee and tea. That exemption is confirmed for Plus; Princess doesn't spell the same carve-out for Premier, so we don't claim it there. In May 2026 Princess directed crew to actively enforce this cap and to stop guests from sharing one package between two people, so treat the limit as a real constraint rather than a formality. Premier's own terms describe no daily limit.

$100 per guest on a 6 to 9 night cruise, $200 on a 10 to 20 night cruise, and $300 on a 21-night-or-longer cruise — real, spendable credit toward a shore excursion rather than a discount code — we found no published redemption restrictions, though Princess documents the tiers far better than it documents the terms, so check yours at booking. Princess has not published a tier for cruises shorter than 6 nights, so we treat that as unconfirmed rather than assuming zero or assuming it scales down. On a 7-night cruise for two, that's $200 of credit against the roughly $490 extra Premier costs for both of you together — about 41% of the gap, before you've had a single specialty dinner.

Yes — Princess calls it crew appreciation, and both packages fold the daily charge into the package price. As of 8 March 2026 that charge is $18 a person a day in Interior through Balcony cabins, $19 in Mini-Suites, Cabanas, Reserve Collection and Club Class, and $20 in suites — a $1 increase across every tier from the rates before that date. If you book Standard fare and skip both packages, this still applies as a separate daily charge; it does not disappear.

Yes. Princess sells the Plus Beverage Package and the Premier Beverage Package on their own, with the 20% service charge already in the price, at roughly $76.70 and $100.30 per person per day — both more expensive than buying the full Plus or Premier fare package, because the fare packages bundle in Wi-Fi, dining and crew appreciation you'd otherwise pay for separately. Unless you specifically don't want Wi-Fi or the dining credit at any price, the full package is very likely the better buy over the standalone drink package.

On 8 March 2026 Princess raised its daily crew appreciation rate by $1 across every cabin tier — to $18, $19 and $20 — and at the same time raised the automatic service charge on individually purchased food and beverage items from 18% to 20%. We found no public Princess announcement explaining either change — the new rates simply appeared on the website. It was the line's first gratuity increase since August 2024, and it's the reason older guides you might find still quoting $17 to $19 are out of date.

Princess relaunched Plus and Premier on 28 July 2025, raising Plus from $60 to $65 a day and Premier from $90 to $100, and trading a few features for others. Premier gained the shore excursion credit and reserved theater seating; Plus gained two more casual dining meals. At the same time, both tiers lost premium desserts, juice bar access, free Medallion shipping, fitness classes and Princess Prizes. If a guide you're reading still lists any of those five, or quotes $60 or $90 for the packages, it predates that relaunch.