Cruise lines have to mix treating their passengers with respect and enforcing their rules. In some cases, those rules are about safety.
No cruise line wants to have to search through your luggage looking for candles, irons, coffee pots, power strips with surge protectors, and other items that are flammable. They search for those items and others on the banned list because they need to put the safety of the ship first.
Related: Carnival Cruise passenger mad at long list of cuts, price increases
In other cases, they have to enforce federal laws. Cruise lines probably don't really care if you bring edibles or CBD pills onboard, but they must be very strict in enforcing federal law. That's also a case of the cruise line protecting passengers from themselves.
If you bring cannabis or even CBD into some countries, you can end up under arrest. No cruise line wants its passengers to end up in a foreign prison, nor do they want to deal with other people onboard complaining about the smell of pot.
When it comes to alcohol policies, however, cruise lines are protecting both their passengers' health and their bottom lines. The cruise line wants to be able to monitor guest alcohol consumption for health and safety reasons, but it also wants to sell more alcohol.
That's why Carnival Cruise Line (CCL) does not allow something that its chief rival, Royal Caribbean (RCL) , does.
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Image source: Carnival Corp.
Carnival does not offer a Royal Caribbean-like exception
Most cruise lines that sell beverage packages have some version of the rule that, if one passenger over 21 in a cabin buys an adult beverage package, every person in the cabin has to buy one. That's clearly a rule designed to stop people from buying a package and then illicitly sharing drinks with someone who does not have one.
Royal Caribbean requires that if one person in a cabin buys its Deluxe Beverage Package (DBP), everyone else staying there also has to buy it. The cruise line, however, does offer one clear exception.
If you call, you can have people who don't want the DBP buy the Refreshment Package — that's a package that includes all drinks except alcohol.
Carnival Cruise Line does not offer an everything-but-alcohol drink package. Brand Ambassador John Heald has repeatedly said that there's no cost-effective way for it to do so.
With Carnival recently increasing the price for its Cheers unlimited beverage package, many angry passengers are calling for a change.
Carnival stays strict on drink packages
Kristin Montoya was clearly angry at Heald and shared a lengthy response to one of his posts on his Facebook page.
"I saw your response to the Cheers increase. No, it’s not affordable when it costs as much or more than the cruise," she wrote.
Heald had earlier made the point that at the increased price for Cheers, even if you only drank the 15 included alcoholic drinks, your cost per drink would be under $6 each. That's a value when a mixed drink and most glasses of wine cost $14.
Montoya also made two other points that Carnival passengers have been making about the Cheers price hike, which was enacted without any sort of warning.
"What is making people upset is there wasn’t a warning at all. Between my parents and I, we have four cruises booked till 2026. We have always been an advocate for the Cheers program, but lord, it’s insane when it’s without warning. You do need to let The Beards know that there needs to be a change to this program if it’s going to cost so much. There needs to be an option if somebody in your cabin doesn’t drink alcohol and they can opt out it. That needs to change. I get it, people break the rules, but come on," she wrote.
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Heald was sympathetic but made the cruise line's position very clear.
"Thank you. Well, we did try it when we first started the program, and it was abused, pure and simply abused. The only way we can fairly control the program now is to do it like this and require everybody age 21 or over to use it. I realize then it doesn’t become something that everybody can do. So for that, I do apologize, but at the moment, we have no plans on changing anything at all," he shared.
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