I Thought My Margaritaville Cruise Was $800 – Here's What I Actually Paid

By Community Member · Margaritaville at Sea Paradise (Margaritaville at Sea)

I booked what seemed like an affordable Caribbean getaway for $800, but walked off the ship having spent nearly triple that. Here's exactly where every penny went.

When I saw the email advertisement for Margaritaville at Sea's Paradise ship doing a four-day Caribbean cruise out of Mobile, Alabama for just $199 per person, I literally did a double-take. My wife Sarah and I had been talking about taking a cruise for years, and suddenly it seemed actually doable. We booked two cabins – one for us and one for our teenage kids – and felt like we'd scored the deal of a lifetime at roughly $800 total. Spoiler alert: that's not what actually happened. The initial booking was straightforward enough. The website was easy to navigate, and I appreciated that Margaritaville at Sea kept things pretty laid-back compared to the massive mega-ships we'd heard about from friends. The Paradise seemed like it would be perfect – smaller, more intimate, with that Jimmy Buffett vibe that made us smile. We paid our $800 upfront and started counting down the days. I even told my coworkers about our "steal of a deal." Yeah, I should've known better. About three weeks before sailing, I got an email about mandatory gratuities. Now, I'd read a little about cruise pricing, so I wasn't totally shocked, but the amount still stung: $15 per person per day. That's $240 total f…