NCL Drops Drink Package Change at Great Stirrup Cay

If you’ve been trying to keep up with the changes to NCL’s Free at Sea drink package at Great Stirrup Cay, you’re probably not the only one whose head is spinning.

Norwegian Cruise Line has made another update, and this time it brings things back to what most cruisers expected in the first place. This whole situation has been a bit of a back-and-forth. NCL first announced that the Free at Sea drink package would no longer work on Great Stirrup Cay starting in March, then the change was delayed, and now it’s been dropped completely.

The Free at Sea drink package will continue to work on Great Stirrup Cay, and it’s no longer just a temporary extension. NCL is keeping it in place going forward, which also means guests won’t need to upgrade to Free at Sea Plus just to have drinks included on the island, like originally planned.

So if you already have the Free at Sea drink package, you don’t need anything extra. It will continue to be honored on the island. And if you upgraded to Free at Sea Plus just for that reason, you can still cancel or downgrade as long as you’re not within a few days of your sailing.

There is one more update tied to Great Stirrup Cay, and this one is more of a trade-off. The island will temporarily go back to tendering starting in April. Even though a pier has been in use, it was only temporary, and work is now underway to build a permanent one, which means ships will anchor offshore again for now.

If you’ve been there before, you already know tendering can slow things down and depends on the weather. The goal is to have the new pier ready by summer, around the same time new features on the island are expected to open.