Royal Caribbean's Crown and Anchor loyalty program gives Diamond members one complimentary day of internet per sailing and Diamond Plus members two free days — but depending on your cruise length, those freebies might actually cost you more in the long run. Royal Caribbean Blog's Matt Hochberg ran the numbers across four different sailings to figure out when prepaying beats waiting.
The key variable is the gap between pre-cruise discounted pricing and the onboard daily rate, which runs around $32.99 per day for a one-device package. Hochberg compared pre-cruise prices on four ships — Utopia of the Seas (3 nights at $23.99/day), Icon of the Seas (7 nights at $20.99/day), Legend of the Seas (6 nights at $23.99/day), and Jewel of the Seas (4 nights at $18.99/day) — against what Diamond members would pay using their free day and purchasing the remaining days at the onboard rate. The only scenario where the free-day approach won for Diamond members was the 3-night Utopia sailing, where it saved about $6. On longer sailings, prepaying came out ahead by as much as $51 on a 7-night Icon voyage.
Diamond Plus members, with two free days, fare better — their benefit beats the pre-cruise price on all but the longest sailings. A 7-night Icon cruise was the one case where prepaying ($146.93) still beat the Diamond Plus onboard math ($164.95). Shorter and mid-length cruises largely favor waiting and using those two complimentary days.
There's also a timing trick worth knowing: if you can go without internet from embarkation afternoon until midnight, you can activate your free day at that point and only pay a prorated amount for the remaining nights — effectively squeezing more value out of each complimentary day. It won't work for everyone, but for Diamond members trying to stretch a single free day, it meaningfully shifts the math in their favor.
The bottom line, according to Hochberg: Diamond members on sailings of four nights or more are almost always better off buying a WiFi package in advance through the Cruise Planner, while Diamond Plus members need to run the numbers for each specific cruise. This analysis was originally published by Royal Caribbean Blog.
