Cruise companies exist to take your money.  It's something that's easy to forget.  They try to make it seem like they want you to have a good time, what with all their food and music and fun things, but really they just want your money.  It's not like they do this stuff for the good of mankind.  Here's how they do it: 
  1. You pay for the cruise months before you leave, so by the time you step foot on the ship, you can't really remember how much it cost.  This is good and bad.  Good because you don't have to worry about how you'll afford things, because you already paid for it.  But bad because you easily forget that you already paid many hundreds or thousands of dollars, so you don't think twice about all the little add-ons mentioned below.
  2. You pay for excursions, which aren't a bad investment because the cruise people plan everything and take care of the details.  But it's an additional, often substantial, cost.
  3. They charge for things like soda, alcohol, and fancy restaurants on the ship.  These charges can be avoided, but what's a vacation without at least a little alcohol?  And they have these silly little drink specials where you can get 6 beers for the price of 5 (at $5 a beer) and a margarita discounted from $12 to $8.  In other words, they have crappy drink specials, but you're not allowed to bring your own alcohol on board, so what can you do.
  4. Auto-gratuity is a cute little word that shows up on the bill for drinks that simply means "forced tip."  You don't have a choice.  They take it automatically, for your "convenience."  How thoughtful.
  5. When you check out on the last day, you find out that you're required to pay a daily tip.  They "conveniently" tack that onto your account, and at $12 per day per person for a 14-day cruise, that suddenly becomes a significant additional charge.  My thing is, I'd rather be charged up front than in the rear, and the double meaning of that phrase is not lost on this example.  I just think it's very shady to convince people that their entire vacation is already paid for (minus drinks and fancy restaurants) and then, BAM, you owe us a ridiculous tip too.
Ah, capitalism. #money