Soon I’ll be boarding Harmony of the Seas at Port Canaveral with my two kids — 15 and 11 — for a 7-night Caribbean cruise. I’m the only adult on the bill. This article is the real family cruise cost, in Canadian dollars, with the line items the brochure leaves out and the single-parent math nobody else writes about.

A quick credibility note before the numbers. I’ve taken four cruises with my kids — Allure of the Seas in 2017, Oasis of the Seas in 2018, Anthem of the Seas in 2023, and Star of the Seas in October 2025 — plus one solo-with-a-friend trip on Celebrity Constellation in January 2026. Harmony will be my fifth family cruise. Some of the numbers below are confirmed from my booking; others are estimates I’m treating as planning numbers in YNAB (You Need a Budget app) until the bills hit. Where I’m estimating, I say so.

Here’s the loop the cruise industry banks on: the website quotes you a number like “from $649 per person,” you mentally multiply by three, you arrive at $1,947, and you tell yourself a cruise costs about two grand. The brochure-to-credit-card-statement gap is the difference between that two grand and the roughly $11,335 CAD this trip actually costs. Closing that gap is what this article does.

The pre-trip costs nobody puts on the brochure

Most “what does a cruise cost” articles start with the cruise fare. They skip the part where you spend $2,650 CAD before anyone has gone through security at YOW.

Flights from Ottawa to Orlando for three

YOW direct to MCO are usually pretty limited. Most of the year Porter is the only airline offering direct flights, otherwise I am looking at connecting through Toronto or Montreal. For my upcoming trip I am estimating $1,900 CAD for the three of us before checked bags. I’m not paying for seat selection to save on budget for the actual vacation.

If you’re flying from a city with direct service to MCO (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver), you’ll save 15–20% over connecting from a smaller airport. That’s not a small number on a party of three. (For the full pre-cruise hotel and customs side of flying from Canada, I broke that down in Flying from Canada to a US Cruise Port.)

Travel insurance for Canadians cruising in US waters

OHIP doesn’t follow you to the US, doesn’t follow you on a cruise ship, and doesn’t follow you to any Caribbean port. I am fortunate to have extra travel medical insurance for the three of us through a union discount for $168 CAD. This covers me for 40 days of vacation within a year which is more than enough for me, although I wish I could be gone for more than 40 days of vacation.

YOW parking and the gear we needed before we left

YOW economy parking for 9 days is around $135 CAD. The off-airport lots with shuttles are closer to $95 CAD. I usually opt for an Uber for door-to-door service since I am under a half hour to the airport; with tip I come in around $80 CAD total for both directions.

Pre-trip purchases that always sneak up: a new piece of luggage because my daughter’s old one finally died, packing cubes (worth it), a USB-C extension cable for the cruise cabin (essential — cabin outlets are scarce), and water shoes for everyone. Call it $250 CAD before we walk out the door.

Pre-trip subtotal: ~$2,650 CAD

The cruise fare itself: what “from $X” means for the real family cruise cost

Here’s where the website language and the credit card statement start to diverge.

One cabin or two — and the math that decides

Royal Caribbean’s site let me book one cabin for three guests on Harmony of the Seas. Not every cabin category will hold three — many balcony cabins on Harmony are doubles only, and finding a triple-occupancy balcony in my date range and price tier was the actual constraint.

My booked cabin holds three: one double bed, one pull-out sofa, one Pullman drop-down bunk. It’s a Guaranteed Neighborhood Balcony, which means I locked in the category and price and Royal Caribbean assigns the specific cabin closer to sail date. My planning number for the three of us, 7 nights, before taxes and gratuities, is $5,000 CAD.

The single-parent reality on cruise pricing: when the website says “from $649 per person,” it assumes double occupancy. The full fare is split across the first two guests; the third and fourth pay a much-reduced rate. That actually works in our favour with one adult plus two kids — we pay full fare for me, full fare for one kid, reduced for the second. We some times pay less than two adults plus a kid would for the same cabin. So the single-parent penalty doesn’t apply to the cruise fare itself the way it does to a Disney resort room.

The penalty shows up in cabin availability, not price. I’ll come back to that.

Taxes, port fees, and gratuities

Taxes and port fees: about $175 CAD per person, so $525 CAD for three.

Gratuities (the auto-tip Royal Caribbean adds for cabin steward, dining staff, and so on): $18.50 USD per person per day for standard staterooms as of November 2024. Three people, seven days = $388.50 USD = roughly $530 CAD at current Foreign Exchange (FX). I leave these on. I prepay so they don’t compound onto my SeaPass card during the cruise — paying once at booking is cheaper than absorbing the daily charge after a tired week. (Rates can change; verify the current per-day amount on Royal’s site before you finalize your number.)

Cruise fare + taxes + gratuities subtotal: ~$6,055 CAD

Cruise drink package, Wi-Fi, and specialty dining: are they worth it?

I built the budget calculator that’s linked at the bottom of this article because on our third family cruise — Anthem of the Seas in 2023 — I completely lost track of onboard spending. The drink package, the Wi-Fi, the specialty dinner, the daily coffee at Café Promenade, two kids charging arcade tokens to the SeaPass. None of those line items were big on their own. Together they were $900 CAD I hadn’t planned for. The daily-tracking tab in the calculator came directly from that mistake.

Deluxe Drink Package — one adult only, math included

Deluxe Drink Package for one adult (me; not worth it for the kids, who get unlimited soda included or through a much cheaper Refreshment Package), 7 days: ~$650 CAD. This is the variable I’ve thought about most. Break-even at the Deluxe rate is roughly 5 alcoholic drinks per day plus a couple of specialty coffees. I’m under that some days, over on port days. It’s a quality-of-life purchase more than a math win — and I’m honest about that. If you’re a casual drinker, skip it.

Wi-Fi — one device, not three

One-device “Surf+Stream” for 7 days runs about $200 CAD pre-purchased. I’m not paying for three devices. The kids share my login during the day; if they want to be online overnight, they’re not. By day three they’re not asking.

Specialty dining — one dinner mid-cruise

Royal Caribbean’s main dining room and Windjammer buffet are both included in your fare and both genuinely good. I budget one specialty restaurant dinner for the three of us around the middle of the cruise — roughly $220 CAD depending on the venue. It’s a treat, not a habit. Some cruises I skip it entirely and put the money toward an excursion.

Onboard packages subtotal: ~$1,070 CAD

Shore excursions — one at each port, skipped at one

Harmony of the Seas’ Caribbean itinerary includes Perfect Day at CocoCay (Royal’s private island) plus additional Caribbean ports. My approach has been the same for the last three cruises: free at CocoCay, one moderate excursion at each of the other ports, willing to skip a port and stay onboard if the math doesn’t work.

I worked through the full decision framework in Cruise Excursions vs DIY — when ship-booked makes sense, when independent makes sense, when DIY makes sense, and when the right answer is to stay on the ship. Here’s the short version applied to this trip.

CocoCay — the one I do free

CocoCay is included. Beach chairs are included. The pools are included. We pack snorkel gear from home, do a free beach day, eat at the included buffet, and spend zero. The fancier add-ons — Hideaway Beach passes, cabanas, the Coco Beach Club — are real upsells that start around $80 USD per person and climb fast. I skip them and we still have a good day.

The other ports — budget one moderate excursion each

For each of the two remaining Caribbean ports I’m budgeting one moderate-priced family excursion — somewhere in the $250–$350 CAD range for three. The specific excursion I’ll pick depends on the port; my pattern is to book one beach day with snorkeling (low-stress, the kids love it) and one with something we can’t do at home (catamaran sail, river tube, cave hike). I book one through the ship for the late-return guarantee and one independent for the price savings — the framework in the excursion article explains which port gets which treatment.

If a port turns out to be one I’ve done before, or one with strong free walking options from the pier, I’ll skip the excursion and use the savings for the contingency line.

Excursions subtotal: ~$600 CAD (two paid ports × $300 average)

Onboard spending — where the budget quietly bleeds

The drink package, Wi-Fi, gratuities, and specialty dining I covered above. Onboard spending is everything else that lands on the SeaPass card before the cruise ends.

The kids’ allowance and the SeaPass card reality

Each kid gets a daily onboard allowance — about $20 CAD per day — and the agreement is that anything beyond that comes out of the souvenir budget I gave them pre-trip. The SeaPass card lets them charge things to my account, so I review the running total every morning in the Royal Caribbean app. Two kids, $20 CAD/day, 7 days = $280 CAD.

My spending — coffee, casino, photos

The inclusions cover most of my consumables. What still lands on the card:

• Specialty coffee outside the package: maybe $40 CAD over the week
• Photo package: $40 CAD — it is tradition to get one main dining room picture with all three of us
• Casino: hard cap at $100 CAD for the cruise. I’m calling it $100
• Spa: not booking. Single-parent math — there’s no second adult to watch the kids during a treatment slot, so it isn’t a real option

My onboard spending: about $180 CAD.

The contingency line I refuse to skip

Every cruise has an “I didn’t see that coming” charge. Learning there was SkyZone on Anthem and never having done indoor sky diving before — worth the splurge, but it wasn’t budgeted for. I budget $300 CAD as contingency. If I don’t use it, it stays in the savings account. I started doing this after one specific cruise where a single unexpected charge derailed the rest of the budget — that’s the kind of paid-for lesson the calculator’s contingency tab exists to encode.

Onboard spending subtotal (allowances + my spend + contingency): ~$760 CAD

Post-trip costs that hit the card a week later

The trip doesn’t end when the plane lands at YOW.

Groceries, laundry, the Sunday I lose

Empty fridge, three loads of laundry, and a $200 CAD grocery run because we left the house with nothing in it. Pretending it’s $0 is how families end the trip $200 over budget for no reason they can identify.

SeaPass stragglers

Royal Caribbean batches the SeaPass charge at the end of the cruise, but the credit card statement reflects it across two billing cycles depending on timing. Watch for stragglers — port-day excursion charges, photo packages upgraded at the gallery on the last sea day, a drink package extension if you bought one. I review the statement line by line the week after I’m home.

Post-trip subtotal: ~$200 CAD

What surprised me — the single-parent cost premium nobody writes about

The first time I tried to book a cruise as one adult with two kids, I went on Royal Caribbean’s website and the booking flow defaulted to “2 adults, 0 children.” When I changed it to “1 adult, 2 children,” half the cabin categories I’d been browsing disappeared. Specifically: most of the better balcony cabins. Royal’s system was filtering for cabins that physically accept three guests, and those are a much smaller set than the cabins that accept two.

I called the reservations line, expecting a workaround. The agent confirmed: certain cabin categories are built for two and they won’t override it. I either booked a triple-occupancy interior, oceanview, or one of the limited triple-occupancy balconies — or I booked two cabins. At ages 11 and 15, with my 11-year-old in a separate cabin from her parent overnight, two cabins is not on the table for me.

That cost me what would have been a $300 CAD per-person upgrade to a balcony I couldn’t actually book. Not a huge number on an $11,000 trip — but a specific reminder that the cruise industry’s pricing and inventory architecture quietly assumes two adults. The single-parent penalty doesn’t show up on your invoice. It shows up on the cabins you’re never offered in the first place.

The other thing I didn’t expect: every meal in port, every taxi ride, every shore excursion charge gets paid by one credit card with one signature. The default vacation math of “one adult takes the kids to the pool while the other gets a coffee alone” doesn’t exist for me. I plan around it now. I pick the one excursion that works for both kids. I take 30 minutes on the balcony before they wake up instead of expecting a quiet hour later. And I budget for the kids’ club specifically so I get the equivalent of an off-shift on sea days. (I wrote more about how that calculation has changed in Cruising with a Tween and a Teen: What Actually Changes.)

That’s the lesson that cost me money to learn: the cruise vacation is built for two-adult households, and as a single parent you back into it from a different angle. The calculator reflects how I actually budget for it now — with the line items the cruise line doesn’t show you and the contingency I no longer skip.

The grand total in CAD and USD

Here’s the cruise-only total, plus what the Disney World add-on does to it. (The full combo math — including why I chose 2 nights at a Disney value resort and one Magic Kingdom day instead of a longer Disney stay — lives in Disney World Then Cruise: Planning Our Harmony of the Seas Combo Trip.)

Category	CAD	USD (approx.)
Pre-trip (flights, insurance, parking, gear)	$2,650	$1,935
Cruise fare, taxes, gratuities	$6,055	$4,420
Onboard package costs (drinks, Wi-Fi, specialty dining)	$1,070	$780
Shore excursions (2 paid ports)	$600	$440
Onboard spending + contingency	$760	$555
Post-trip (groceries, late SeaPass charges)	$200	$145
CRUISE-ONLY TOTAL	~$11,335	~$8,275
Disney pre-cruise add-on (2 nights at a value-tier resort + 1 Magic Kingdom day for 3)	+$2,170	+$1,585
COMBO TOTAL (Disney + Harmony) — full breakdown in Article 3	~$13,505	~$9,860

USD figures use a 0.73 conversion (as of this writing, mid-market). By the time you book, the rate will be different — your budget should pull live FX, which is exactly what the Currency Converter tab in the calculator does.

If you want to run your own numbers

The categories I walked through above — pre-trip, cruise fare, onboard packages, excursions, onboard spending, post-trip — are the structure of the Family Cruise Budget Calculator I built. There’s a Trip Cost Estimator tab for entering your own numbers, a Currency Converter that pulls live FX, a Savings Tracker for the months leading up to the trip, and a Cruise Comparison tab if you’re deciding between two or three sailings. It runs in Google Sheets or Excel and it’s $19 CAD on Etsy.

Built by a Canadian cruise family. Works in any currency.

Family Cruise Budget Calculator on Etsy: etsy.com/ca/shop/PracticalPathsTravel