kwokpot

The tasting menu is quite extensive with lots of choices. I find the name a misnomer since to me it implies smaller portions which isn't the case at all. It's all the regular portions. This was what we chose from the tasting menu at Butcher's Cut steakhouse on the Meraviglia earlier this month. The food was excellent!

Are you sure you don't mean NCL's one and only Epic, which split up the cabin bathroom to 3 separate components with the sink out in the room? I don't know of any Royal Caribbean ship that has a bathroom sink in the cabin itself.

Actually the bathrooms on NCL's Prima Class and bathrooms on any Royal ship are decently sized, unlike the Excel class or cousin ships in the Virgin fleet. Celebrity's Edge class have very nice bathrooms in their standard cabins. The standard cabin bathrooms on the Carnival fleet pre Excel Class were always horrid: cheap ugly plastic without a hint of real tile and even up to the Panorama had a shower curtains instead of glass doors. At least aesthetically the Excel class bathrooms look new, modern, and have that great pivoting glass shower door. Too bad they're so small!

Look how Fincantieri scales up and down a basic cruiseship design for Virgin,NCL,MSC (Lady Class??? Prima Class, Seaside Class)

Correct. He does not consider himself a professional gambler. That was discussed with our accountant and we determined that was absolutely not the way to go. As an addendum which would be germaine to this offshoot discussion as a couple we have decided to cutback the amount of gambling, both land-based and cruiseship gaming. We actually cancelled four comped cruises that we had planned for September, November, and December. We left in place a Holland America cruise planned for January, which is also a casino comp certificate from a land casino. We had an amazing run. Living in Philadelphia we are only one hour away from Atlantic City and being retired we had all the time to take advantage of the casino complementaries from all sources. But I think the novelty of it all has run its course.

Here's a screenshot of my husband's cell phone record keeping for his gambling. He defines a 'session' as a day of gambling. At the beginning of each year he takes these cellphone records and creates a spreadsheet for the whole prior year to figure out what he determines as winnings minus losses. Additional records includes a marker from the casino, photos of the slot machines, ATM receipts.

As with most everything that you put in your Federal tax return it doesn't matter how you arrived at the numbers until you are questioned by the IRS. If you are questioned either with an initial inquiry via a letter, as we were, or a full audit what you say you do to arrive at the amount you need to pay taxes on will not hold up.

For those that are interested in this topic, I can post some information on what my husband and I do. I'll give you a small snapshot of our 2021 return that I was able to quickly find and snap a pic. This is Schedule 1, additional income and adjustments to income. The supporting documents are uploaded to our accountant's portal,so I can access that tomorrow when I have more time. It will show what our recorded keeping is to substantiate the deduction/adjustment you see below Line 8B is the total amount of W-2Gs we received that year. Line8Z is the calculated losses based on sessions record keeping.

That's not the records the IRS requires or expects if one is audited. You need to show session by session how much you wagered and how much you won and lost. How you define a session is up to you. It could be each time you change a slot machines,it could be hourly,it could be daily. But it needs to be consistent and detailed.

Yes, exactly. We were challenged by the IRS on our joint tax return and via letter writing we alerted them to the fact that they had not reviewed the attached worksheets on how we came to only pay taxes on our offset winnings. It took several months but they accepted our calculations. The differential was in the 5 figures.

EXACTLY. It's no different than the land based casinos giving out comps,it's literally the same thing. Rooms and suites at a casino hotel that would cost $200-$1,000/nt and more are routinely given out to those who gamble. Along with free food,gifts,airfare, show tkts. I recently had a stoop sale to get rid of all the 'free' gifts that we received from the casinos Attached is a picture of the things I had to sell.About 95%of the items in the photo are casino gifts. The black luggage3 is a TUMI bag worth $950!!! That was a free gift from the casino!

Cruise company loyalty programs(besides MSC)are the only travel/hospitality companies that don't have time limits on their loyalty levels. A few do have lifetime status for the tippy top members but the vast majority of airline and hotel loyalty programs have expiration dates. The cruiselines really should migrate to that.

https://www.cruisehive.com/celebrity-cruises-adjusts-blue-chip-club-clarifies-after-guest-feedback/139771?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR35FY-VLeTwYStTjeXJaWRp-QjRGluGNW6__53iELrllHkAMt2T9BMj2gQ_aem_NdfLbrRpLeu8_-ABKxKehw

I've been away from these boards due to other more pressing matters, but as someone that has sparred with you and others on this I'll add some additional thoughts. Virgin Voyages has done what many have said should be the case and comped casino rates don't count towards their loyalty program AND you won't get loyalty level benefits on any comped casino cruise. Celebrity and NCL has made major changes to their Casino players programs. In Celebrity's case free drink packages will no longer be part of higher tier levels of the casino players program. What is being substituted is the existing benefit of free drinks while actively playing in the casino, which is a benefit for ALL passengers, and not just those who are part of the casino program. In NCL's case they took away free drinks in the casino for allwho are on a casino comp rate and only the higher casino loyalty tier gets a free drink package. So there's definitely been changes with the cruiseline casino player programs.

Yes