kwokpot

Ok, but usually those offers aren't with a fully comped room. Didn't you have to pay a for the room and port fees and taxes?

I understand that which is why I was curious how much was paid for the upgrade. As I have posted we've been taking Celebrity comped cruises for years, either through BCC, or URComped, or both simultaneously. Whenever I have asked to upgrade from a free veranda to Aquaclass, the upgrade amount always was in the thousands of $, even when the retail price differential was only a couple hundred. I understand the reason for this, which is basically BCC doesn't value the comped cabin at full retail value but at an internal valuation, yet the price for the new cabin is at the retail rate or casino retail rate, which is why I was always quoted the upgrade would be thousands rather than a few hundred. And this wasn't an isolated case, but has been that way since before the pandemic shutdown.

URComped assists in mining new cruise gambling customers for cruise line casino programs. Just like land-based casinos have status match programs with other casino companies URComped is no different, except the status match comes in the form of a complementary or reduced price cruise offer on a cruiseline TBD. What you need to do is not only upload whatever land-based casino offers you have but you will need to give them some basic gambling information: your normal gambling budget, what you like to play whether slots or table games, and info like that. They then 'shop' your gambling profile to cruise lines they work with and see who will offer you a fully comp or reduced price cruise, with the hope you will become a future repeat customer. Your initial offer from URComped, whatever that may be, will not require any specific gambling requirements. You will always be asked though, what your gambling budget will be for any cruise you book through URComped. If take them up on their offer and you don't play as much as you stated before hand, there won't be any charges or penalties. You may not any further offers from that particular cruiseline through URComped.

The Indonesia website for E-VOA is very, very wonky. It took us quite a few tries to get the approval (For a totally different cruise line going to a small port called Bitung). At issue is having the system recognized both your passport photo and separate portrait photo. For us what made matters more confusing is Carnival didn't have the forethought to give us the correct Port of call address and even doing an extensive internet search the actual Cruise port address for Bitung, Indonesia can't be readily found, so most people on our cruise just approximated an address (I just used the commercial port address). The other issue is that it seems that website is more problematic when it isn't done during Indonesia business hours.

Seems like the revised Luminae entrees are skewing towards Asian influences as we have two examples, a fish with a Japanese Eel Sauce and a Duck with a Chinese Cha Siu BBQ sauce.

Celebrity casino hosts no longer do that. What they will do is tell you to is to speak with the Casino host on the LAST day of the cruise and they will review your play and see how much onboard charges can be wiped off. If you're friendly with the casino host, and you're playing BIG from the start of the cruise, you can speak to the casino host the first couple of days to see if, for example, they could comp a wifi package or wifi upgrade. Even in this instance they tell you to go ahead and purchase the plan and they will go into your account and wipe the charges. They no longer 'offer' things but instead you have to proactively ASK for whatever you want. We aren't big specialty restaurant attendees, we feel Celebrity's MDRs are good enough for us. What we will do then is on the last day of the cruise ask the casino host to review my husband's play for the entire cruise and see how much OB charges can be wiped out. We've been do this for the last couple of years, and it generally amounts to $200-$400 depending on how well he was doing. What we then do is go to the gift shops and buy stuff to bring home;clothes, mugs, bags, etc. We make sure we know the EXACT amount the host is willing to wipe off and we usually can work out the purchases within pennies of our spending limit.

I actually got it last month on our Odyssey ot Seas cruise since it was a fully paid cruise. We haven't sailed on Royal since March 2020, about a week before the world shutdown. We couldn't get ANYTHING comped anywhere on this cruise, which was a family cruise so ship and sail date was locked in. Our next Royal is another family cruise, A Christmas cruise on the Anthem. Was able to get $2K off of prevailing rate due to husband's play last month on the Odyssey. I'll see if we can get shareholder credit on that cruise since we still had to pay $1,300 on that holiday sailing.

Are you getting fully comped BCC cruises without any added upgrade fees? If so that goes against all rules and I have never, once received shareholder credit for the past 10 years on any complimentary cruise on with Royal or Celebrity

I would assume PC=Per Cabin

For the benefit of others reading this thread, these are the latest emailed BCC offers. We booked the Jan 7th Ascent in Aquaclass and are thinking about a B2B on the Reflection on the 14, also in Aquaclass. AND the Ascent offer has All Included! Hopefully the Reflection offer will be the same.

Are you seeing Celebrity Aqua Class sailings through them? Many, many sailings and ships. That's great news!

No they do not. The primary passenger in the 2nd room would need to be a qualified gambler through URComped.

The pina colada will NOT be a frozen drink, which isn't included in the classic package.

Yes we did. Whatsmore last year we also had simultaneous comped bookings with on Celebrity with URcomped and BCC. Royal Caribbean was a whole other story. There are qualifications that you have to attest to and we confirmed that with our Host at URComped. On Royal they are enforcing the no crossovers offers if you have a booking directly with Royal and/or Casino Royale. MSC also had issues. Our last MSC, which was our second MSC cruise but first comped cruise from any channel was booked through URComped. The onboard casino host was basically dismissive of my husband (he's the gambler) since we booked through URComped. He didn't quite make the threshold for a free comped cruise but should have received a certificate for % off a booked cruise. Casino host stated that since we booked through URComped you'll have to go through them for any future offers.My husband never receives anything directly from MSC's casino department. But URcomped offers for MSC cruises are available. Our experience with Virgin booked through URcomped is a mixed bag. We booked our two cruises through URComped and continues to get offers through URComped for Virgin. But on our last cruise he gambled enough for a free cruise directly from Virgin (an XL Terrace, best cabin besides suites) and we were able to book a comped cruise directly with Virgin even though the free cruise certificate with them technically had expired became we didn't book it within the certificate timeframe. But we called and they checked with their supervisors and we're booked for a 8 nights Caribbean on the Valiant Lady for February.

All I can say is we just finished an URComped cruise on the Apex last month and just booked a BCC cruise on the Ascent for February. Here's proof:

Incorrect

What was the extra fee from inside to Veranda?

That's seems to be true for their Royal Caribbean sailings but not for Celebrity (at least it isn't for us, since we've had Celebrity bookings simultaneously through BCC and URComped).

You misunderstood what I posted. As a regular URcomped customer, when you request a cruise they have on their website, you must give them what your gambling budget is and whether you're bringing cash or going to ask for a line of credit (Room charging would count as cash-I was incorrect about the bet per hand). There is never a requirement to play on their offers.

When you request a particular sailing, you tell them your gambling budget and average play per hand. We've had great success with them, and probably have done about 20 sailings with them on Celebrity, MSC, Virgin. They recently added some limited sailings on NCL

Yes, definitely Call, we had the same issues with the automated requests, didn't used to be an issue(I'm speaking about last year). Yes, you will receive the regular CC points for complementary cruises. You will not receive RCCL shareholder benefits. There's been a lot of changes with BCC, so TBH I don't know what the upgrade fees currently are. Previously there were all different upgrade programs depending on what BCC received from the Revenue department. You will see past postings about $20/day upgrades to Aquaclass from balcony which I was Never able to get despite taking at least 4 BCC comped cruises a year. What we found is they will reprice whatever cabin you're looking for at the current BCC rate and deduct the internal value of your complementary cabin, which is not the same value as the retail prices but much, much, much less . What the results were it would cost over thousands to upgrade from Veranda to Aquaclass when the retail differential was only several hundred dollars.

Thanks for all the suggestions. The last two seems like an inexpensive way to utilize the parking garage shuttles.

The Char Siu sauce is yummy! https://thewoksoflife.com/chinese-bbq-pork-cha-siu/

Are you sure it isn't CHAR SIU? That's Chinese style BBQ pork, which would make sense using the Chinese sweet/savory BBQ sauce for a duck confit dish. Googling Var Siu and nothing comes up.