MaksPewPew

.Sorry, can you be more specific? You purchased HAL gift cards which I am assuming at a discount, and applied that towards a cruise…? They did not let you pay for a cruise with GC? And they only let you apply it towards on board credit/deposit? One thing I know folks do is buy gift cards, and apply it towards OBC…. Then use casino charges against those OBC deposits.

On a table game, hit one of the bonuses for BlackJack. $5 hit for $625 iirc…. ALMOST ended up being the Grand feature bet there which would have been between $10k and $100k…. But the dealer did not have a suited BJ. lol.

First, $2k is nothing to worry about. Bring it in cash if you want. There are onboard ATMs. You can also bring travelers checks with you. I am not sure on Carvnival, but on Princess you can just charge to your room, with no fees. I charged $8k on a recent cruise…. Tons of miles. lol. If you want, you can pay it off before cruise ends, or just keep the cash and earn the miles. On princess, you can charge $5k per day, up to $100k I believe for the total cruise, with no fees.

A great resource for Princess casino in particular is the YouTube channel, “cruising with mark”…. He pretty much lives 6 months out of the year on casino offers on princess. And yes, Buy in absolutely matters to getting attention. I would buy in at a minimum for $1,000 every night. It does not mean you have to use it, but you absolutely want to show it. And if you are a miles person…. You absolutely want to charge as much as you can. lol. Free miles/cash back.

Inadvertently, it MAY. Table games are based on “Theo”. Or theoretical loss. This is what most casinos are now basing their comps on. What that is is… Your average bet amount x house edge x time played. That creates your “theoretical loss”. Casinos then discount that loss and give a portion of it back to you as comps. The pit bosses rate your play and how long you play. Being nice to them, they MAY round up your average bet and instead of reporting you as a “green” $25 a hand player, they may round it up to $50, etc. That would absolutely have an impact on comps. As far as the other questions here, the onboard host, ONLY HAS LIMITED CONTROL. They can dole out on board comps, up to what you are rated in the system as. THEY HAVE ZERO CONTROL OVER THE COME BACK AND SAIL OFFERS. All they do is upload your rated play to corporate, and corporate generates the offers that come under the door. Hope that helps.

Yep, majority of all events show up on the app. Keep in mind, due to changes in ports, etc… they do update. The app will update as well. Keep in mind also that you will not have the filled in schedule until much closer to departure, on the app now, you will have some of the major stuff but not all.

The only time casino stays open is on one island nation if I am not mistaken and on the private islands. Otherwise, they are closed in port as they would have to comply with local laws and gambling authorities.

When we boarded for our Alaska cruise, I did not even see anyone checking for it. Went right through the security with wine. The security folks having you go through metal detectors are pretty much unconcerned with it I believe, nor would wine set them off. In checked baggage? Perhaps.