"Free Room" offer

[Haljo1935]

@Chelle111213 congrats on scoring not only a free aft balcony but Terrazzo - nice! When are you on Venezia? We are B2B NYC Sept 16-29. Not free, paying ALL of it, ugh and green for you, but very much looking forward to it.

[ciabelle]

I signed up a few weeks ago for Carnival's Casino offers, included my Leap card (3rd out of 4 or 5 tiers depending on the casino within the Mohegan Sun network) Immediately got offered a discounted, but not free cruise with $50 in free play. Figured they considered it pretty meh as far as my status goes and forgot about it. 

Until this week.  Got an offer for a "free" oceanview plus $100 in free play and drinks in the casino. Booked the Panorama to Mexico in February with a cruise buddy I met on my last (non CCL) cruise. Though we upgraded to a balcony for an additional $160 each. That was two days ago. Today I get an offer for a "free" balcony +$100 free play, and managed to convince my DH to join me on a 15-day Panama Canal cruise in October 24 on the Miracle. 

I figured I needed to book fast before they realized I'd already booked a free cruise. Apparently it's pretty common though reading this thread. I just don't gamble all that much anymore (just got bored with it) So I expect the offers will dry up quick after the cruises. I didn't realize you could get DOU anywhere on the ship as an offer though. The Cheers package will cost more than my out-of-pocket for the cruises. So trying to decide if I should just get it, or just play penny slots to grab drinks in the casino and leave. Being a non-smoker is likely to keep me from spending a whole lot of time in there anyway.

Is there a certain dollar amount you need to play to get a comped drink? CCL's T&C's are quite vague on the topic.

Edited August 6, 2023 by ciabelle

[weezal]

3 hours ago, ciabelle said:

Is there a certain dollar amount you need to play to get a comped drink? CCL's T&C's are quite vague on the topic.

To earn free drinks in the casino, a new player must earn 1500pts.

Since you booked with that casino offer, then you can already order complimentary drinks, as long as you are seated, without minimum play requirement. 

Edited August 6, 2023 by weezal

[phoneman69]

Getting Free offer deals but only for inside room on 2 cruise onboard Veniza. Must not be spending enough.

[phoneman69]

Sorry Spelling Carnival Venezia out of NY

[Anyislandwilldo]

On 2/10/2023 at 12:56 PM, Chelle111213 said:

I have been getting emails for years now (literally) with offers for "free rooms"  (just port fees and taxes)...well, I have never really looked at any because always thought they were not "free".  But for kicks and giggles yesterday I went on to my account and clicked the email and off to the Carnival site.  I just put in the info just to see if it really was "free".  Well, to my surprise I was able to get a Aft Balcony for "free"...just had to pay the port and taxes, plus I added the gratuities.  I still think it's too good to be true.  I even called to pay for it versus the website to ensure it was! 🙂 Anyone else ever gotten this??? I do spend a lot of time in the casino on the ship and here at home 🙂 

 

For a quicker way to get to your offers, click on today's offers above the login are and enter your past guest number.  It will take you right to your offers.

 

[coldinkansas]

Our last three or four cruises we’ve taken have been with a free room. You actually pay $200 for the room and then get $200 onboard credit plus we had free drinks in the casino. We’ve got one coming up in December that is a a 14 day that we got with a $100 per person for an inside cabin. I’m sure soon they will stop doing those soon since  they have gotten back to full capacity.😎

[Analog187]

We are sailing on our first casino offer next month.  Really nice 9 day cruise around Spain and Portugal.  This was a Fun Match and I plan on gambling on the cruise in the hopes of keeping these offers coming.  On average, how much do you think one would have to spend to get Carnival to offer you another free cruise?  I gambled a decent amount on our last HAL cruise that we paid for and I haven't received one email from them about anything.  Was hoping I'd at least get a casino discount or something.

 

Since I'm already on Carnival's radar, I'm hoping to gamble more this cruise to stay on their radar.  My budget is about half the price of what the cruise would have cost.  Will stick to slots.  

[ChuckF]

Currently have 3 Carnival cruises booked, all on casino offers.  But offers are drying up. I still get the emails, but when I go to look at available cruises there are very few to choose from at the advertised rate. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I have several booked. 

 

Interesting though, we recently booked a Celebrity Greek Isles cruise in 2024, and out of the blue I get a free interior room (casino offer) from Celebrity. We have only done 1 Celebrity cruise probably 6 or 7 years ago. They actually offered a cruise to Cabo that appealed to us, so sign us up. Upgraded to balcony for ~ $200 pp. Not a real Celebrity fan, but a free room is a free room.

[weezal]

6 hours ago, Analog187 said:

On average, how much do you think one would have to spend to get Carnival to offer you another free cruise?

My guess is you’d have to earn at least 1000 points per day, to get interior cabin offers. 

[MadManOfBethesda]

9 hours ago, weezal said:

My guess is you’d have to earn at least 1000 points per day, to get interior cabin offers. 

Your guess is wildly inaccurate.

 

I barely earn 1000 points in a week, much less in a day. In fact, on our last "free" cruise in April, I didn't even reach the 1,500 point mark until the last night of a two-week transatlantic trip from Tampa to Barcelona.  And then two months after that in June, I booked several more cruises on casino offers: next week we're taking a 14-night cruise to Greenland and Newfoundland out of Baltimore; next April we're taking another free transatlantic cruise, this time from Barcelona to Port Canaveral; and then in September 2024, we're taking a free 25-night transpacific cruise from Singapore to Los Angeles.

 

For each of the above cruises, we paid $200 up front and in return received $200 obc. To me, that constitutes a "free" cruise.

[weezal]

5 minutes ago, MadManOfBethesda said:

Your guess is wildly inaccurate.

My guess is based on personal experience. There’s no published tier/play chart for casino offers with Carnival.

While it’s fortunate you got great offers with minimal casino play, Carnival would be out of business if everyone got that. 

[kwokpot]

1 hour ago, weezal said:

My guess is based on personal experience. There’s no published tier/play chart for casino offers with Carnival.

While it’s fortunate you got great offers with minimal casino play, Carnival would be out of business if everyone got that. 

People also tend to underreport what they truly spend in the casino. NO ONE is going to give out a free cruise if all you spend is $200 gambling in the casino. I can guarantee you that. 

[grandmacani]

We’ve been getting tournament offers but not free rooms. Have a transatlantic booked so I guess we hit the casino again and see if we can get them to send free room offer. 
we had one years ago fron NYC to Puerto Rico. All we paid was $200 and had $200 obc. I can only hope to get a great offer. We’re close to being diamond so it’s not based on that. 

[MadManOfBethesda]

1 hour ago, kwokpot said:

People also tend to underreport what they truly spend in the casino. NO ONE is going to give out a free cruise if all you spend is $200 gambling in the casino. I can guarantee you that. 

First of all, 1,500 points is a helluva lot more than $200. If you don't know what you're talking about, it's best to stay out of the discussion. Secondly, what would I have to gain by under reporting what I spent in the casino? All I am doing is correcting the wildly inaccurate information that a previous poster provided to someone who asked a question.

[kwokpot]

33 minutes ago, MadManOfBethesda said:

First of all, 1,500 points is a helluva lot more than $200. If you don't know what you're talking about, it's best to stay out of the discussion. Secondly, what would I have to gain by under reporting what I spent in the casino? All I am doing is correcting the wildly inaccurate information that a previous poster provided to someone who asked a question.

Why do you think I don't know what I'm talking about? I've been traveling on Casino comps on multiple cruise lines for the past 10 years. I'll be on the Luminosa next month for the 30 TP in a Spa cabin with $1,000 freeplay and drinks everywhere on the ship for two, totally comped. I have comped cruises on NCL, Royal Celebrity, MSC. I know more than you do on this topic.!

[MadManOfBethesda]

57 minutes ago, kwokpot said:

Why do you think I don't know what I'm talking about?

Try reading what you posted above.

 

I had stated that I received and booked offers for multiple free cruises even though I earned only 1,500 points during the course of a two-week cruise and you responded by posting that not only is no one getting free cruises for only spending $200 (which in and of itself is a non sequitur), but then implied that I was lying by underreporting how much I gambled. Neither one of your statements made any sense.

 

That's why I said that you didn't know what you were talking about,

[kwokpot]

3 minutes ago, MadManOfBethesda said:

Try reading what you posted above.

 

I had stated that I received and booked offers for multiple free cruises even though I earned only 1,500 points during the course of a two-week cruise and you responded by posting that not only is no one getting free cruises for only spending $200 (which in and of itself is a non sequitur), but then implied that I was lying by underreporting how much I gambled. Neither one of your statements made any sense.

 

That's why I said that you didn't know what you were talking about,

I never said you weren't telling the truth nor did I think you were getting offers for very little play. I was making a generalized statement about people posting on Cruise Critic about getting free cruise offers and people asking how much play is needed to garner comp cruise casino offers. I'm trying to set expectations for people reading these threads that it takes more than spending a couple of hundred dollars gambling in a cruise casino to generate offers. 

[Riles34]

20 hours ago, kwokpot said:

People also tend to underreport what they truly spend in the casino. NO ONE is going to give out a free cruise if all you spend is $200 gambling in the casino. I can guarantee you that. 

I brought $300 cash last cruise willing to lose it all. Gambled that away and I get free offers and casino rates plus drinks on us blah blah blah. Granted, out of pocket was a $300 loss, but with winnings on the slots here and there it was about $850 "gambled". So you can get offers by spending a couple hundred dollars....as long as you gamble you winnings away as well.

[Analog187]

7 hours ago, Riles34 said:

I brought $300 cash last cruise willing to lose it all. Gambled that away and I get free offers and casino rates plus drinks on us blah blah blah. Granted, out of pocket was a $300 loss, but with winnings on the slots here and there it was about $850 "gambled". So you can get offers by spending a couple hundred dollars....as long as you gamble you winnings away as well.

Thanks, this is what I was looking for.  I realize that "coin in" is the real measurement here and that's going to vary on an individual basis but if I had a large enough sample size, I could get an average for dollars lost.  On HAL I probably had around 800 to 1000 coin in over the course of the cruise and I still came out ahead which is rare.  I've also run through $50 in a matter of minutes in Atlantic City so it all just depends.  Since I'm getting an $1800 cruise for $200, I don't mind losing $800 or so.  If I get nothing out of it I'll still come out ahead.  We'll see what happens.  

[hard_eight]

As others have said, it's TOTAL COIN IN. Not "I took $300 onboard and got a free cruise!"

 

You took $300 onboard, won and lost a bit for a few days and left broke. That's a different calculation. You win a couple fat piggies with your $300 and feed it all back, that's why they want you back.

 

Take $300 in cash and just play table minimum blackjack. See how many offers you get.

[kwokpot]

13 minutes ago, hard_eight said:

As others have said, it's TOTAL COIN IN. Not "I took $300 onboard and got a free cruise!"

 

You took $300 onboard, won and lost a bit for a few days and left broke. That's a different calculation. You win a couple fat piggies with your $300 and feed it all back, that's why they want you back.

 

Take $300 in cash and just play table minimum blackjack. See how many offers you get.

That's how complementaries work both on land based casinos and cruiseships. My point being people want an easy way to get a 'free' cruise and it's really not that easy if you have a limited budget. As I have said my husband and I have been doing this for years both in land based casinos and cruiseships. To be very frank It's a lot of work and record keeping. We report on our joint tax returns over 6 figures in W2-G income for many years. The amount of record keeping my husband needs to do in order not to have to pay taxes on the total amount of reported winnings is pretty onerous. On our last cruise 2 weeks ago on the Odyssey of the Seas my husband generated 15 W2-G forms for a 7 day Europe cruise!

Edited August 8, 2023 by kwokpot

[luvcruzing]

1 hour ago, kwokpot said:

15 W2-G forms for a 7 day Europe cruise!

That’s amazing! Continued good fortune to you and your husband.  

[MagnoliaBlossom]

On 2/10/2023 at 12:56 PM, Chelle111213 said:

I have been getting emails for years now (literally) with offers for "free rooms"  (just port fees and taxes)...well, I have never really looked at any because always thought they were not "free".  But for kicks and giggles yesterday I went on to my account and clicked the email and off to the Carnival site.  I just put in the info just to see if it really was "free".  Well, to my surprise I was able to get a Aft Balcony for "free"...just had to pay the port and taxes, plus I added the gratuities.  I still think it's too good to be true.  I even called to pay for it versus the website to ensure it was! 🙂 Anyone else ever gotten this??? I do spend a lot of time in the casino on the ship and here at home 🙂 

We have four of these booked right now.  Plus they gave us OBC to cover the port and taxes.

[jakeT]

Free room and drinks on them card from the Casino. Just pay port ect

Bsst deal out there.  Their casino isn’t that bad you can play for hours. Win ,lose, win ,lose.  In the end  Theanount you lose still is. Better then paying full fair and have hours of casino fun