Best Carnival value youve booked?

[live.love.cruise]

11 minutes ago, resetjet said:

We just did that one.  Was a decent cruise.  I would suggest booking a tour in limon or don't get off.  The boat tour was reasonably interesting.  The rainforest walking tour did not have any wildlife viewing (except for poison frogs).  

Thank you! I’ve been looking at the tour options in Limon. I plan to get off since there’s only two port days. 

[Pellaz]

I was offered a $35/pp cruise on the Sunrise, 4-night, interior, for last February.  I upgraded to a balcony for not that much (less than $200) and went on my first-ever solo cruise.  

Then I won $2,500 on the "Cash Vault" machine in the casino on the last night...which paid for the cruise, my airfare, pre-cruise hotel and all about three times over.  I spent $20 total in the casino. 🙂  

Came home to find $0 offers for cruises with DOU in the casino, including an 8-day cruise to the ABC Islands...and I hated to pass it up, but it departed just 3 days after I had just returned.    Oh, well.  😐  

 

 

[KarmaCruisers]

We’ve lost a LOT in the casino..however, in October we’ve got two Extended Balconies booked on Celebration; with DOU (everywhere) and $1500 of FreePlay..out of pocket is $697 per cabin. (However we get $200 OBC of that back per cabin..so $497 per cabin?)

[gone_cruisin]

$149 Balcony 7 day Western Carib on the Dream.  Not a casino or interline rate.  Booked 2 weeks out.  Random offer we saw and grabbed it.

Edited February 27, 2023 by gone_cruisin

[EngIceDave]

9 hours ago, resetjet said:

This breaks my heart.  That is free for us as well and we cannot make it.  Seattle, alaska, japan, australia.........What a great cruise.

Had that booked originally, then daughter announces new Gbaby arriving a month prior to that cruise.

 

No way was Grandma going on a cruise with a fresh baby around,

[live.love.cruise]

6 hours ago, Pellaz said:

I was offered a $35/pp cruise on the Sunrise, 4-night, interior, for last February.  I upgraded to a balcony for not that much (less than $200) and went on my first-ever solo cruise.  

Then I won $2,500 on the "Cash Vault" machine in the casino on the last night...which paid for the cruise, my airfare, pre-cruise hotel and all about three times over.  I spent $20 total in the casino. 🙂  

Came home to find $0 offers for cruises with DOU in the casino, including an 8-day cruise to the ABC Islands...and I hated to pass it up, but it departed just 3 days after I had just returned.    Oh, well.  😐  

 

 

That’s a great deal! $20 is usually my casino limit but recently increased to $40 or $60 max per cruise lol, to increase the casino offers. My offers are random or last min deals. 
 

My best non casino was about $1300 ( +$200 OBC) for an extended balcony for two on the Mardi Gras for New Years ‘21/‘22.

Edited February 27, 2023 by live.love.cruise

[stobe1]

We have 3 this year booked under an awesome casino offer. All were balcony cabins, $100 per person + tax, $1500 OBC and drinks everywhere on the ship for both of us.

 

Celebration 7 days E Caribbean, Miracle 10 days Alaska and Spirit 8 days Key West/Bahamas.

[john91498]

8D balcony for 7 days for free. it was a casino offer and we paid the taxes and port fees. The fees were returned to us via OBC.

[Pellaz]

19 hours ago, live.love.cruise said:

That’s a great deal! $20 is usually my casino limit but recently increased to $40 or $60 max per cruise lol, to increase the casino offers. My offers are random or last min deals. 

$10 in the Cash Crane (failed), and $10 in the Cash Vault machine (amazingly did not fail).   And that was it.   I'm pretty sure my original $35/pp fare offer was NOT a casino rate, just one of those cheap deals CCL was offering to get bodies into staterooms.  

Pro tip:  the $2,500 "cube of cash" is actually only $1,000 in singles.  You have to go to the cage to "cash it in."   Which took 45 minutes since they had to review the security footage, etc.   Since the cube wouldn't have fit in my backpack anyway, I was happy to get 25 $100 bills instead.   And, of course, a tax "hit" now.  🙂  

 

[asalligo]

My best deal was not a casino offer. March 2020, the last cruise if the Carnival Liberty before full shutdown. $258 for a balcony for two total cost. I booked it two days before it sailed. Was also maybe our best cruise ever. Ship practically empty. 

Edited February 28, 2023 by asalligo

[cruisinqt]

Our best so far has been a 2 week transatlantic cruise out of Barcelona with $500 OBC, $500 free play, free drinks everywhere on the ship for both of us, in a balcony cabin for only $508 total which was mostly port fees & taxes. 

[eas2225]

We have an 8K Legend for 8 days in Sept. for $342.40.  Insurance and prepaid grats is another $330.00, but we also have a lot of OBC, casino free play and DOU.

 

 

[Tink10]

14 night Hawaii cruise out of Long Beach. DOU throughout the whole ship, $1000 in free play, $100 pp stateroom credit in an Ocean Suite. The total was $372.40 (taxes & port charges)

 

We have the same deal for our Alaska cruise in June

 

We also just booked an Elite offer of 15 nights on the Venezia in a free balcony with DOU throughout the whole ship, $500 free play with all the Elite perks for the cost of port charges & taxes.

 

LOVE the casino offers 🙂

[dianef]

How much do you have to gamble to get these offers?I kind of know there is no rhyme or reason people say.

[4hunters]

10 hours ago, dianef said:

How much do you have to gamble to get these offers?I kind of know there is no rhyme or reason people say.

It’s not how much you gamble, it’s how long you play.  The house edge, which is built into every game, says the house will eventually get a percentage of your money over the long run. 
 

 The longer you play, the more offers you’ll get. However, there is no hard and fast rule on what exactly those offers will be. 

[mz-s]

10 hours ago, dianef said:

How much do you have to gamble to get these offers?I kind of know there is no rhyme or reason people say.

 

Carnival doesn't have a hard and fast schedule of comps like Royal and other lines/casinos have nor do they have a tier system. Or if they do it is not public information.

 

We do know just from experience that slot play is rated higher than table play. That is - for a given amount of money and time in the casino, you will get more/better/more consistent comps with slot play vs. table play. Slot machines will tell you how many points you've accumulated and there is a set number of points needed to earn drinks on us. Comps after that are less clear though - how many points to earn a free steakhouse dinner or balcony room for example?

 

My wife and I play with about $500 each per cruise, playing often throughout the cruise and obviously putting our winnings back in (though we usually come home with about $500, so we lose about half I guess) - she plays slots and I play tables. We haven't paid for a cruise since the COVID restart (well you pay your deposit and get that back in the form of OBC and you have to pay taxes and grats), nor have we paid for drinks. We're mostly getting free interiors, but are just now starting to see free balconies coming in. No offers with FunPlay yet, but hopefully that will be coming in soon as well. We'll see. Honestly as long as we can keep getting free interiors, we're happy. We cruise as often as we can (5x in the 12 months after restart as we had vacation time accrued and the cruises were free, and this was before airfare started going insane) and have a great time.

 

After this next cruise if we can get some more better offers we'll see if we can start to status match with other lines like Virgin. I'm not sure how it will work since Carnival's casino doesn't actually have a status tier system, but we'll see. I've spoken to Virgin reps and they say they can but I want to see if I can get better offers after this upcoming cruise before I try.