January 24, 2024|Carnival, Casino, Cruise

by Eric Lipkind

The main reason many people get into this hobby of miles and points is to get free and upgraded travel.  Many times you can pay zero for luxury travel.  We’ve traveled first class for free on Emirates, stayed at the St. Regis in Venice, and cruised on Virgin Voyages all for free.    This was all so over-the-top in luxury.   Other times you can pay zero for not-so-luxury travel.  Here is such a tale…

About a year ago, I was able to go on the Royal Caribbean’s Wonder of the Seas ship for a weeklong cruise in a balcony room over Christmas break for free (aside from some taxes and port fees).  I was able to get this via Kathy Kelly Mendez of Bob Kelly Tours who is an independent Caesars Casino host.   She was able to see my status with Caesars and then communicated with the casino department of Royal Caribbean who then offered the free cruise.   Kathy is awesome.  This was Royal Caribbean’s newest and largest ship at the time and it was incredible – from the food to activities to entertainment to the room.

Over the summer, my wife and I went on a free Virgin Voyages cruise from Barcelona to Marseille, Cannes, Mallorca, and Ibiza.  We were able to get this cruise for free by transferring CitiThankyou points to Virgin Atlantic (which is a Virgin Red partner).  Virgin Red was offering free cruises for 80,000 points.   This was an incredible deal. Additionally, Virgin Voyages was able to status match my status from other cruise lines.  This got us some nice extras for free as well including a bar credit, free wifi, free specialty coffee, a cocktail event, and some free dry cleaning.   Everything on this cruise was top of the lion and couldn’t have been better.   I also bid for an upgraded room and ended up with a fantastic suite.  I can’t say enough about Virgin Voyages.

Then, a few months ago, I did a status match with Carnival Cruise Lines.   This is where the story takes a dark turn.  I will state upfront, that these are first-world problems, so please don’t @ me!  🙂

I was given an offer for a free cruise for two people in a suite (plus taxes, fees, and gratuities).  It also came with $500 in casino cash to use in the casino and free drinks while playing in the casino.  All sounded good.   I went ahead and booked a five-night cruise on the Carnival Paradise from Tampa stopping in Grand Cayman and Cozumel. The only suite available was a junior suite, which just seemed like a regular balcony cabin to me.

First I’ll point out some of the positives (in no order whatsoever):

— Since we were in a suite category, we were able to board first and put our bags in our cabin before the other passengers

— The casino cash offer of $500 was supposed to be in casino credit loaded into my account.  To my surprise, the person in the casino cage handed me $500 in cash, no strings attached!

— The free drinks in the casino were the largest casino drinks I’ve seen.  They are the same size as the drinks others had to purchase.

— The straws in all of the drinks were made out of candy and edible.

— If you want money to play table games in the casino, you can charge funds to your room charge (and earn points on a point-earning credit card).  However, there is a 3% fee.   One of the pit bosses told me if I requested funds through the slot machines and bet at least $1, I could then cash out the funds at the cashier for no fee.   This seemed odd to me, but it worked.  As such, I did this several times and cashed out leaving with cash (and being charged to my credit card).   Free points from my credit card!

— The hamburgers at the Guy Fieri hamburger grill were decent as was the food in the main dining room.

— The XPlore excursion in Cozumel was a lot of fun.

— The cabin attendant was excellent.

And on the flip side:

— The main elevators that sit in the atrium in the center of the ship did not work the entire time.

— Two elevators reach the suite deck.  On check-out day, one was not working leading to a 15-minute wait for an elevator.

— There were only two restaurant dining options — the main dining room and the buffet.   I’ve never seen a ship without specialty restaurants.

— The buffet was nothing like I had seen on any other ship.  There were no stations with different ethnic foods.  There was one station with maybe 6 or 7 choices.  That’s it.  Although there was a deli station in the buffet, but they called that a different restaurant name for some reason.  At breakfast, I asked if there was bacon or sausage and was told they rotate meats each day and that day there was ham.   My son noted that the free buffet at the XPlore excursion was better than the buffet on the ship.

— In the main dining room, typically it is all you can eat.  This was a first for me – it was noted on the menu that there was a $5 charge per entree after the second one was ordered.  I certainly didn’t need two or three entrees, but seeing a charge was new for me on a cruise.

— On ‘Elegant Night’ in the main dining room, the staff started marching around carrying a cake and then started singing ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ with alternate words thanking us for coming on the cruise.   Many people in the dining room started twirling their napkins in the air.   I felt like I went through the looking glass.   Certainly not what I’m used to on other cruise ships and my definition of elegant is a bit different than many of those on this ship.

— The majority of the crowd on the ship was much more of the partying/drinking crowd than I experienced on other ships.   They were quite a cast of characters.  It just wasn’t my scene.

— Many people in this crowd certainly didn’t know how to play blackjack and had difficulty adding at times.  This didn’t make for a fun playing experience.

— Usually, cruise chips have trivia games and at least some type of prizes are given to the winners.  On Virgin, we won a round of drinks.  On Royal Caribbean we won a pen.  Carnival gave no prizes.

— I’ve never been on a cruise where the cruise director was the main performer for one night of the shows acting as an emcee for a Newlywed Game show.   I’m not sure if they were short-staffed, but this was different.

— Shortly after boarding, we were offered drinks in Carnival Plastic cups.  I signed the check and it said they were $16 each.  I then saw on my bill that we were charged $66 for the two drinks.   I went to the front desk and they said I also had to pay for the Carnival cups (even though I never signed for that on the bill).  They said if we brought them back to the front desk, they would see if they could be refunded.   I’m happy to say that they were.   Hopefully they didn’t sell these used cups to someone else.

— We went to play an organized game run by the activities staff.  It seemed as if they had never done this before and were learning how to run it as we attempted to play.  Additionally, they had such heavy accents, it was very hard to understand what was going on.

— As this was a smaller ship, there really wasn’t much to do.  Coming off The Wonder of the Seas, this was the opposite extreme.

— We were told that suites have access to priority dining.  Apparently what that means is that we could choose which seating for dinner — early or late.  We chose the other option of dining when you like.  However, we found on the first night, there was a 60-70 minute wait to eat in the main dining room, and suites get no priority.  I also didn’t understand why there were waits when there were many empty tables in the dining room.  Perhaps they weren’t adequately staffed.   There were really no other extra benefits of having a suite as there are on other cruise lines.

— Many times it took forever to get a waiter or waitress to take our drink orders in the casino.   The free drinks were only available through the waiters and waitresses.  If we went to the bar in the casino, they were not free.  This was very annoying.

So, when you book free travel, set your expectations low and you will be pleasantly surprised — or not!   Sometimes you get what you don’t pay for, and sometimes you will get even less.

If you want any help getting free travel, please reach out to me.