As you end up spending more time…and losing more money, in ship casinos, you begin to learn how the system works….at least right now.

It turns out that all of the sea (and land) based casinos want to entice known casino players into their casinos. So, after you get status at one cruise ship casino, all the others are willing to offer you opportunities to sail. This appears to be true even with low level players. I thought it would be worthwhile to share our most recent experiences.

On our current travels, we are playing in the ship casino to earn a few cruises and to begin to compile our casino points for the 2024 – 2025 year. As you may recall, we will play to earn 2,500 points during the year in the casino from 1 April to March 30 to generate a free cruise and drinks in the casino for the following year. We just got our free cruises from last year credited to our accounts. Additionally, right now 1,200 points and higher will generate an immediate free cruise offer on RCL. So we decided to play on my card on one 8 day cruise to 1,200 points and on Reva’s card on an additional cruise to 1,500. Fortunately, the 1,200 points only cost us about $350. Unfortunately, the 1,500 points cost us about $1,500….it is called gambling after-all.

We have been talking to many platers that sail on multiple cruise lines and have used the various status match programs to turn one complimentary cruise into as many as four or five cruises.

I had previously used www.urcomped.com and received a free MSC cruise and 30% off of an additional cruise.

Our friend, Jeff leveraged his 1,200 point cruise offer for free or reduced cruises with Carnival, Princess and Holland America Cruise lines. The web pages for applying for these cruise status matches can be found at www.carnival.com/Registration/Promotions/casino-funmatch https://princess.medallionclassmarket.com/casinooffer and https://oceanplayersclub.com/hollandamericamatch

Virgin Cruises has initiated its own casino offer program. They don’t refer to it as a “status match” but it appears similar. It can be found at: https://www.virginvoyages.com/ahoy/stories/our-cruise-ship-casino

Margaritaville at Sea has also just started a casino match program. (Literately, as I was writing this blog, I received the email). It appears to require a phone call. Please see the details here: https://margaritavilleatsea.com/experiences/casino/mv-casino-club?utm_medium=email&utm_source=sendgrid&utm_campaign=casino_rewards

Also, there are many status match programs with land-based casinos. Additionally, I imagine you can also find similar programs with other cruise lines around the world – certainly worth evaluating. So if you like to gamble…excuse me….invest in the casinos, consider checking out some of these offers!

Waddle on ducks!