Casino $$$ ?

[discjoker]

One of my favorite activities at night on a cruise is trying my luck at the casino. On my last cruise (on NCL) they allowed you to get up to $1000 a day in casino chips or slot tokens which you could charge to your on-board account. The really nice thing was there were no fees to do this (much better than using the ATM). Can you do this on HAL and is there a fee? Thanks!

[777steve]

Yes.. you can get money in the casino from your shipboard account - I can't say for sure if the limit is $1,000 but I believe it is. And no, it's not free. There is a fee of 3% added to the charge.

Have fun and good luck!

Cheers!

[discjoker]

Thank You. I can deal with 3%. And I don't think I will be taking advantage of the full $1000 limit (my wife will be with me to make sure of that ;) )

[discjoker]

Oh, another casino question. Are the slots open 24hours while at sea? Generally what hours are the tables open for?

[LetsGoAgain]

On the Zuiderdam in November the slots seemed to close around 1AM, depending on the number of players(we were actually told on two different evenings that the casino was closing and could we please leave!) No actual time seemed to be posted, but it was never 24 hours of operation. The tables opened later than the machines and closed earlier as well. Times of opening were posted in the Daily Bulletin, but the closing time appears to be up to the Casino Manager.

[777steve]

As the last poster stated the usual run of things seem to be 1-2ish ... depending on how much action ... oddly enough on my Westerdam cruise the tables were hopping long after the slot lizards (like me) had gone. But in general don't plan on being there past 1:30 or so at best.... however all of this is subject to current playing conditions! :)

Cheers

[Pilot70D]

One of my favorite activities at night on a cruise is trying my luck at the casino. On my last cruise (on NCL) they allowed you to get up to $1000 a day in casino chips or slot tokens which you could charge to your on-board account. The really nice thing was there were no fees to do this (much better than using the ATM). Can you do this on HAL and is there a fee? Thanks!

HAL does have a way for passengers to prebuy casino chips through ship's service. The form (which can be downloaded from HAL's website) for prepurchasing all sorts of things has a line item on it for casino chips. We took advantage of this on our recent Volendam cruise and prepurchased $350 in chips. The credit was there when we went aboard and was truly convenient - didn'ty have bring extra cash and didn't have to pay any 3% fee. All I had to do was show the voucher to the casino manager and exchange it for the physical chips. Incidentally I didn't have to get the whole $350 at one time. I could have gotten it as needed. As it turned out I ended up winning about $450 over our ten day cruise.

Enjoy your cruise, gamble often and win lots. :-)