Calnev1

Just finished a cruise on the Carnival Miracle two days ago. This is an accurate statement of the charges to your onboard account when using it for your casino play. The 3% charge is still true for money pulled from your onboard account to buy chips while sitting at a table. Obviously, loading to your slot account and then pulling the cash out at the cage -- at no charge -- is the way to avoid this 3% fee.

Agree one hundred percent. But I have noticed on a couple of post-COVID cruises that even when there is an indoor mask mandate many folks don't wear them properly. So my wife and I have taken to wearing N95 masks, and only N95 masks, when in indoor spaces with lots of people close by (like the casino). Unlike most masks, a properly worn N95 will protect the wearer even if no one else around is wearing a mask or wearing it properly. Of course, the N95 doesn't look very stylish. But I don't worry about what others are doing, or not doing, when I have my N95 on.

My wife and I have cruised three times on Carnival since the restart. We are generally happy with how our Platinum benefits are holding up. 1. We always take advantage of the free laundry. Between the two of us, at least four bags of laundry depending on the length of the cruise. Yeah, we don't give them anything delicate to wash, that's not smart. But on one cruise we even brought a bit of dirty laundry on board for them to wash. Not particularliy proud of that, though. 2. My wife and I have each gotten $25 in cash (or funplay) from the casino cage in lieu of the tourney entries on each cruise. Can't argue with cash money. 3. The free bottled water was in our cabin right next to the water for purchase. I realize that this is different from ship to ship. 4. We do roll-off debarkation. On each cruise, there was a special debarkation lounge for platinums, and we were among the first persons off the ship. That was fantastic! 5. I am happy there is a dedicated platinum/diamond line at the guest services. Is it always faster than the regular line? Not always, but still maybe 90 percent of the time. And sometimes the dedicated line is WAY FASTER. 6. Free drink at sea day brunch was OK 7. Didn't go to the platinum parties. Even so, was happy to be platinum on these cruises!!!

I do not think the kiosks are set up to dispense cash. Has anyone else done this?

I know how you feel. You are still way ahead, but if only somehow you had managed to sell around $70 how much better you would be now . . . . Reminds me of my inlaws. They owned quite a bit of Rockwell International stock since the dad worked there, and over the years Rockwell spun off small pieces, including in some tech company called Conexant. Well, during the tech bubble the price of Conexant soared so that my inlaw's stake in that company was, on paper, worth much more than their Rockwell stock. Then the tech bubble burst, and the price of Conexant collapsed. My mother in law used to wonder out loud how they had a million dollars in Connexant stock, and then it all went away. If we all had a crystal ball.

Good to hear!

I have applied partial gift cards to my S&S balance many times without problem. Carnival does have a potential limit on how many gift cards you can apply to your S&S balance on any particular cruise. This limit has been described on the Allstate thread. The exact amount of this limit is unclear, but it doesn't sound like the OP was anywhere near this limit on the cruise in question.

Just keep in mind that carnival cruise lines (not Carnival Corporation) has been getting stingier in giving out the shareholder benefit OBC. Multiple threads already on that topic.

Yes I realized after I wrote this that the Canadians could be layering requirements on top of Carnivals (relatively) straightforward US domestic requirements.

IF you are vaxxed and boosted, its pretty simple. Take the test anytime in the three days before you cruise starts, and as for type of test, they accept ..... pretty much EVERYTHING. We just did the Radeas home test offered through a link directly on the Carnival website. Got the kits in the mail three days after ordering. Proctoring on Zoom was easy peasy, took 15 minutes, and then had results by email two minutes later.

I always wondered about them putting my final charges outside my door on the last night. I thought that should be more private. If you ask the ship staff, will they slip that under your door too?

Wow. All this from my statement "but mostly up."

I am not a market timer. I buy and hold long term. It sounds like maybe you are selling stocks now in anticipation of a recession (I apologize if I have misinterpeted you). The problem, though, with trying to time the stock market is that you need to be right twice, in this case when exactly to sell if you anticipate a bad recession, and then when exactly to rebuy before the stock market rebounds too much. Complicating this is that the market and the economy do not move in lockstep, that is, for example, the market can rebound before a recession has actually abated. I do think research shows that folks who market time don't make either decision (sell or buy) very well. But if you can do it, more power to you.

Lol. I'm didn't give any advice here about whether its a good time to buy stocks, and I won't. You write your theses, and I will stick by the stock market going "mostly up" as illustrated quite clearly by historical performance charts: https://stockcharts.com/freecharts/historical/marketindexes.html

The market goes up, the market goes down. But mostly up. Those people who talk about about a market crash probably 1) Never participate in the market, or 2) buy high and sell low. Not the best folks to take investment advice from.

Did you go down the hallway opening the cards on the doors?

Ha. And now I see there is a big thread on this. Folks rushing to purchase cruise cash and excursions. Probably someone in Carnival IT messed up. Looks like the IT folks have fixed it now, and I was just too late to get that mega-discounted cruise cash. Oh well.

This is very interesting, particularly the possibility of buying discounted cruise cash with already discounted gift cards. So I tried to apply the code to a purchase of $100 in cruise cash on my July five-night sailing. Unfortunately, the website would not accept the code for a cruise cash purchase on that sailing.

A few months ago I went on a couple of cruises and because there were no BJ/Slot tourneys onboard they gave me my Platinum tourney benefit in the form of some funplay cash. Going on another cruise next week. Wondering if I can expect a BOGO tourney entry or some funplay money (or equivalent)?