Nuck Chorris

As I get older, I like flying less and less. If you husband is like me, he will think both the Houston-Sydney and the Rome-Houston flights are bad. Still, I would put up with it to do the cruising you describe. Lol.

I just remembered that you don't even need a AARP membership to buy the Princess GCs. So technically anyone can set up an AARP Rewards account without a membership to buy Princess GCs.

The maximum monthly limits for Princess GCs and Carnival GCs on AARP are different. For Princess, the most you can purchase per month is five GCs through each AARP account. So assuming you and your spouse have separate accounts the most Princess GCs you ccould purchase would be ten per month. Of course, you can always use the accounts of friends or family to increase your monthly purchases. You can even set up memberships for them, since there is no longer any age limit on AARP membership. Also, fyi, Princess GCs on AARP only carry an eight percent discount, not ten percent like Carnival GCs.

I hear you about the extra work to learn the Fun 21 strategy not being worth it. I understand that POV. But just to be precise, I believe that the house odds on the ship’s 3:2 standard blackjack (SBJ) are not 0.5% but, rather, 0.63%, what with six decks in the CSM, double down permitted after splitting but splitting Aces allowed only once, and no surrender permitted. See, for example, https://tunicatravel.com/blog/2017/01/two-deck-vs-six-deck-blackjack-games/ and also https://www.onlineunitedstatescasinos.com/las-vegas/blackjack/six-deck/ So Fun 21, when played properly, has the best odds of any game on the ship by a whisker. Fun 21 also has a smaller minimum bet than the ship’s 3:2 SBJ, which I like when I want to keep my bets small. But the most important thing to me is the hand shuffle. I won’t play any blackjack anywhere that is shuffled by a CSM. So I was forced to learn Fun 21 if I wanted to play BJ on the ship. One drawback to Fun 21 that you didn’t mention was that there are a few players who sit at the Fun 21 table who will groan when you do something “nonstandard,” like hit your hard 12 against a dealer 5 or 6. Its always a conundrum -- do you just let the groan stand or do you try to educate them about the effect of the kings missing from the shoe?? Its best, of course, not to say anything. But sometimes its difficult.

I assume you mean 3/9/2024. There is a roll call for your cruise with comments from fellow travelers.

The house advantage is actually quite small. Does require a modified BJ strategy though. https://wizardofodds.com/games/fun-21/

Hey mk-ultra. Great blog! Is the hand-dealt BJ-ish game called Fun21? Or does it have some other name?

Is anyone else having problems with purchasing cruise gift cards from AARP? Have tried three different times over the past three days, with different forms of payment, and all I have received is an error message.