How does one get a Princess Casino Offer?

[Guest Snaxmuppet]

2 minutes ago, roxievegas said:

You don't have to spend a ton of money - hopefully you win enough to keep playing and accumulating points.

We don't get as great of offers as we did and we continue to gamble the amount that we would have spent for the cabin. ie.  if we get a free balcony and it would have cost $1599 ea then we have a budget of $3,000 - total between the two of us to gamble.  If the cabin is not free, we would have spent the $3,000 anyway.

 

We now get free interior cabins and free play.  We have one cruise booked for 2025 a

17 day Ultimate Alaska

cost when I booked it back in Fall of 2023, the cost from the Princess website was

interior $2398, OV $3598, balcony $4248, mini suite $5398

we got the interior for free, but paid $1200 (total) to get an ocean view that has the full length window on Deck 14.  So the cost of the OV would have been $7200, but we paid $1200.

the cost has gone down on that cruise now, but once you book it you are locked in.

Off topic I know but can you not ask for your cruise to be re-fared... a lot of people here do it (not available in the UK though 😞 )

[memoak]

2 hours ago, Shippy said:

I play penny slots every day. Remember the casino is NOT open on port days until 1 hour after you leave port. It is not open before you get to the port.

   The best offers are the ones they leave in your cabin on the last day of the cruise.

I get a mini suite. I get tons of email offers but they are only for outside or balcony cabins.

   Also, you can upgrade these offers. $900.pp seems to be the going rate to upgrade to an s4 penthouse on a 7 day cruise.

   The really incredible part is that for the last year, they have been adding the plus package. That is really worth a lot.

    My husband gets offers for casino cash, no room.. On our last cruise he got one for $500. on the next cruise.  I booked under my offer & they actually added his cash offer to it even thought the fine print says not combinable.

  Usually on about the third day, a casino host will come up to a machine I am playing & ask if we would like a complementary specialty restaurant. They make the reservation right then.

 

We always book with my wife’s free balcony offers and then pay to upgrade to a S3 Penthouse.  They always give both of us free play   The one time the cage did t see my freeplay and the host caught it they insisted on comping us a specialty dinner

 

 

[artvlay]

Can someone please explain how Princess casino program differs from the Royal Caribbean program.

Thank you 

[Shippy]

2 hours ago, Snaxmuppet said:

Off topic I know but can you not ask for your cruise to be re-fared... a lot of people here do it (not available in the UK though 😞 )

WAY OFF TOPIC...PERHAPS YOU SHOULD START A NEW THREAD.

I really like the discussion on the original topic & would hate to see it veer away...

[roxievegas]

12 minutes ago, Snaxmuppet said:

LOL! 

 

Have you seen how many posts I have here? Don't you think I would know that?

 

You may not have offended me if you hadn't "shouted" with the capitals. I felt as though it was rather demanding.

 

It doesn't need a thread on its own. I wasn't asking a question... I was trying to point out to the poster that they could try to get their cruise re-fared. That is all. It was something on the side that just came up in conversation and it is not uncommon or unusual to have side discussions in threads. 

 

OK, you didn't want that here but a quiet "... hey guys, can we keep it on topic please... this is interesting" would have been way better and more effective. As it turned out your exclamation took us even further off topic.

 

13 minutes ago, Snaxmuppet said:

LOL! 

 

Have you seen how many posts I have here? Don't you think I would know that?

 

You may not have offended me if you hadn't "shouted" with the capitals. I felt as though it was rather demanding.

 

It doesn't need a thread on its own. I wasn't asking a question... I was trying to point out to the poster that they could try to get their cruise re-fared. That is all. It was something on the side that just came up in conversation and it is not uncommon or unusual to have side discussions in threads. 

 

OK, you didn't want that here but a quiet "... hey guys, can we keep it on topic please... this is interesting" would have been way better and more effective. As it turned out your exclamation took us even further off topic.

I will answer because it is not totally off topic.  It is part of getting a casino offer and using it.

When you get a casino offer for a free cabin, when you book your cruise, you pay for the cruise up front 

so ie, the cruise has port tax/fee of $295 per person, and the offer is for a free interior.  You will pay $295 for taxes, plus $200 deposit which is returned to you in OBC once you board the ship - so you can not use the OBC prior to the cruise.

In our case, the Alaska cruise is $595 each for the port tax, plus $200 each for deposit, plus we get the princess insurance and then we upgraded to OV cabin, so we paid $2900+ at the time of booking.  If we cancel for any reason we lose the $200 each deposit.  This is part of the agreement for booking the cruise with a casino offer.  Making changes because the cost of the cruise goes down may not change the cost of what you have to pay to upgrade to a higher class cabin.

Over all getting a free offer for a cabin is money saving, but the trade off is spending the money in the casino,which is what we do

[Guest Snaxmuppet]

1 minute ago, roxievegas said:

 

I will answer because it is not totally off topic.  It is part of getting a casino offer and using it.

...

Thank you... back to normality 🙂

 

Thanks to everyone that did answer my questions. 

 

We will see how much we  spend in the casino on our next cruise in April... who knows... it might turn out to be lucky for us. We won $250 OBC through Princess Prizes on our last one so you never know.

[TRLD]

On 3/7/2024 at 6:49 AM, Steelers36 said:

Still, though, it takes working $54,000 to amass 18,000 points!!  🤪

or if the RTP on slots is 96% (usually range from 90 to 98%)  then running 54,000 through the machine would cost one about $2160 in general.  Of course one may do better or worse.

[Globaler]

5 minutes ago, roxievegas said:

 

I will answer because it is not totally off topic.  It is part of getting a casino offer and using it.

When you get a casino offer for a free cabin, when you book your cruise, you pay for the cruise up front 

so ie, the cruise has port tax/fee of $295 per person, and the offer is for a free interior.  You will pay $295 for taxes, plus $200 deposit which is returned to you in OBC once you board the ship - so you can not use the OBC prior to the cruise.

In our case, the Alaska cruise is $595 each for the port tax, plus $200 each for deposit, plus we get the princess insurance and then we upgraded to OV cabin, so we paid $2900+ at the time of booking.  If we cancel for any reason we lose the $200 each deposit.  This is part of the agreement for booking the cruise with a casino offer.  Making changes because the cost of the cruise goes down may not change the cost of what you have to pay to upgrade to a higher class cabin.

Over all getting a free offer for a cabin is money saving, but the trade off is spending the money in the casino,which is what we do

A side benefit to having to pay in full is that you can make dining reservations early. I haven’t been able to book on the Sun but I’m sure cause it’s a new ship and they are trying to get the process down.

[Catbert234]

4 hours ago, Globaler said:

A side benefit to having to pay in full is that you can make dining reservations early. I haven’t been able to book on the Sun but I’m sure cause it’s a new ship and they are trying to get the process down.

That is a perk (being able to book dining early if you're paid in full on a Casino Offer). I have dining booked for 2025 even. Sun Princess is the exception because they are still opening venues and they didn't open any dining after March 28 until the end of Feb. Now, dining reservations for Sun are open through May I think.

The casino host (Maria) on Sun now came from Sky Princess, and so did at least one of the dealers (to bring the topic back to the casino). 

I reiterate that it is good to give Princess permission to market to your email and mailing address since they send postcards and offers and emails with offers frequently (every other month or so)

 

[Catbert234]

9 hours ago, Snaxmuppet said:

Off topic I know but can you not ask for your cruise to be re-fared... a lot of people here do it (not available in the UK though 😞 )

Actually not completely off topic, since it deals with an upgrade room price on a casino fare & the possibility of savings. The room upgrade paid for is actually less than the fare and I think that the casino offer prevents a re-faring by its nature. As a result, I don't think they will re-fare for this situation.  They also changed some of the shareholder benefit language to block using the shareholder benefit if I take advantage of the casino offers (they used to let customers stack the two offers, but no longer).  

 

Edited March 11 by Catbert234
grammar problem

[Globaler]

6 minutes ago, Catbert234 said:

Actually not completely off topic, since it deals with an upgrade room price on a casino fare & the possibility of savings. The room upgrade paid for is actually less than the fare and I think that the casino offer prevents a re-faring by its nature. As a result, I don't think they will re-fare for this situation.  They also changed some of the shareholder benefit language to block using the shareholder benefit if I take advantage of the casino offers (they used to let customers stack the two offers, but no longer).  

 

I’m getting shareholder benefits but my cruise is not totally comped. So maybe that’s the difference. I upgraded my offer.

Edited March 11 by Globaler

[Catbert234]

Just now, Globaler said:

I’m getting shareholder benefits but my cruise is not totally comped. So maybe that’s the difference.

I have heard folks talk about being able to get the shareholder benefit once on board. I DID read the terms and conditions of the shareholder offer and on last reading did prevent offer stacking. Good job for the folks who talked the on board customer service people into granting it, however.

[Globaler]

7 minutes ago, Catbert234 said:

I have heard folks talk about being able to get the shareholder benefit once on board. I DID read the terms and conditions of the shareholder offer and on last reading did prevent offer stacking. Good job for the folks who talked the on board customer service people into granting it, however.

Are you saying Princess assigns OBC for the SHC and people can’t use it? My SIL is sailing with Carnival and they turned him down because his cruise was 100% comped.

Edited March 11 by Globaler

[Catbert234]

8 minutes ago, Globaler said:

I’m getting shareholder benefits but my cruise is not totally comped. So maybe that’s the difference.

 

4 minutes ago, Globaler said:

Are you saying Princess assigns OBC for the SHC and people can’t use it? My SIL is sailing with Carnival and they turned him down because his cruise was100% comped.

Here is the shareholder benefit form - it describes the restrictions
https://www.princess.com/downloads/pdf/contact-us/shareholder-request-form.pdf

 

[Globaler]

3 minutes ago, Catbert234 said:

 

Here is the shareholder benefit form - it describes the restrictions
https://www.princess.com/downloads/pdf/contact-us/shareholder-request-form.pdf

 

It says can’t use the SHC in the casino - but can be used for the Spa, specialty dinners, plus and premium package. In my case I will sign up for plus once I’m onboard.

Edited March 11 by Globaler

[Catbert234]

Just now, Globaler said:

It says can’t use the SHC in the casino - but can be used for the Spa, specialty dinners, plus and premium package.

and cannot be combined "with some offers" - that's where I think my applications fell short

[Globaler]

Just now, Catbert234 said:

and cannot be combined "with some offers" - that's where I think my applications fell short

I do know you can’t get the military credit and the SHC.

[jwattle]

I've always gotten it combined with my casino fares.

[Catbert234]

8 hours ago, jwattle said:

I've always gotten it combined with my casino fares.

I guess I will give it another try. Seems as if Carnival has signed with an app that validates stock ownership to make it easier to claim the shareholder benefit

[CU64]

On 3/6/2024 at 7:31 PM, 2MellowCruisers said:

Also for reference:

On our recent Crown Princess cruise in January, I earned a little over 20,000 points and got an offer for a Balcony and $600 casino cash.  No Plus package.  Maybe because our cruise was 16 days vs 7 days?  I wish I could figure out how they decide what they will offer.  We spend maybe 3- 5 hours in the casino daily playing mostly slots.  We used to always get balcony and free play offers with Plus Package via email but lately they have been reduced insides, lower free play and no Plus Package even though we haven't reduced our play.

 

To OP: I'm not sure if anything is different for Australia but we are also able to just go online and after logging in, we can check out cruises and it will show our casino discount.  Either $0 or a reduced amount if we want to upgrade.  I will say that I checked on cruises this week and a lot of the offers went away on cruises I was just checking out last month.  Also, check to see if you have given princess your email address and I believe there is somewhere in your profile that you can check to receive promotional offers.

I would set my hair on fire If I had to sit in front of a slot machine 3-4 hrs daily on a CRUISE. Guess I will be paying regular prices for my cabins.

[Globaler]

3 hours ago, CU64 said:

I would set my hair on fire If I had to sit in front of a slot machine 3-4 hrs daily on a CRUISE. Guess I will be paying regular prices for my cabins.

That’s why I go on a cruise. I can gamble, sit out by the pool, go to shows, exciting ports, bars, food and oh did I say gamble!

[2MellowCruisers]

12 hours ago, CU64 said:

I would set my hair on fire If I had to sit in front of a slot machine 3-4 hrs daily on a CRUISE. Guess I will be paying regular prices for my cabins.

You quoted my post and since I cannot hear the inflection in your voice, I’m not sure how to take it. A great question was asked and great answers and experiences have been given. I was just giving our experience to see how it compares with others. We don’t gamble for the comps. It is something we enjoy and the comps are a nice bonus. We budget what we want to spend, sometimes based on what we would spend for the cruise if not comped. Sometimes we come out ahead, and sometimes not. The casino counts on us doing the latter. The times I shared are an average and not always in one sitting. There are also others things on a cruise we enjoy so we may play a little go do other things and maybe go back. But playing in a casino if definitely something we enjoy on a cruise. 
 

We are currently on a cruise and I am up by almost $2600.00 and that was the result of the free play I was given. I haven’t spent a penny of my own money. My DH is only down a tiny bit so our plan is to go home ahead in this one. We didn’t go to the casino at all yesterday and don’t have plans to spend a lot of time today. 
 

If the casino is not your thing then please spend those 3-4 hours doing something you enjoy. I want you to keep your beautiful head of hair. 😁

[memoak]

13 hours ago, CU64 said:

I would set my hair on fire If I had to sit in front of a slot machine 3-4 hrs daily on a CRUISE. Guess I will be paying regular prices for my cabins.

The casino is our entertainment from 10:00 pm on sometimes a bit in the afternoon. We go on long cruises with lots of sea days so we also spend time in bars or reading or going to lectures. The casino is just a few hours a day on our cruises 

[Stosh68]

On 3/10/2024 at 9:02 AM, 20165 said:

Ok so all you math wizards out there, how many $3 slot plays would $1k get you? Example, 333 when you run through the first round with your $1k, but assuming you get paid back 95%, i think someone said that is the pay back on the slots, then the next round would get you roughly 316 $3 slot plays and so on.  Can anyone think of the formula off the top of your head that would give you the total plays for that $1k assuming a 5% loss per run through of that money?  Sorry, its early and hurting my head thinking about it...

 

There's more variables to the problem than stated, and you'd have to do a monte carlo simulation of several million $1000 bankroll sessions to give you a bell curve that would be useful.

 

First, 95% payback on a cruise ship is extremely unlikely.  A more reasonable assumption would be between 85 and 90%, but even that is still unknowable without insider knowledge.   The second variable is the volitivity of the machine.  If you get a lot of smaller wins, then you have a low volitivity machine which will stretch out the number of spins your bankroll will last, if there are fewer, but larger wins the opposite will be true.   Again, you can't know this information for certain on a slot machine, but after a decent amount of play you can make an educated guess.

 

But some quick and dirty numbers using middle of the road settings from an old program a friend wrote shows that with 95% payback you'd get 6700 plays in the middle of the bell curse, compared to 3200 and 14k on the high and lower ends.   At 90% payback, those numbers change to 1900, 3400 and 5600 plays.   

 

So a $1000 bankroll could get you between 1900 and 5600 points on a 90% slot machine.  Keep in mind, there will still be instances where you get much less than 1900 points, and if you hit a more than expected amount of jackpots you could get a lot more than 5600 points if you played until you went broke.

 

If I had a limited bankroll and wanted to maximize points, I'd stick to video poker.  Assuming a fair game, you can calculate exact paybacks and optimal strategy for each game and variation.

 

 

Edited March 12 by Stosh68

[CU64]

2 hours ago, 2MellowCruisers said:

You quoted my post and since I cannot hear the inflection in your voice, I’m not sure how to take it. A great question was asked and great answers and experiences have been given. I was just giving our experience to see how it compares with others. We don’t gamble for the comps. It is something we enjoy and the comps are a nice bonus. We budget what we want to spend, sometimes based on what we would spend for the cruise if not comped. Sometimes we come out ahead, and sometimes not. The casino counts on us doing the latter. The times I shared are an average and not always in one sitting. There are also others things on a cruise we enjoy so we may play a little go do other things and maybe go back. But playing in a casino if definitely something we enjoy on a cruise. 
 

We are currently on a cruise and I am up by almost $2600.00 and that was the result of the free play I was given. I haven’t spent a penny of my own money. My DH is only down a tiny bit so our plan is to go home ahead in this one. We didn’t go to the casino at all yesterday and don’t have plans to spend a lot of time today. 
 

If the casino is not your thing then please spend those 3-4 hours doing something you enjoy. I want you to keep your beautiful head of hair. 😁

Yes, you read it tongue in cheek. Congrats on 2600