Bonnie and I had to skip our European honeymoon six months ago due to her health. She’s feeling better now and so we went on two back-to-back cruises out of New Orleans-the first November 30 – December 7 on the Carnival Dream and the second departing a few hours later, December 7 – December 14, on the Norwegian Dawn.
All of it was casino comp. Our Carnival Cruise Lines trip was courtesy of the M Casino. Our Norwegian Cruise Lines voyage was a Seven Stars Signature Event from Caesars Entertainment. For our travel to and from New Orleans we used a Seven Stars annual trip.
The two cruises went to similar ports (Dream: Cozumel, Grand Cayman, Montego Bay — Dawn: Cozumel, Belize City, Roatan, Costa Maya), but our experiences were very different. This article explains how the cruises differed.
First of all, the ships themselves were different. The Dawn, which was more nicely appointed, was smaller and older (2200 passenger capacity, 2002 launch) when compared to the Dream (3500 passenger capacity, 2009 launch). It appears that in general Carnival is a lower-end cruise line and cost-conscious customers will typically choose Carnival over Norwegian.
On the Carnival cruise, most of the customers lived near the New Orleans port of departure. They were Southerners and I estimate that perhaps 60% of these passengers were African American. Southern hospitality (from whatever race) was apparent and we were regularly greeted in the hallways by fellow travelers we didn’t know.
On the Norwegian cruise, perhaps 25% of the customers were on the Seven Stars Signature Event. Although it’s not a simple formula, most people who attain Seven Stars status have played at least $1 million coin-in — often several times more than that. Probably the average Seven Stars member loses $100,000 or more a year to Caesars. To have that much discretionary wealth, these people are generally middle-aged and older. If they bring their children along, the children are adults themselves. There was a noticeable racial difference between the two cruises with fewer than 20% of the customers on the Dawn being African American. (Our country is experiencing some racial tension as I write this. None of that was apparent on either cruise.)
A high percentage of Seven Stars players on the ship were from the East Coast. The typical East Coast personality is nowhere near as warm and friendly as that of most Southerners. That was readily apparent as we walked through the ship. Exceptions to any stereotype abound, of course, but fewer strangers said hello to each other on the Dawn.
On most cruise ships these days, you can get an all-you-can-drink package for something like $70 per day per person, including tax and gratuity. In round numbers that’s $500 per person per week and if one person in a stateroom buys the package, the other person in the room is also required to do so. Voluntarily setting aside $1,000 per week for alcohol seems to be a viable option for a rather small percentage of travelers.
Many other travelers drink some, but ship bar prices are rather high. On the NCL cruise, part of the Seven Stars Signature Event was that all 500 of us got the unlimited beverage package. So lots of Seven Stars members who would normally drink modestly drank far more than they typically would. After all, it was free and the gratuity was already included. So why not? The net result was that a much higher percentage of travelers on the Dawn were walking around with a buzz on when compared to the Dream.
It addition to the price of the alcohol package, gratuities ($84 per person), port fees (about $250 per person), and transportation to and from the airport (or casino) were also picked up by Caesars. This was a sweet comp.
In our opinion, the food included in the regular price on the Dream was better than that on the Dawn, but the specialty restaurants (where you pay a $15 to $25 per person surcharge per meal) on the Dawn provide better food than we found on the Dream. The Dawn has numerous specialty restaurants. It’s easy to come to the conclusion that NCL tries to nickel and dime you all the time with these extra charges.
On the dress up nights, the outfits worn were generally much nicer on the Dawn than on the Dream. After all, people who can afford to play a million bucks or more per year coin-in can afford nice threads. (To Bonnie’s dismay, I’m rather blasé about cruise dress up night. I wore clean pants and a polo shirt. Bonnie looked sharp, but I value packing my stuff in one suitcase far more than dressing up when I’m on vacation. She swears she’ll pack lighter next time. We’ll see.)
On the Dream, I was one of the very few casino VIP guests. Our room was very nice. On the Dawn, one fourth of the guests qualified for VIP staterooms. While our stateroom had a balcony and was certainly nicer than a standard room, being in the top 25% warrants a lesser room than being in the top 2% does.
Casinos give a lot of special benefits to their highest tier players. Seven Stars players are used to such treatment. They learn to feel entitled to it. When there are only a few of these in a casino at any one time, each of these players can regularly experience VIP treatment. But on a cruise ship with 500 Seven Stars guests at one time, something has to give. There just aren’t enough resources to give each of these guests the type of constant VIP treatment to which they’ve been accustomed. Some of them weren’t particularly gracious with the reduced status they felt that they received on the Dawn.
Not that Caesars didn’t try to prevent this from happening. Caesars sent along about 15 hosts from their casinos around the country — all wearing pinkish shirts so you could easily identify them. These folks went out of their way to service the Caesars guests, but these hosts had a very different set of rules to live by on the ship than they did “back home.”
The personality of the guests also seemed to spread to the ships’ crews. The staff on the Dream responded well to the friendliness of the guests. The staff on the Dawn seemed to be adversely affected by the strain of dealing with all these guests who felt entitled. I’ve been on many NCL cruises, including three times previously on the Dawn. This time the staff wasn’t as friendly, but it’s hard to blame them.
I’m not particularly interested in cruise ship casinos. Since I live in Las Vegas and have good pay schedules available to me 24/7 when I’m at home, I feel no need to go out and play “just for fun.” Live poker can be a good opportunity on a cruise ship, but that’s not my game.
Whether I’m a fan of cruise ship casinos or not, you can bet that with 500 Seven Stars players (including their guests), the Dawn’s casino was busy, busy, busy. A high percentage of these players will gamble at any machine they can find — whether it’s an intelligent bet or not.
Your comps on the Dawn were affected by three things. Seven Stars was one of them, your NCL status (based on the number of cruises you’ve taken with them), and your Casinos at Sea status (based on how much you’ve played in the shipboard casinos during your previous trips.) Because of my lack of gambling on the ship, my comps on the ship are less than they would be if I were a big player in NCL’s Casinos at Sea program. I don’t have a problem with this. Personally, Bonnie and I enjoyed our belated honeymoon. Consider these comments to be observations and not complaints.
Since NCL and Caesars have some common ownership, it probably makes sense for NCL to give lavish comps to a large group of proven gamblers. The fact that a few of these “proven gamblers” never venture into the casino on the ship is just another “cost of doing business” for NCL. On average, I suspect Caesars/NCL made out quite well on this promotion. There were enough “will gamble anywhere, anytime” personalities who qualified for this Seven Stars Signature Event cruise that the casino was never lacking for players.
We were also fortunate to have picked the better run event. At least one previous Seven Stars Signature Event in the fall of 2014 had numerous players very angry at the way it turned out. That didn’t happen on this cruise. Presumably Caesars learned from mistakes made previously, and also they got lucky in that external circumstances didn’t bite them this time around.