New Promotion on Norwegian Cruise Lines

As I write this, Bonnie and I are spending two weeks aboard the NCL Bliss having set sail Sunday, October 26. We tour the Mexican Riviera (Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlán) on back-to-back cruises. This is our “go to” itinerary for three reasons.

First, I have extended family near our departure port, so after a 200-mile drive from Las Vegas, we get to have a place to spend the night before, a place to park the car while we’re cruising, transportation to and from the port itself, and a chance to visit family I don’t see very often. In exchange, I buy everybody dinner Saturday night — and many of my family members accept this bribe.

Second, the Bliss has a Texas barbeque specialty dining option. While Bonnie and I are not barbeque fans, Texas-style or otherwise, the venue also has a country-western band playing every night next to a nice dance floor. And we are fans of that. We are better than average dancers and Bonnie never tires of compliments we receive from other passengers.

Our third reason will resonate with more of my readers than the first two. The last time we were on the Bliss, in the fall of 2024, the casino offered a sizeable number of persistence slot machines, many of which I knew how to beat. There are many fewer of these slots than there were a year ago, but there are still 11 Super Star machines which include Ultimate X (UX). 

These UX machines have three games (Double Bonus, Double Double Bonus, and Deuces Wild), in Triple Play, Five Play, and Ten Play configurations. Each of these come in five different denominations, yielding 45 different combinations per machine.

Since cruise ship gamblers tend to be less sophisticated gaming-wise than those found in Las Vegas, these UX machines may frequently be found with unplayed multipliers. I don’t seek unplayed UX multipliers in most casinos I frequent because several casinos remove players who do so. I do look for those unplayed multipliers aboard the Bliss because it is both lucrative and if I get kicked out of the casino, it’s relatively small potatoes. Especially since I plan to give up gambling in a few months anyway.

Plus, the casino’s smoking section is behind sealed glass which makes the rest of the casino relatively smoke-free. Not completely, because some smoke escapes whenever one of the doors between the smoking and non-smoking areas is opened, but it is far less smoky than many casinos. Which is a huge plus for me.

In the casino, you earn points for your play. One point for every $5 coin-in for slots and one for $10 coin-in for video poker. The points are redeemable for free play, at a miniscule yet non-zero rate. As near as I can tell, it’s 0.01% for video poker and twice that for slots.

Starting in early October, they began a fairly lucrative promotion called “Points to Paradise.” According to the slot club boothling I spoke to, this promotion is valid on most NCL ships, and they plan to run it indefinitely. 

If you earn 500 points, you receive $250 off your next cruise. One thousand points gets you $500 off, and 2,000 points earns you a free cruise. After you earn these benefits, you must book a cruise within 60 days and sail within a year or the benefits evaporate. If you stay on the ship for two or more weeks back-to-back, insofar as this promotion is concerned, and you end up with, say, 450 points on the first week, those points do not carry over until the following week.

For the mathematically challenged, if you are planning on, or at least willing to, cruise again on NCL within a year, playing on slots gives you a 10% rebate, and playing video poker gives you a 5% rebate — assuming you stop playing when you reach exactly 500, 1,000, or 2,000 points.

If you play nothing other than vulturing UX machines, it’s unlikely that you’ll earn 500 points. You are, after all, only playing one hand at a time whenever you find a good situation. And the number of good situations you find largely depends on how many other UX vultures there are on the cruise. There are some persistence slots which earn points much faster than vulturing UX, simply because you often play a lot of hands on such machines until it becomes unplayable, so I’ll end up with close to 1,000 points each week. I’m writing this in the middle of our first week of cruising, so I’m not sure what my balance will be.

The best non-UX video poker I found was single-line 8/5 Jacks or Better in denominations between 50 cents and $10 — which returns 97.3% if played correctly. I don’t think I’ve ever played 8/5 Jacks or Better before, but I know 8/5 Bonus Poker perfectly and that strategy is “close enough” to play for a few hands. A a machine with a casino edge of 2.7% paired with a promotion that returns 5% is definitely playable. If I end up with, say 800 points by the time the cruise ends, I’ll earn the remaining 200 points by playing $2,000 coin-in worth of 8/5 Jacks or Better, with an expected loss of $54. This will allow me to receive my second $250 discount for the week. I plan to do this for both weeks. If the competition for unplayed UX multipliers during the second week of our cruising is greater than it is the first week, I might end up with only $250 in cruise discounts for the second week.

Bonnie and I have already qualified for our highly discounted NCL cruises for 2026 that we’ve earned by maintaining Seven Stars status. I may well not be gambling after January 2026, but I will be cashing what I earned prior to that. We’ll probably reserve two back-to-back Mexican Riviera cruises on the Bliss again next fall.

While we won’t have the casino as a reason to go on the cruise, I’ll still have family in Southern California and there will still be country-western dancing on the ship (we hope). Those two reasons are sufficient.

I won’t make the mistake of picking dates during the World Series like I unwittingly did this year. I’ve been a Dodger fan since the team moved to Los Angeles in 1958, and if they’re in it again next year I’ll want to watch the games at night in preference to going dancing. Which won’t be to Bonnie’s liking.

While the Dodgers are longshots to make it back again to the 2026 World Series, they probably have better odds than any other team. And we can just as easily go the week after the Series.