Week Two Aboard the Norwegian Bliss

In last week’s blog, I told of Bonnie and I going on two back-to-back Sunday to-Sunday Mexican Riviera cruises. I was still aboard the Bliss when I started the last blog post. I’m already home before I’m starting this one. Some of what I previously wrote needs amendment. Not because I intentionally lied to you, but either the host in the casino gave me bad information, or I misunderstood what was said.

I earned 1,000 points each week, entitling me to $500 off my next NCL cruise. I needed to make cruise reservations using these certificates within 60 days, and the trips needed to be completed within one year. So, two days after we arrived home, I called NCL’s Casinos at Sea department to make the arrangements. I wanted to use these certificates to pay for the port fees and possibly gratuities on the same cruises we earned by obtaining Seven Stars status at Caesars.

No can do. The certificates are only good for the cabins themselves — or an upgrade. We could upgrade to a “Club Balcony Suite,” for an additional $360 per person, but I could only use the certificates for my part of that, not Bonnie’s. So, If I wanted to use my certificates at all, we’d have to pay an additional $360. We would get a bigger room, bigger balcony, and a bottle of sparkling wine. For $360. For each of two weeks.

We decided to do this. It might end up being our last cruises (all of our cruises so far have been largely subsidized by casinos — paying retail for cruises doesn’t sound attractive at all — and I’m giving up gambling effective January 1, so we won’t be getting any more cruises “for free.” Paying retail for cruises goes against my frugal nature, and with the casino no longer attractive to somebody who has given up gambling, there’s far less reason to go.)  

When I said in last week’s blog that the certificates were worth 5% if you played video poker and 10% if you played slots, that’s only true if the certificates are useful to you — like if you didn’t get highly discounted cruises from Caesars or other casinos and were willing to pay retail for them.

There were 30 or so guests cruising back-to-back like we did — presumably, there’s a similar number every week. But somehow the Bliss has a computer glitch that kicks in on back-to-back cruises.

Usually, you use your stateroom key card as a slot club card in the casino. I went to the casino about 2 a.m. on Monday morning for my first visit of the week. The machines are largely available at that time, and I was optimistic that the new passengers would have left unplayed multipliers on the Ultimate X (UX) machines and also left some of the (relatively few) persistent slot machines in an advantageous state.

The first slot machine I checked was Rich Little Piggies (RLP). At home I rarely check these machines because a high percentage of machine pros know what to look for and they are checked regularly. But on a cruise ship, when there aren’t too many machine pros, this might be worth checking. When these machines aren’t being played, what shows on the screen is the 1¢ 75-coin game. While this is a low denomination that isn’t of particular interest to me, the screen showed the blue piggy at 25 with a fat yellow piggy. 

Simply put, this machine was in a positive state and lots of players had walked right by it since it was last played. This was a good sign because at least a portion of the UX vultures would recognize this RLP game as being good to play. And if they hadn’t found this game right out in the open, there were probably multipliers available on the UX machines ripe for the plucking!

Except my card wouldn’t work.

I went to the casino cage. They looked at what they could see on their computers and told me that my account was in good standing, and I should not have a problem. The slot attendants had gone to bed, but some of the table game dealers filled in for them. One of them tried my card and agreed it wouldn’t work and he had no explanation as to why.

I passed a man in a suit with an NCL employee badge on, and I asked him if he was in the slot department. No, but he was the overall casino shift manager and wanted to know what my issue was. I explained that my card worked last week and wouldn’t work now. He told me they sometimes had a problem on the first few days for a back-to-back cruiser. He thought the problem had been fixed, but they had a workaround that they could use. He told me he could get one of his slot people, who was currently off duty, to come and help.

“You’re going to wake somebody up?” I asked. “I can wait until tomorrow.”

“No,” he replied. “If you’re in the mood to play now, we want to help you. My slot guy should be here in ten minutes, so please wait over here,” and he pointed to some empty seats.

I did and about 15 minutes later I had another card. It was for the casino only and wouldn’t work to open my cabin door. It had a different design on the card so I could easily tell the cards apart. We tested it and it worked, at least on the machine we tested it on.

When I went back to the RLP game, the new card wouldn’t work. The guy who had been woken up to help me had left the casino. There was no way I was going to get him called back again. I’d just wait until tomorrow.

I was a little concerned. At this point I thought the promotion was worth between 5% and 10% and I didn’t know how many opportunities I’d get. It would depend on how much competition I had at UX vulturing — which I couldn’t know yet because the ship had just sailed 10 or so hours earlier. The good numbers on the RLP machine were an indication that I’d find plenty of opportunities to get my points, but it was just an indication, not a certainty.

As it turned out, I got the new card fixed the next day and had no problem finding enough plays to earn 1,000 points. But I didn’t know this when I returned to bed Monday morning at about 3 a.m.

The back-to-back problem also affected my internet package for a few days. It eventually got fixed but I missed something on Sunday that I really wanted. We were going to do a special Gambling With an Edge podcast on the recent Blackjack Ball, and we planned to tape it Sunday afternoon when we were still in the port of Los Angeles.

Unfortunately, my name wasn’t recognized when I tried to set up the internet account for the second week. It would be fixed a few days later, but Richard Munchkin had to tape the GWAE episode without me. He did fine, of course, but we both wish I would have been able to participate.

I don’t understand why the Bliss had computer glitches affecting back-to-back cruisers. The ship is about six years old, there are dozens of ships in the fleet, and dozens of back-to-back cruisers every week. They’ve had plenty of opportunity to fix the glitch, whatever it was.

The attitude of the employees was excellent — but somehow the system didn’t work properly. I don’t know if this affects other ships in the fleet or not.