Bonnie and I each earn at least one highly discounted Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) cruise per year because of our Seven Stars status within the Caesars Total Rewards system. Cruising to the Mexican Riviera out of Los Angeles is our default trip. I have extended family in Southern California and we use the cruise as an excuse to get together. We’ll show up a day early, treat everybody to dinner, and one of them will provide a place to sleep and transportation to and from the ship. It works for all involved.
This year, we cruised on the Norwegian Bliss. The first of our two cruises was a 5-day affair immediately after the Bliss repositioned itself from its summer run in Alaska. Schedule-wise it worked for us, and in another month, Bonnie will go with her daughter and enjoy the seven-day version of the trip.
We’ve been to the ports. Sometimes we get off the ship, and sometimes we stay aboard. For us, we use it as an excuse to go dancing every night. And, of course, now I know a bit about slots, I look forward to visiting the casino. When I was strictly a video poker player, I avoided ship casinos. Not anymore.
The Bliss has the best casino at sea I’ve ever experienced — out of possibly 80 separate cruises. Perhaps other ships have the same or similar features, but this is the best for me so far. The top feature of it is that two-thirds of the casino is totally non-smoking, and the smoking part of it is behind sealed doors. Although some smoke drifts through when people open the doors to the sealed area to enter or exit, it’s by far the best cruise chip casino arrangement I’ve enjoyed so far. There are machines and table games in both areas. Although I walked through the smoking area once to see what was there, I avoided playing there. The cigarette smoke is much more concentrated in that sealed room than in a regular casino. Even when I could find no more playable machines in the non-smoking area, I left the casino rather than check out what machines were then playable in the smoking area.
It used to be that NCL would give you a green casino player’s card along with a separate card you could use to get a free drink in the casino. You were supposed to be playing when you ordered the free drink, but they didn’t always check very closely. These cards no longer exist.
Now you tap your room keycard on the machine (very similar to the way you can pay for things with your smart phone at some locations) and you’re logged onto that machine. When you’re done playing at that machine, you can either cash out into a TITO ticket or tap your card again and the money will go to your account.
The next time you play (it could be in a day or two — it could be at an adjacent machine), if you have money in your account, you can simply download it at the machine. On this particular trip, I was able to build credits to an excess of $2,000. I downloaded $200 of it and carried it between machines in a TITO, which I find much easier to deal with. If it went to zero, I’d download some more. If I hit a sizeable jackpot (but less than the W2-G threshold), I’d put all the money on my card and download another ticket for $200 or so. If I dropped a ticket and lost it, I’d rather it be for $200 than $2,000.
On the last night of the cruise, I turned slot points into free play, played them off, and collected all of the money in my account. I was told I could leave both slot points and money on my card and the next time I sailed on NCL both the money and slot points would be there safe and sound. I’d be willing to risk that if I were sailing on two back-to-back cruises, but not if, as in my current case, it’s going to be a year or so until I return.
Just as in an out-of-town land-based casino where I plan to return again and again, I know for certain that at some point I’m going to die or otherwise not be able to return and redeem accumulated points and money. I’d much rather that money be in my estate and distributed according to my will than being left in the NCL account forever. I’m not sure what the NCL does with abandoned cash and slot club points, but I’m sure it doesn’t go to my heirs.
The third feature I appreciated was that there were nine Super Star machines in the non-smoking area, each including Ultimate X, among several other games (like Super Times Pay, Spin Poker, and several other video poker games, and Keno).
The Ultimate X games came in Triple Play, Five Play, and Ten Play — and each had five separate denominations — and each of those came in Double Bonus, Double Double Bonus, and Deuces Wild. That’s 45 separate games to check per machine. To fully load such a game requires 10 coins per line — five coins to collect money as you normally do in video poker and five additional coins to build new multipliers.
These games could return 95% or so to the player if played perfectly with ten coins per line. (Playing perfectly is extremely unlikely due to the difficulty of the strategies and the fact that strategies aren’t published for pay schedules that bad.) If you can find a game with unredeemed multipliers, you play one dealt hand and each time you do so you’re playing at least a 105% game, and it can exceed 1,000%. The latter number is rare and usually occurs when a 10-coin-per-line player was dealt a flush or full house and left the game immediately afterwards.
Over the five-day cruise I found 300-400 playable situations on this game. I certainly wasn’t the only person checking, but the good situations kept getting created over and over again by the not-so-knowledgeable players. When you have this many opportunities and always played at an advantage, it’s close to impossible to end up behind. And, with a little luck, you can end up way ahead. Over time you’re going to hit 4-of-a-kinds and royal flushes. Those are always good, but when you hit such hands with a multiplier, they’re even better.
There were playable slot machines as well. Some rather new ones that many players didn’t know how to exploit, and also some oldies-but-goodies like Scarab. This is a game that is well known, and I never check in Vegas because so many players know about it. But on a cruise ship? I checked regularly and found several playable situations.
My biggest score ($1,000) came on a slot machine, as well as my biggest losses (about $400, twice). Overall, though, I was easily ahead on both video poker and slots. I need to juggle my time so that I can eat and go dancing with Bonnie, but there’s still time for me to go check out machines in the casino a few times each day. I didn’t hit any W2-Gs this time even though I was playing machines where they were certainly possible. Maybe next time.
Next year around this time the Bliss will be assigned to the Mexican Riviera route again. That’s good news for Bonnie and me.
