• Casino At Sea Certificate

I received an offer for a Norwegian Cruise Lines cruise from CET.
The dates I need to be in Vegas correspond with a junket by my travel group, so it would cost me $0 to take advantage of this offer. (Well $0 assuming I broke even gambling on the weekend. LOL).

The Norwegian (NCL) Casinos @ Sea Rewards program has 5 tiers. At most casinos, players can earn points to move to different tiers by playing multiple types of games, including table games and video poker, and at some casinos, you can even move to different tiers by playing keno or bingo. May 13, 2009  Casino opened at 9 a.m. On all sea days. They conveniently will take cash, sail and sign card and they have an atm at hand to further remove you from your money. A few days into our cruise on the Legend hubby struck up conversation with lady sitting by herself near Lido bar looking PO'd.

I cannot find any restrictions on the offer! I have until July 2014 to take the cruise, but I can't find where there is any limit on which cruise I pick.
Has anyone ever used one of these offers?
1.) Is there any limit on what cruise you pick? The brochure lists Europe, Alaska, and Caribbean cruises, so I'm guessing the only restriction is if your class is still available at time of booking?

Casino At Sea Certificate

2.) My offer is for an inside cabin. Can I upgrade to a balcony room by paying the price difference?
I still have to pay to get to the port, departure fees, taxes, gratuities, and drinks outside of the casino, so it will be far from free, but it would give me a $1,878 savings. Makes the 5+ hour flight times to and from Vegas worth $180/hour, so I can live with that. :-D
The 12 day Southern Caribbean cruise I am looking at is $939 for Inside cabin. We have done the Southern Cruise on Celebrity before, and really liked it. St. Maarten, and Colombia, would be new stops for us.
The other cruise I am looking at is a Miami to Los Angeles cruise through the Panama Canal at $949 (cheaper since it is not a round trip sail). Has anyone ever done this cruise?Raleigh,
I have a little information for you about that. I was invited on a similar cruise several years ago (think it was 2007) on NCL through Hilton-AC. My certificate was for up to a 7 day cruise (apparently yours doesn't specify), and I had a little over a year to book it. I booked on NCL Pearl for October 2008 (not quite a year later) within the booking deadline, but about 3 weeks before the cruise, NCL notified me that they were dry-docking the boat for maintenance and the cruise would not happen! I contacted the Casino at Sea people asking to re-book, but where I was working I had to reserve my time off a year in advance, and they couldn't stretch the certificate that far, so I ended up not going at all. At least they were willing to make it right, even if I couldn't take advantage of it.
I have been on the NCL 10 day Southern Caribbean, and it's a great cruise with lots of good shore excursions. NCL is my favorite line among them, Princess, Carnival, and Holland America, and certainly the best casinos among those choices; I haven't sailed Celebrity. Panama Canal I have not sailed, but experienced cruisers I've known think it's among the best trips. And NCL should be able to help you with partner discount air fares to/from destination ports. They're very helpful at their 866 number listed on the website without being pushy sellers. The Casino at Sea (which is a different number, but is wholly owned by NCL, not subcontracted to a gambling consortium) hosts and dealers are very good, and pretty generous with their comps; they can write off shipboard charges, which can include anything you charge to the room, including gaming markers (which they did for me last month; I was shocked). I think as a gambler you might really find it worth your time to start a relationship with them.I think I got this offer too.
From what I read on Tripadvisor, you are responsible for taxes and port fees at about $250/pp. And you can upgrade to the balcony for whatever the difference in cost is.Thanks beachbumbabs, boyimbo, larwiz1, and timberjim for your input.
I had also been googling for this offer, and found a few forum entries on other sites regarding free NCL cruises, but none more recent than 2010. To me, it looks like they may have changed the program a bit. Instead of having certificates for certain cruises, it looks like you get a voucher for any cruise, and you have up to a year to book it. I am guessing it is like free airfare, where they only allot a couple of cabins for freebies, so I many not get to take the cruise I want, if someone beats me to it.
From what I have read, NCL has 3-4-5x craps odds, so that is decent. I went ahead and booked the last 2 seats on the junket. We shall see what happens.Raleigh,
I am not a craps player, but I let them talk me thru it one slow night, and they were more than competent IMHO; I did very well on the 6/8 odds bets after coming out, and they coached me quickly thru the correct protocol and the best bets without intimidating me. The craps were very popular on the Epic, which has the largest casino in the line; they had 2 craps tables on the boat, plus a third I never saw open, but I was transatlantic; in Miami when they run the Caribbean all 3 pits are very busy according to the dealers. They have 27 dealers on board plus 10 pit supervisors, 1 casino boss, and at least 3 hosts.
On that boat, they have 2 smoking pits and 1 non-smoking. They have roughly 12 BJ tables, all 6 deck shoes; I think it was double any 2 cards, stand on all 17's, unlimited splits, no double after split. 3 craps 3-4-5x, 2 roulette wheels with electronic tote/highlights, 1 paigow (no bonus), 2 3 card, 1 let it ride (might be a 2nd one not opened, can't recall), and 2 ultimate THE (I played this almost exclusively; great game!). They have a hi-limit room but not sure what's back there other than BJ. Most table minimums were 5 after the 1st day; they weren't getting much play at 10 so they lowered the limits. They have about 600 slots, with about 40 1dollar or higher; about 1/2 the slots are smoking areas, the other 1/2 non. Almost all penny/2cent video with features, very few game king/VP types. They run tournaments for BJ, THE, and slots about every other day, and deal 1-2 tables of THE 2/5/pot limit every night; when they're busier, i think they deal with higher blinds. You can sign markers for up to 2000/day to your stateroom and settle your account at the end of the cruise, in addition to whatever cash you may have. No checks.

I received an offer for a Norwegian Cruise Lines cruise from CET.

OK Cruisers, what sort of level are we talking about here ? Diamond ? One reference point, if you would share it, is how many tier credits have you earned this year ? Thanks, needless to say, we did not get the offer.
- Mr and Mrs L. Roller

OK Cruisers, what sort of level are we talking about here ? Diamond ? One reference point, if you would share it, is how many tier credits have you earned this year ? Thanks, needless to say, we did not get the offer.
- Mr and Mrs L. Roller

Hi L.R.,
I don't think you are going to like my answer. ;-)
I was a low tier Diamond in 2010, 2011, but I backed off my CET play and fell to Gold. However, I still had a good rating with my local travel junket agent (due to my Beau Rivage play), so they were able to get me a free trip to Paris for New Year's Eve as a CET Gold player. That trip, coupled with 2 overnight trips to Cherokee has given me 7,120 Tier Credits, so I am middle Platinum now. So basically, I have 7,120 points on 3 trips, or about 7 days of play, which is about 1,000 Tier Credits / day average.
In the past 2 months, the volume of offers has picked up tremendously for me, mostly from CET properties (other than Beau).
I usually take about $1000 / day for a trip, and will play almost all craps, with an average bet rating of $120-$210. I will play 4 to 8 hours a day, if my $1,000 does not run out. Lately I have been mostly losing, but during the Diamond years I had quite a few winning sessions, in the $1k-3k range, so my Theo loss was quite high for me, but still not what I would call a high roller by any means. Actually, I'm not even sure I qualify as a medium roller. More like a step above a $10 player. I certainly don't throw black chips around like some other players on here.
So, I think my ADT is much higher than the Platinum 7,120 Tier score would indicate. And I 'think', that is what is driving these extra offers, like the cruise.
My wife will play the $.01 slots most of the time, so she will lose another $500 each trip, but that gets me quite a few Tier Credits from her play.