Cruises - Buying casino chips with credit card

Anyone knows if Carnival still allows to charge casino chips to your sail and sign card without charging a fee or ringing it up as a cash advance?

Sailed with them last October. Used sail and sign card. No fee. The system has gotten really nice.

Sailed with them last October. Used sail and sign card. No fee. The system has gotten really nice.

No cash advance, correct?

Sailed with them three weeks ago.

It is a 3% charge to use your Sign & Sail card to get casino chips, and a 5.5% surcharge if you want to use your credit card to get cash! If you plan on taking out more than $200, then the on-board ATM might be a better deal ($6 fee, not including your local bank's fees).

However! If your ship has an electronic PokerPro table, you can simply buy in for $30-200, fold a few hands (or simply buy-in when no one else is around), quit, go to the casino cage, request to cash out your poker money, and you get your money in cash with no fees. Whether that's worth saving 3% or $6-ish is up to you. I paid for almost all of my incidentals (booze, laundry, Camp Carnival after-hours, and pictures) playing poker; one of the softest games I've ever played in.

Sailed with them three weeks ago.

It is a 3% charge to use your Sign & Sail card to get casino chips, and a 5.5% surcharge if you want to use your credit card to get cash! If you plan on taking out more than $200, then the on-board ATM might be a better deal ($6 fee, not including your local bank's fees).

However! If your ship has an electronic PokerPro table, you can simply buy in for $30-200, fold a few hands (or simply buy-in when no one else is around), quit, go to the casino cage, request to cash out your poker money, and you get your money in cash with no fees. Whether that's worth saving 3% or $6-ish is up to you. I paid for almost all of my incidentals (booze, laundry, Camp Carnival after-hours, and pictures) playing poker; one of the softest games I've ever played in.

That's a great idea on the poker game - have they also gone cashless gaming on the slots?

I haven't been on Carnival in years, but when I did there was the 3% fee in place for both tables (chips) and cash and its not the sort of thing that they would do away with, they aren't that sort of company.

If the OPs plan is to make airmiles then this isn't going to work, but if it is just to have access to cash on the cruise (without carrying it on the plane) then you can do a front money deposit at the cage, I believe that they accept Cashiers Checks (confirm with OPC who to draw it out to).

There is no 3% for Front Money, so you effectively create a bank in the casino for yourself, they may ask questions if you don't play, but I am sure you can stall them...

have they also gone cashless gaming on the slots?


They have, but I don't think there is a way to get hard cash out. Given how many people on CC are slot players, any method to extract cash without fees through slot machines would've been known/exploited by now.

That said, I was going to post my fee-free experience on CC, but, the more I think about it, I won't.

As far as I know, Carnival hasn't clamped down on their player bank system on the slots. You simply put your cruise card in the slot machine, follow the instructions to create a player bank, deposit whatever amount you want from your shipboard account to your player bank, and play or cash out whenever you want. There is a daily limit of something like $2000, but it's fee free and is simply charged to your ship account, which is then charged to your credit card.

It's been this way for at least 6 years, across all the Carnival family of cruise lines (Princess, Holland America, P&O, Costa etc). One would think this is easily abused and therefore Carnival would cut down on it, but I think they make so much off of people who gamble more this way that they find it worth it for people who use the system as a mile-earning ATM.

A quick search on CC shows that my method works on slot machines, too. One line spin on a penny slot, anyone? :D

A quick search on CC shows that my method works on slot machines, too. One line spin on a penny slot, anyone? :D

You don't even need to spend the penny. When I did it, all I did was create the player bank, upload $100 to the bank from my account, took the card to the cage and cashed out the bank for $100 cash in hand. You do have to make sure when you play the slots with the player bank, that you upload your money from the machine back to your card before leaving the machine (whether you actually play it or just use it to get fee-free cash). I have seen people simply pull their card out of the machine and walk away with 20 or 30 bucks left on the machine.

You don't even need to spend the penny. When I did it, all I did was create the player bank, upload $100 to the bank from my account, took the card to the cage and cashed out the bank for $100 cash in hand. You do have to make sure when you play the slots with the player bank, that you upload your money from the machine back to your card before leaving the machine (whether you actually play it or just use it to get fee-free cash). I have seen people simply pull their card out of the machine and walk away with 20 or 30 bucks left on the machine.

On our last two CC cruises the money automatically uploaded to our bank when we pulled the card.

On our last two CC cruises the money automatically uploaded to our bank when we pulled the card.


SOunds like a nice improvement then. Been a couple years now since we've been on a Carnival line so I hadn't had the chance to notice. They probably had too many people walk away from the machine and lost money.

As far as I know, Carnival hasn't clamped down on their player bank system on the slots. You simply put your cruise card in the slot machine, follow the instructions to create a player bank, deposit whatever amount you want from your shipboard account to your player bank, and play or cash out whenever you want. There is a daily limit of something like $2000, but it's fee free and is simply charged to your ship account, which is then charged to your credit card.

It's been this way for at least 6 years, across all the Carnival family of cruise lines (Princess, Holland America, P&O, Costa etc). One would think this is easily abused and therefore Carnival would cut down on it, but I think they make so much off of people who gamble more this way that they find it worth it for people who use the system as a mile-earning ATM.

Agreed. It definitely works, just got off the boat a week ago and cash out a couple hundred before a port. Not a problem at all. I did however fall victim to a little gambling which countered the advantages. I would rather gamble the fee, get a few points than to pay an atm fee. Plus free points and use my Cap1 Venture miles to credit off the charge when I got back home.

Agreed. It definitely works, just got off the boat a week ago and cash out a couple hundred before a port. Not a problem at all. I did however fall victim to a little gambling which countered the advantages. I would rather gamble the fee, get a few points than to pay an atm fee. Plus free points and use my Cap1 Venture miles to credit off the charge when I got back home.

I went on Carnival this weekend and just did this 3 times for $100 each. There are only two problems that I encountered. One, the slot machines only let you load up to $100, so I did the max. I'm not sure if there is a way to load up more by doing it multiple times while the room card is inserted, but I really didn't try. Not sure if possible. The only other problem I encountered was that the first time I did it I didn't play at all. Just cashed it out. So I was told at the cashier that the next time I did this without gambling at all, my room card would deactivate this feature automatically and I would then have to use cash to play for the remainder of the cruise. So the second and third day I did it I found a penny machine, gambled a few pennies for less than a minute and cashed out and it worked just fine. I wanted to ring up about $2,000 worth of spending and ended up doing only $300 because I just didn't feel it was worth the hassle with the $100 per load limit, so if anyone knows of a way to do more than $100 per load by doing multiple loads by all means please let me know.

The $100 thing might be their way of countering this now. I remember it was something $500 or $1000/day you were allowed to load into your player bank when I was last on Carnival in 2009. Indeed, I read reports on cruise critic of people bringing thousands of dollars home from the cruise by doing this simply for the points.

so if anyone knows of a way to do more than $100 per load by doing multiple loads by all means please let me know.

As I said up-thread, if you are poker-inclined, then the Poker Pro tables allow you to charge up to $200.

The $100 thing might be their way of countering this now. I remember it was something $500 or $1000/day you were allowed to load into your player bank when I was last on Carnival in 2009. Indeed, I read reports on cruise critic of people bringing thousands of dollars home from the cruise by doing this simply for the points.

Not saying you're limited to $100 per day now, but simply that you might have to do $100, play, cash out, and repeat as long as you want to on the same day. The daily limit might be more, but I simply didn't try and I didn't want to flag myself by asking them. I just did $100 each day for all 3 days of the cruise. I don't actually like gambling and I don't know any card games, so poker or any other games were out of the question as I'd be risking actually losing the money.

Thanks for the info. Planning to take Carnival Cruise this Oct, will report back.

On costa cruise lines, in June, the limit was 500 Euro per day PER credit card. You would register a credit card with your ship account, then use your ship card in a slot machine, the most expensive slots (i believe 5 euro a spin) allowed me to put 200 Euro at a time onto my ship card. So I'd put 200 Euro, play a spin, cash out, put 200 Euro, play another spin, cash out, put 100 Euro, spin, cash out. By cash out i mean cash out to my ship account. Then go to the cage and cash out the ship account to cash.

Then go back to the lobby, get out your next credit card, switch your account over to it (this is an automated process u dont have to talk to anyone), and do the same thing.

I would not however allow me to do more than 500 Euro per day per card.

Also if your on costa BE CAREFUL, as they charge you in Euros so if you dont have a foreign transaction fee free card and you account is not normally settled in Euros, then you may incur a fee for all these transactions.

Costa is owned by carnival (just to be clear).

Happy Cruising

p.s. If anybody goes on a costa cruise in the near future let me know, I need ya to cash out a few 100 Euro blackjack chips i still have left over!

On costa cruise lines, in June, the limit was 500 Euro per day PER credit card. You would register a credit card with your ship account, then use your ship card in a slot machine, the most expensive slots (i believe 5 euro a spin) allowed me to put 200 Euro at a time onto my ship card. So I'd put 200 Euro, play a spin, cash out, put 200 Euro, play another spin, cash out, put 100 Euro, spin, cash out. By cash out i mean cash out to my ship account. Then go to the cage and cash out the ship account to cash.

Then go back to the lobby, get out your next credit card, switch your account over to it (this is an automated process u dont have to talk to anyone), and do the same thing.

I would not however allow me to do more than 500 Euro per day per card.

Also if your on costa BE CAREFUL, as they charge you in Euros so if you dont have a foreign transaction fee free card and you account is not normally settled in Euros, then you may incur a fee for all these transactions.

Costa is owned by carnival (just to be clear).

Happy Cruising

p.s. If anybody goes on a costa cruise in the near future let me know, I need ya to cash out a few 100 Euro blackjack chips i still have left over!

Why would you need to go to a Casino on a Costa cruise? Aren't you already gambling with your life when you set foot on one of their boats?

Why would you need to go to a Casino on a Costa cruise? Aren't you already gambling with your life when you set foot on one of their boats?

Everyone has accidents at some point ... doesn't mean they aren't safe as a whole.

Not saying you're limited to $100 per day now, but simply that you might have to do $100, play, cash out, and repeat as long as you want to on the same day. The daily limit might be more, but I simply didn't try and I didn't want to flag myself by asking them. I just did $100 each day for all 3 days of the cruise. I don't actually like gambling and I don't know any card games, so poker or any other games were out of the question as I'd be risking actually losing the money.

To "cash out", is it just done at the machine and you can reload? Or do you have to go to the teller each time?

Thanks

The cashout is done on the machine, you are cashing the machine out (i.e. the money u put in via your credit card) to your ship account. Then at the end of the cruise stop by the casino cashier, give your ship card, and you can cash out your ship account to cash.

To be clear the slot machine will not give you actual cash.

The cashout is done on the machine, you are cashing the machine out (i.e. the money u put in via your credit card) to your ship account. Then at the end of the cruise stop by the casino cashier, give your ship card, and you can cash out your ship account to cash.

To be clear the slot machine will not give you actual cash.

Just for clarifications's sake, you create a player bank funded from your shipboard account, and the money goes between the machine and the player bank, not between the machine and shipboard account. When you are finished at the machine, you have to reload the money from the machine back to your player bank. You have to make sure you cash the player bank out at the casino cage before the end of the cruise, as that money doesn't automatically go back to your shipboard account.

The cashout is done on the machine, you are cashing the machine out (i.e. the money u put in via your credit card) to your ship account. Then at the end of the cruise stop by the casino cashier, give your ship card, and you can cash out your ship account to cash.

To be clear the slot machine will not give you actual cash.

I understand not getting cash from the machine. I guess my question is, will the machine let you add additional money to your account using your sea pass card if you have a current ballance on the account? Or do I need to empty the casino account before adding more money to it?

I understand not getting cash from the machine. I guess my question is, will the machine let you add additional money to your account using your sea pass card if you have a current ballance on the account? Or do I need to empty the casino account before adding more money to it?

I can't say for sure, but I don't see why you can't add more up to whatever daily limit they have set.

No you don't have to cash out, and the daily limit is per card.

Since the OP question has been pretty much covered...is there any workaround on Princess ??

Since the OP question has been pretty much covered...is there any workaround on Princess ??

The Princess casinos are operated by the same company that runs the Carnival (and Holland America) casinos (a subsidiary company of Carnival Corp), so the same procedure applies.

just came home from the Star Princess: first time experience with getting slot token from room charge. As others have said, insert one's room key card into the slot machine, set up a pin #, request $ to be loaded onto card for play. The machine flashes your first name, pts accumulation, and you need to remember to cash out of the machine before trying another machine.

I had hoped to be able to use my card for table games: no, only the slot machines. I checked my closing statement and the slot token amount was listed and no service fee. The casino reminds players to take their room keys to the cashier cage for "cash out" before the closing of the casino at cruise end. Any money left will not be transferred over to one's room account.

The casino reminds players to take their room keys to the cashier cage for "cash out" before the closing of the casino at cruise end. Any money left will not be transferred over to one's room account.

My understanding is that Carnival will send you a check over a certain amount. I haven't tested it, and frankly this policy provides a good excuse as to why you're cashing our through the week (if questioned.)

I just got off Carnival Magic and had no problem getting $600 in about 5 mins. That included 4 minutes waiting in line at the cashier. :D