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I'm off to bed. Hopefully you guys can get a little sleep on the flight yourselves. This has been the most fun review/sail along ever. Thanks for the sights, humor and education.

Is "being blessed by others" the same as depending on the kindness of strangers? Asking for Blanche...

If you are in the cruise business the industry standard is free food, or food included if you prefer. If you are in the casino business (land or sea) the industry standard is free perks, or perks included if you prefer. In both businesses you can try defying the industry standard and charge for the free (included) parts, but companies don't do that because they believe cruisers would go to competitors and gamblers would go to competitors. If you are going to lump the paid parts and the free parts of one business together, a fair comparison with another business requires lumping the paid and free parts together for that other business. I would lump the free and paid parts together for both businesses because the bottom line profit is what matters.

Casino perks are included, not free...

I thought giving away free food to sell rooms was the loss leader...

Let me guess... Irish?

I'd go with her too!

Disembarkation training? Sid could have used that on his last cruise.

The other day you woke up and made your first few posts just as I was going to bed. Now you are going to bed 5 or 6 hours before I will. Continue the trend. Soon we will be on the same schedule.

Welcome fellow scourge upon all that is holy and good about cruising.

I have noticed how with the free at sea drinks package, where you can get a couple of drinks or shots at the same time, they tend to be heavy on the pour.

Good luck convincing her...

Actually it worked wonders for his "hookup" resume...

Can't believe Thriller dance is still a thing. One of my sons was part of a group of students at the College of William and Mary that briefly held the Guinness world record for "most people to dance to Thriller simultaneously in one place". That was back in 2009.

You guys waking up just before I go to bed is a challenging.

Well, that's different...

My wife used to always enter the free slot tournaments that came with diamond. She badgered me until one cruise I entered. I won and got this ship on a stick and a free cruise and entry to a big tournament - a couple of hundred thousand jackpot or some such. We went on that tournament cruise and it was one of our least favorite cruises. Everyone on the ship was a slot fanatic. You could not find an open slot machine until about midnight. To top it off I was out of the "big" tournament the first day of the seven day cruise. Ever since we avoid tournaments and tournament cruises. We keep looking for a cruise hosting a Southern Baptist convention.

I'm a Woodford fan so this is a small peeve I have with NCL. But a Buffalo and Coke beats a Woodford and Pepsi so that cancels my peeve.

I don't know. In most of Europe what we call the first floor is known as the ground floor, but I think it an outlier to call any floor "zero floor." Sounds more like a warning...

That's not what I meant, but I like the way you think😁

While I also have a thing for pom-poms, I have a completely different idea of who I want holding them...

I agree. I was simply pointing out the error of saying the casino did it. Carnival did it. But as you said, their ball game. Just clarifying whose ballgame. As for disingenuous. By saying the casino did it at least 3 below applies. Knowing a little history, maybe more. adjective 1. Not straightforward or candid; insincere or calculating. 2. Pretending to be unaware or unsophisticated; faux-naïf. 3. Unaware or uninformed; naive. As to who pays for it, while the contract between Carnival Cruise Line and Global Casino Operations may not have Carnival paying GCO $25 to hand out the money (it may be more or less depending on where Carnival Corp. wants profit to appear and how much their attorneys figure they can get away with before endangering the corporate veils), legally Carnival Cruise Line is paying for it.

Now you guys are just screwing with the heads of new cruisers 😆 There will probably be a thread started by someone worried they will make a mistake and get charged $5.

It's not complicated. If you looked under benefits for the VIFP program (you know, that thing with gold, platinum, diamond levels) you would have seen the old free tournament entry benefit listed under the benefits of the VIFP program. When covid came around you would have seen the footnote to the VIFP benefits saying that since there were no tournaments the were giving $25. All that was part of the VIFP benefits available to folks who never set foot in the casino. It was offered by Carnival, not the casino operation.

Also, bringing the casino into it is very disingenuous. This was a VIFP perk listed along with all the other VIFP perks like priority boarding etc. It was not a casino perk.