Virga

7 hours ago, spsarrocco said:

Just want to say, if you click the terms link for FJ1, it's actually free drinks everywhere on board, at least for me.  This was enough for me to grab one of those!

Nice catch - very interesting!  It's definitely listed in my deals as only in the casino for me - but clicking on the T&C link does indeed say Drinks on Us "INCLDUED" (not my misspelling) Everywhere in the title.  It also doesn't have the, 'Complimentary drinks are available to the qualified (1) guest only while actively playing in the casino and limited to casino bar menu items.' text I normally see on DoU-Casino offers.  Hmmm...

3 minutes ago, Honolulu Blue said:

Thank you for sharing your experience.  It's not nice of Carnival to hide limits to their offer codes - especially if it's able to be self-booked.

 

P.S.  The offer code I mention in my original post has expired, and I'm now getting more "ordinary" prices for those Splendor Alaska cruises.  Oh well. 😐

That has happened to me several times - I've gotten in the habit of putting anything attractive on hold.  Often, it's not that the rate code expires (they have never (technically) ended a code early on me) but they decide they've sold enough at that rate, either on a particular sailing or overall, and suddenly the code can't pull up the good rates anymore.  I also would appreciate more transparency!  I've tried here a few times to encourage people to post very detailed datapoints, but I think I might be more obsessively analytical than most.  New offers should be coming soon, maybe you'll find a diamond in a few days!!

On 6/30/2022 at 10:57 AM, Honolulu Blue said:

 

First of all, thank you to everyone who replied to this long post with all the numbers of limited relevance to anyone but me.  I guess I'm a good storyteller. 😄  Also, thanks to everyone who shared their stories of killer deals linked to their accounts.  It seems I'm not so special after all - and for once, that's OK with me. 😁

 

Now, to the post I quoted above, I didn't see anything in the base T&C of the offer that would limit how many of these offers I could book at one time.  I'm not saying there isn't, just that I didn't see it.  Good to know, but even a single B2B would be a sweet deal in my eyes.

Unfortunately, the code itself isn't limited a certain number of times as a global setting - so the terms and conditions don't mention the limit.  You have to contact Carnival to be told how many uses you get.  Trust me, when I realized I'd 'wasted' my ONLY use (pre gambling) on a weekend Sunrise cruise, I was horrified and only realizing that my husband was also given a use so we could take the heavily discounted Mardi Gras cruise calmed me down. 

For instance, right now I have code FJ1 for $100pp rooms with $100pp OBC and free drinks in the casino - I can access the terms here: https://www.carnival.com/cruise-deals/vifp-club/past-guest-offers-FJ1/terms.aspx but only Carnival can tell me how many uses I have.  I guess, technically, you can figure it out yourself, by booking one and seeing if the code still shows up in your account - but that method is not terribly useful for planning.  

Six months ago, I'd have encouraged you to throw a little money in the slots to try to improve your offers, but I think the days of 'lose $300, get two free cruises and free drinks' might be over.  We still have some great rates (we each gave them back their $500 in OBC last cruise) but not on very many cruises where the cost is more than $500 per person to begin with.  For our part, I think our gambling days are done and we'll just play enough to order a couple rounds of drinks a couple times a day.

I hope that when you contact Carnival they tell you that you have at least two uses!  If not, perhaps a potential sailing mate has a use of the same code, and you could have them book the following week?  The sting of travel expenses is definitely softened with a B2B!

I have never been given more than two uses of the best rate codes - prices like that with $200-$500 OBC.  I sometimes also get another use or two of prices like that without OBC. Sometimes I only get a single use of one.  Since mine are casino offers, the casino folks can tell me how many uses of each code I get.  I don't know if a normal PVP can tell if it's not a casino offer, but probably.  

Before I started gambling on cruises - solely to get the great offers I read about here - I didn't realize these were limited and I 'wasted' my single use on a weekend cruise, not realizing how it worked.  Fortunately, my other half also had a use and we booked the Mardi Gras lady year for less than $500 total in a balcony cabin.  We've given back every penny in OBC Carnival has given us, right to the slot machines, but the cruise prices themselves have saved us thousands.  I'll miss them when we run out of OBC offers, because I don't want to spend our own money in the casino - I can't imagine the amazing cruise prices will stay at our gambling level once things get more back to normal.

The only upgrade offer I've ever received came in about two months BEFORE final payment is due.  The offer was something like $42 to go from an inside to an oceanview.  We do not value oceanview cabins at all, so we didn't take them up on it. 

They turned mine into OBC, which was fine by me, so I didn't ask if there were any other options.  

For our part, we treat the suggested/automatic gratuity the way we treat resort fees - as a complete fabrication that a property/brand uses to pretend that their rate is lower than it actually is, and avoid some taxes to boot.  We feel it is a disservice to the crew to call this amount a tip - it is merely wages called something else to make it seem more palatable.  Your complaint isn't wholly without merit - both cruisers and crew would be better off if they stopped the shady practice of decoupling some portion of wages from fares.

We used to remove the automatic 'tips' and directly reward those who provided excellent service, but eventually came to feel that this wasn't fair to behind-the-scenes staff that provided services invisibly to us.  Now, we leave the automatic 'tip' charges on the account and reward excellent service additionally.  I would vastly prefer it if the standard service charge was rolled into quoted fares, but airlines and hotels have made it clear that this won't be done unless it is mandated.  In the meantime, we've settled into a habit that works well for us.  

37 minutes ago, mz-s said:

It's possible you had a one time use offer on your account. I get those often.

I have gotten much better about paying attention to exactly what I have available and am booking ever since I realized this.  I even ask Carnival how many uses each offer I might use is good for.  

For the OP, they have so many insanely good offers floating around even o people who have never spent a dime onboard or in the casino... even if yours really was an error, I can't imagine that anyone would be able to look at your account and think, 'oh, they should NOT have this offer!  Rescind it!!'  I think you were intended to have this offer, and don't think they want to give ANY unnecessary refund to someone who is willing to sail.

I'm even more excited now!  A vintage cocktail bar and a cocktails of the world bar??  Right up my alley!  Here's hoping they also expand their import beer selection for the Gateway!

1 hour ago, tytanbri said:

I pay for everything on our cruises. I spend more time and money in the casino (slots and tables), purchase from the Cherry on Top and gift shops. Yet, my husband (plays table minimally) gets all the casino offers. I have never received one and have been on eight cruises. Makes absolutely no sense.

Never?? I was receiving (mediocre) casino offers all through the plague, and I don't think I ever earned more than fifty points before I started gambling onboard last year.  Are you sure you're opted in for casino marketing??

2 hours ago, Elaine5715 said:

Casino offers are also based on marketing data they purchase so yes, your credit/debit card information would trigger more offers than his but it doesn't matter where you spend. The onboard  and bounceback offers are tied directly to casino play

Heh, they don't have to purchase my data to know that I'm the one that pays for all the cruises and that it's my card that goes on the folios...  It's actually silly that they'd bother to purchase marketing data from outside sources if they can't even be bothered to competently track onboard spend for analysis.  Direct data on what I'm actually willing to spend money on with Carnival is incredibly rich data, and at least one other poster here thinks they don't bother to get granular with that...  As I said to them, you won't catch me complaining if they're actually that dumb.

2 hours ago, Elaine5715 said:

They don't separate purchases, it just shows as "Cherry on Top" om your statement.  They make way more off selling candy for 10x the price

If they don't have a way to track them separately, boy, they're dumb - but I certainly won't complain!  They should absolutely be tracking purchases onboard by profit margin, their analysts and algorithms can't make good predictions with worthless data!  I'll happily take advantage, and artificially inflate my onboard spending like this every cruise if they're stupid enough to log that as high profit spend.  

57 minutes ago, Elaine5715 said:

The casino offers are always more generous with a higher casino spend.  I don't believe there is any triggers for new offers based on Cherry on Top spends. Gift cards are recorded same as spending $20 a pound for m&ms

My husband has gambled about 30% more than than me on every single cruise, on the same slots, but my casino offers are more generous.  I'm nearly convinced it's because I pay for everything cruise related in my name.  If they indeed see gift card purchases the same way they see purchases, that would be glorious - I've seen enough datapoints to be confident that they love people who spend heavily on high profit categories like M&Me and spa services. 

That's basically exactly what I'm hoping to discover - it would be idiotic of them to value gift card purchases as highly as an equal amount of candy purchases, but a girl can hope!  I need $1300 in gift cards, though, and I was wondering if anyone knew if that was going to be feasible on a ten day cruise.

This is not actually an OBC question - we'll be donating our OBC to the casino - but I imagine it's pertinent to those folks as well.

Is there a per day / per cruise limit to how much gift card credit you can purchase?  I just realized that all of our fall cruises will be due after our July cruise, and imagined the 'offer algorithm' might think kinder thoughts about me if I purchase gift cards onboard to cover those impending payments.  Anyone know offhand if there are limits?

Good on them, I wonder if they'll ever get around to throwing us low-GI folks a bone...

1 hour ago, Retiredmedic said:

Must vary ship to ship, in March on the Vista I went to the Alchemy bar and asked for a Martinez, he just pointed at the QR code to scan for the menu and told only what's on the menu. Many people walked away from the Alchemy bar because would not make any drinks to order, menu only.

Wow, back when I first tried the first alchemy bar I'd seen onboard, they'd actually had little 'prescription' pads where you could list things you wanted (or didn't want) to end up with a totally customized drink just for you.  I didn't use the pads, just said, 'i love ginger and hate tequila, what would you like to make for me?'

On a ship with a craft cocktail bar (most have Alchemy now, right?) I love being able to ask the bartender to make me every ginger drink in their repertoire.  The steakhouse bar should be similarly able to play around - this isn't something I expect them to be able to do at the pool bar.    If you have a favorite ingredient, and stop in when they aren't slammed, they will likely be happy to play around and find some new favorites for you. 

10 minutes ago, cruisingguy007 said:

 

None, the point of insurance isn't to profit off of it or to guarantee you a higher value vacation, it's to make you whole, cover you in emergencies/medical and help cover things like your car breaking down on the way, flights cancelled, luggage lost etc. Yes, you are limited to what you paid to cover a trip but the medical benefits/coverage is why most get it (myself included). You can add riders for addition coverage with some policies,  but you'd pay a lot more for it and I'm not aware of any that will let you declare something is of higher value than you paid unless specifically declared in the policy.  

Then why are we giving him a hard time about insurance and telling him that's what insurance was for?  To my knowledge, no standard insurance policy would have put him up in Florida at current last minute rates for the length of his cruise, they'd have said that Carnival's refund made him whole there, covered the cost of his flight change fees and told him to go home, right? 

Edit: I do agree that everyone should get insurance - we keep an annual policy for medical/evac as well as high-end credit cards for things like delays and baggage loss.  I just don't think insurance would have really come into play here in any way that would have salvaged his vacation.  Carnival's original offer covered nearly all the costs insurance would normally protect.  Telling him that Carnival won't cover his lodging and he should instead file an insurance claim is misleading - insurance wouldn't pay for an Orlando vacation instead either.  If there is the kind of policy that would cover that, I would definitely be interested in looking into it to see if it's something that makes sense for us.  

If he HAD booked standard travel insurance, what exactly would have been covered?  In my - admittedly very limited - experience with using trip insurance, policies are similarly restricted to the cost you paid, not the value of what you had booked.  If the carrier provides you that 'full' refund, what exactly does the trip insurance cover?  

I guess my question is, say I'm convinced and want to purchase the kind of policy that will make sure I still get to have a $2000 vacation if the '$500' cruise I booked during mid-plague-promotions is cancelled abruptly - what kind of policy coverage am I looking for?  What kind of insurance covers the VALUE of a trip, not the cost paid?

2 hours ago, kdr69 said:

I didnt even know there were limits on promos, always learning something on here.  I have more promos (7 at last count) than i have vacation days to take lol.  Everyone is a casino offer even though i only average about 200 dollars a day over a 7 day cruise gambling (if i dont win that is lol)

Each promo you have is 'set' for a certain number of uses - the good ones are usually only once or twice per code for me.  I don't think there's a limit on total numbers of codes you're eligible for, but there's definitely a limit on how many times you can use each code.  The casino department can tell you how many uses you're eligible for on any given code.  I (of course) like the ones with great rates, several hundred in Freeplay, and free drinks everywhere way more than the 'half off and drinks in the casino' codes.  I usually get 1-2 uses on the former and 8 uses on the latter - but I'm wondering if I could double that by having another account!

2 hours ago, kdr69 said:

Have you ever thought of combining them into 1 showing all your cruises?  

I mean I regularly check the VIFP numbers for eight different people.  For what it's worth, if they were all mine, I would never combine - the limits on promos per account would make then more valuable separately.

You've actually just given me an idea to ponder though - I wonder if a fresh account would get great offers after a single heavy gambling cruise?

Yep, I have asked about this multiple times because I'd really rather my ex-husband not get anything addressed to me well over a decade later, and the problem has never, ever gotten fixed.  Hopefully it's not tied to anything of value, but I'll never know.

I keep hoping that there will be a period of time where they put a Spirit class ship on the 3/4 day Miami runs.  I don't hate the Conquest class ships, but I'd take even a 'sunshined' Spirit any day.  

I have been trying to make sense of how offers are targeted ever since the restart.  I have several VIFP numbers I check every offer cycle - two with four cruises since the restart, with five on the books, two with three cruises since the restart and one on the books, two with a single cruise since the restart and nothing booked, and two that haven't sailed in several years with none booked. 

Early on, we all had phenomenal offers - the two people that usually lost a couple hundred bucks in the casino had the same rates, but were given DoU offers.  They each got two uses of their great rates, the rest of us only had one each.  My two (with the five booked) got a couple more cycles with excellent offers after we decided to donate our COVID cancellation OBC to the casino, and that's how our five got booked.   Lately, our and everyone else's offers have gotten less attractive, though even the non-gamblers have gotten a few that are better than any of us used to get pre-plague.  The folks that haven't been booking lately haven't been offered anything better than the rest of us for the last two code cycles - but we're all still seeing prices for desirable ships/regions that we'd have only seen during hurricane season in days of old. 

Oddly, despite my other half gambling more than I did on our last two cruises, my offers are slightly better than his this cycle.  My only guess for this is that I pay for all the cruises on my credit card - our 3/1 couple sees the same discrepancy, though neither of them gamble.  I imagine that Carnival tries to approximate each guest's value, and gives better offers (&/or more uses) to more valuable guests. 

Did your daughter by chance spend any time in the casino?  Purchase Cheers but you didn't? Book a higher category room?  I love these threads, always helps me add datapoints and also realize that sometimes what others consider a great deal is way way too rich for my blood.  

At first I was like, 'please no, don't lump us in with the youngins!' but I think we're finally old enough to get to be seated at the adults table.  We've definitely been known to get boisterous at the bar, but I don't think our age has played into our manners elsewhere.