Gift Card Cash Out Limit in Casino?

Does anyone know if there is a limit to the amount of cash you're allowed to cash out from the casino?

I have a credit card that has a minimum spend of $5k to hit a big sign-up bonus. My thought process was that I would purchase a bunch of gift cards from AARP before leaving.

I would load the cards to my S&S account over the length of the cruise, load to player's club balance and then cash out in casino.

Thoughts? Flaws in my logic? I'm thinking if I do $1k at at a time with a few slot pulls here and there it won't raise any flags?

Does anyone know if there is a limit to the amount of cash you're allowed to cash out from the casino?

 

I have a credit card that has a minimum spend of $5k to hit a big sign-up bonus. My thought process was that I would purchase a bunch of gift cards from AARP before leaving.

 

I would load the cards to my S&S account over the length of the cruise, load to player's club balance and then cash out in casino.

 

Thoughts? Flaws in my logic? I'm thinking if I do $1k at at a time with a few slot pulls here and there it won't raise any flags?

I've never used gift cards to do what you plan but there isn't a limit to what you cash out in the casino.

I've cashed out at the cashier many times during the cruise...$1,000, $800 etc and was hand paid when the win was over $1200.

On Pride in March a woman put a $20 in a slot machine and on the third pull, hit for $19,000...she got paid in cash.

Over on slickdeals they just had a deal that I missed for $100 GC's for $85. There was some mention of only being able to use gc's, but then someone else on another thread said that the limit is 9. I have no idea either way, but just wanted to pass on the info. Please update if you get a concrete answer.

Keep in mind US Customs regulators require you to declare more than $10,000 of cash upon entering the United States:

https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/778/~/declaring-currency-when-entering-the-u.s.-in-transit-to-a-foreign-destination

Apparently using more than 3 gift cards onboard requires the cards to be validated by the Carnival corporate office in Florida. Per John Heald this should take about six hours, but I have seen on his page and elsewhere the process could take up to two days. You could essentially have an extra one by purchasing Cruise Cash prior to sailing.

There is also a limit of $3,000 per day that can be charged to your Sail & Sign card from the casino ($5,000 on special invite-only sailings).

https://help.carnival.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1146/~/casino-and-carnival-players-club[emoji768]

Sent from my eye phone using a three legged yak FFS

 

Apparently using more than 3 gift cards onboard requires the cards to be validated by the Carnival corporate office in Florida. Per John Heald this should take about six hours, but I have seen on his page and elsewhere the process could take up to two days. You could essentially have an extra one by purchasing Cruise Cash prior to sailing.

 

I was aware that they limited how much cash could be taken out on your S & S card, but I had no idea that the gift cards were limited. Do you know if that applies if you intend to use some for excursions and some for the casino or is it 3 in all? Per person or per cabin? I'm just wondering if DH and I could use 3 under his name for the casino and 3 under mine for an excursion. It's not that much hassle and would potentially give us an extra $90 in free money if that deal comes around again.

It doesn’t matter what you use them for, anything over three cards has to be verified. The dollar amount is irrelevant too - you could theoretically have canceled multiple bookings and had refunds in excess of $500 each as gift cards.

Does anyone know if there is a limit to the amount of cash you're allowed to cash out from the casino?

 

I have a credit card that has a minimum spend of $5k to hit a big sign-up bonus. My thought process was that I would purchase a bunch of gift cards from AARP before leaving.

 

I would load the cards to my S&S account over the length of the cruise, load to player's club balance and then cash out in casino.

 

Thoughts? Flaws in my logic? I'm thinking if I do $1k at at a time with a few slot pulls here and there it won't raise any flags?

Seems like a good way to meet the Spend requirement. I bought a bunch of grocery store gift cards then just used them the rest of the year... just be sure not to just “blow” the cash you take onboard out since you will have to pay off the gift cards when you get home, lol...

Does anyone know if there is a limit to the amount of cash you're allowed to cash out from the casino?

 

 

 

I have a credit card that has a minimum spend of $5k to hit a big sign-up bonus. My thought process was that I would purchase a bunch of gift cards from AARP before leaving.

 

 

 

I would load the cards to my S&S account over the length of the cruise, load to player's club balance and then cash out in casino.

 

 

 

Thoughts? Flaws in my logic? I'm thinking if I do $1k at at a time with a few slot pulls here and there it won't raise any flags?

I have used the casino onboard to meet many minimum spends and even manufacture a little bit. Just make sure you stay under 10k and under whatever amount of cash you are comfortable carrying on your person until you can get to the bank.

I think there could be a flaw in your plan however, the gift cards.

Many of the card issuers are really clamping down on “gaming” or “churning” and manufactured spend and most have language that states that gift cards and other cash equivalents won’t count as eligible purchases to trigger the minimum spend bonus. Some issuers will even shut your account down. Maybe not likely, but there are data points out there showing it can happen.

This is why the ship casino is such a good play, its basically a cash equivalent because Carnival will bill the entire sign and sail and does not provide level 2 or level 3 data to the card companies. You charge your whole sign and sail, carry off the cash from the casino and pay the bill. Easy peasy. The 10% gift cards would be sweet if they work, but I personally wouldn’t gamble a signup bonus on it.

A word of caution, on our last cruise on Horizon, I was unable to use my player bank at the tables. (This is my normal play, load the player bank from sign and sail at machine and then get chips on player bank at the tables to avoid the 3% fee for charging the sign and sail.)

The pit boss said since Horizon was new the system was not set up to let them do this. (Not sure if it is true or if they are changing their policy, but they had tons of issues with rating players and reading Cards so it may be just a wrinkle that they will work out). I had to go to the cashier to draw out cash and return to the tables. The pit boss even warned me to not go overboard with it or they would shut down my player bank. We didn’t get shut down, but it definitely slowed me down from what I would have normally done.

It doesn’t matter what you use them for, anything over three cards has to be verified. The dollar amount is irrelevant too - you could theoretically have canceled multiple bookings and had refunds in excess of $500 each as gift cards.

Thank you. I wasn't aware of this at all. It's p/p though, correct? Not per cabin? That being said, it's making me realize that getting $15 off of $100 isn't so great. Definitely better to look for incentives that offer a discount off of a higher $ amount if I'm going to do this.

One separate question. When I've won larger amounts, I was able to request that a casino wire the money to my bank account vs handing it to me in cash. I haven't run into this situation on a cruise, but if it were to ever happen, would this technically mean that you're still crossing over with less than $10K or do you need to claim that which was wired a couple of days before as well? I am aware that you'll still get tax forms regardless, but am just trying to better understand how customs works in addition to taxes. Thanks!

I think the gift card limit is with electronic gift cards not physical ones.

Thank you. I wasn't aware of this at all. It's p/p though, correct? Not per cabin? That being said, it's making me realize that getting $15 off of $100 isn't so great. Definitely better to look for incentives that offer a discount off of a higher $ amount if I'm going to do this.

 

One separate question. When I've won larger amounts, I was able to request that a casino wire the money to my bank account vs handing it to me in cash. I haven't run into this situation on a cruise, but if it were to ever happen, would this technically mean that you're still crossing over with less than $10K or do you need to claim that which was wired a couple of days before as well? I am aware that you'll still get tax forms regardless, but am just trying to better understand how customs works in addition to taxes. Thanks!

I presume it would be per person if there were separate Sail & Sign accounts, but I haven’t seen anything in writing on that.

I’m not sure about whether Carnival can wire money to a bank from the shipboard casino during sailing. I do see where you can request a refund of unused player bank funds at OceanPlayersClub.com, but that would be after your sailing is over. I’m also not sure what effect that would have for Customs.

Sent from my eye phone using a three legged yak FFS

Oh wow, seems to be some interest on this topic! I do quite a bit of MS-ing and just happened to realize I had this cruise coming up along with having a new card with a $5k spend to hit the bonus. What is this 3% I see mentioned earlier in the thread?

I think there could be a flaw in your plan however, the gift cards.

 

Many of the card issuers are really clamping down on “gaming” or “churning” and manufactured spend and most have language that states that gift cards and other cash equivalents won’t count as eligible purchases to trigger the minimum spend bonus. Some issuers will even shut your account down. Maybe not likely, but there are data points out there showing it can happen.

 

This is why the ship casino is such a good play, its basically a cash equivalent because Carnival will bill the entire sign and sail and does not provide level 2 or level 3 data to the card companies. You charge your whole sign and sail, carry off the cash from the casino and pay the bill. Easy peasy. The 10% gift cards would be sweet if they work, but I personally wouldn’t gamble a signup bonus on it.

I think that mainly applies to gift cards/prepaid cards with a credit card logo. I bought a $15 Hardee's gift card, a $25 Raising Cane's gift card, a $17.68 gift certificate to Brew-Bachers for my mother for Christmas. I have loaded money($20 - $40) on my mother's Walmart gift card several times. I also bought 3 $100 Carnival egift cards from AARP($270 total) for myself. I got cash back for each purchase.

The only problem I had was with AARP's system bring extremely picky about how my address was formatted for my Capital One credit card.

Although I didn't buy gift cards to meet a minimum spend requirement, all of my gift card purchases posted in the same category as the merchant I bought the cards from. They were never listed as gift card purchases.

Many of the card issuers are really clamping down on “gaming” or “churning” and manufactured spend and most have language that states that gift cards and other cash equivalents won’t count as eligible purchases to trigger the minimum spend bonus. Some issuers will even shut your account down. Maybe not likely, but there are data points out there showing it can happen.

 

This is why the ship casino is such a good play, its basically a cash equivalent because Carnival will bill the entire sign and sail and does not provide level 2 or level 3 data to the card companies. You charge your whole sign and sail, carry off the cash from the casino and pay the bill. Easy peasy. The 10% gift cards would be sweet if they work, but I personally wouldn’t gamble a signup bonus on it.

 

This is great to know about the level 3 info. Thankfully it's not an AmEx card, they are the ones really clamping down on the gift cards not counting for bonuses. I also think I'd be okay as the gift cards from AARP would be Carnival and not Visa GCs which is what they key in on. I'm mainly trying to MS the $5k without having to pay fees for Visa GCs and then coverting to MOs.

The main thing that has me concerned is the amount they limit you to load to your account. Seems to conflicting information some people say you can only load 3 before they have to call the mother ship and others say that John Heald has said this is not the case. I was on the Magic a few months ago and loaded 4 GCs to my sail and sing at the kiosk just fine. So....not sure is this something very recently new?

Here's what I understand about the whole gift card situation, and trust me by your sailing it might differ. There is no official limit to how many Carnival gift cards can be accepted in person at the Guest Services desk, however some ships are experiencing problems with getting verification to deposit a of a large # of cards at a single time to an account. So some of the ships are telling passengers that there is a limit of anywhere from 3-5 cards daily.

Here are the solutions or workarounds that have been reported on various cruise forums. Use the GCs to purchase general cruise cash prior to boarding. Ask your check-in clerk if the terminal applies the GCs towards the S&S account, like many now do for cash accounts. Deposit as many as you can at the S&S kiosk then visit the GS desk to deposit more. Make a plan to visit the GS desk daily till all of the cards have been deposited.

Here's my personal experiences. Dec10th'17 on the Pride, was told there was a general computer problem and that GS would accept my 6 cards, without a word about any limits, but there was a chance they would not show on my account until Monday or Tuesday, as they would need to email CC Corp to get the validation. Didn't phase me much because I also had $50 in OBC and a credit card on file. By 9 pm that night I checked my folio on the HUB app and the full amount of all the cards I turned over were applied, the next day the receipts showing validation were in my cabin.

Pride's NYE Dec31st'17 cruise, asked during check-in if they would accept the cards, was told they were not yet set-up for that but should be sometime in 2018. Went to the GS desk fully expecting the same speech about computer problems, but they accepted and processed my 7 cards handing me the validation receipt right then.

Oh wow, seems to be some interest on this topic! I do quite a bit of MS-ing and just happened to realize I had this cruise coming up along with having a new card with a $5k spend to hit the bonus. What is this 3% I see mentioned earlier in the thread?

The casino will charge a 3% fee for charging cash into your sign and sail at the tables or at the cashier. The same fee as the ATM kiosk. One way around that has always been to load your player bank at a slot machine and either play a little or not and cash out to your player bank. Then go to table and order chips on your player bank to play there and there is no fee.

Doing this is usually pain free if you are actually playing, but if you are obviously just using the casino as a free atm, they may shut down your player bank.

In normal circumstances I usually just use a card that gets 3x points for travel purchases, so the normal sign and sail plus the bit of inflation from the casino earns enough to get me an extra flight.

The casino will charge a 3% fee for charging cash into your sign and sail at the tables or at the cashier. The same fee as the ATM kiosk. One way around that has always been to load your player bank at a slot machine and either play a little or not and cash out to your player bank. Then go to table and order chips on your player bank to play there and there is no fee.

Doing this is usually pain free if you are actually playing, but if you are obviously just using the casino as a free atm, they may shut down your player bank.

 

In normal circumstances I usually just use a card that gets 3x points for travel purchases, so the normal sign and sail plus the bit of inflation from the casino earns enough to get me an extra flight.

If you don't play, your card will lock. Just needs to be a few spins.

I am not 100% positive but one thing to think about is if you cash out a large amount of money at the casino I believe they are required to have you fill out tax forms. So while it might be a wonderful idea you may be taxed on the money as winnings. I would double check this first before you actually do it.

I am not 100% positive but one thing to think about is if you cash out a large amount of money at the casino I believe they are required to have you fill out tax forms. So while it might be a wonderful idea you may be taxed on the money as winnings. I would double check this first before you actually do it.

You only get the tax forms on hand pay jackpots

Alright, so a couple of data points for everyone that replied or for people that may find this thread.

Got back few days ago from a Carnival cruise. The self help kiosks for loading gift cards were not working on this ship as they had been on Breeze a few months back. No biggie, had to instead go to guest services to load the gift cards. No limit of "3 per day" as I had read in threads past. I loaded over $4.5k worth of gift cards to my account over the course of 7 days for sole purpose of cashing out in casino.

To start out I loaded $1k. Took about 4-5 spins, won $10 and cashed out. Was warned by the cashier that my card would be blocked from EFT if I did this activity again and said I needed actually play. Cashier didn't give a certain number of spins or how much I needed to play, but I heeded this advice.

Over the course of the rest of the cruise I slowly played 5-10 spins here and there and only loaded $500 through EFT at a time. By the end I had slowly loaded and cashed out over $4k worth of gift cards for cash. After all of my spins I wound up $2 ahead, not bad!

Bottom line, it can be done. They know what you're doing, the computer tells them. Just be smart and space out your plays and don't be in a hurry to cash out.