Casino - purchasing credits in pre-cruise planner

[PumpkinPatches]

Cruising on the Silhouette for Christmas and New Years and I see there is an incentive to pre-purchasing casino credits.  I have a lot of OBC on this cruise, and the 10% back in free play is enticing... I am wondering if this could be a loop hole for turning my OBC into cash?

 

Like if I used my OBC to pre-buy casino credits, I will get 10% back in free play. If I were to buy a lot of credits with my OBC, gamble a little bit and take my chips to the cashier window, I would get cash back right?  I know the free play chips are going to look different than regular chips and can't be exchanged for cash.

 

Or does Celebrity frown upon this and have a way to prevent this.

[jelayne]

Purchasing chips with OBC you get promotional chips which you cannot turn in for cash.  You can play with them and any winnings are paid out in cash. 

[LMHSRN]

22 minutes ago, PumpkinPatches said:

Cruising on the Silhouette for Christmas and New Years and I see there is an incentive to pre-purchasing casino credits.  I have a lot of OBC on this cruise, and the 10% back in free play is enticing... I am wondering if this could be a loop hole for turning my OBC into cash?

 

Like if I used my OBC to pre-buy casino credits, I will get 10% back in free play. If I were to buy a lot of credits with my OBC, gamble a little bit and take my chips to the cashier window, I would get cash back right?  I know the free play chips are going to look different than regular chips and can't be exchanged for cash.

 

Or does Celebrity frown upon this and have a way to prevent this.

If you use OBC on the slots, you can not cash it in.  I just goes right back on your account.  Once you have exceeded your OBC purchase, then any extra can be cashed out.

[Jim_Iain]

I purchased a similar package for slots and never again.   I got a slip from the casino and once I put it into a slot machine would not let me cash out and move to a different machine.  The slot ship was like the Casino Promotional Slots and you could only cash out the winnings.

 

I'll never purchase again.

[Tyler414]

1 hour ago, jelayne said:

Purchasing chips with OBC you get promotional chips which you cannot turn in for cash.  You can play with them and any winnings are paid out in cash. 

This is correct, any winnings are paid in "real" chips, but you basically need to lose all your promotional chip.  I would only use OBC for this, spending your own money for promotional chips may not be the best idea...

[wrk2cruise]

Also if Blue Chip Club credit is important you don't earn any credit for this play, the entire amount, not just the 10%.

[NorthStarStateCruiser]

4 hours ago, PumpkinPatches said:

Cruising on the Silhouette for Christmas and New Years and I see there is an incentive to pre-purchasing casino credits.  I have a lot of OBC on this cruise, and the 10% back in free play is enticing... I am wondering if this could be a loop hole for turning my OBC into cash?

 

Like if I used my OBC to pre-buy casino credits, I will get 10% back in free play. If I were to buy a lot of credits with my OBC, gamble a little bit and take my chips to the cashier window, I would get cash back right?  I know the free play chips are going to look different than regular chips and can't be exchanged for cash.

 

Or does Celebrity frown upon this and have a way to prevent this.

If you're looking to convert OBC into cash via the casino, you'll want to do the transaction onboard rather than the cruise planner. At a slot machine you can log into your account and do a so-called "room charge" where you charge your onboard account with the dollar amount you'd like to convert to cash. Once you have funds loaded on the slot you can cash out and bring the ticket to the cage where they will give you cash. The room charge will be reflected on your onboard account statement which will be offset by your OBC.

 

Note that you will be restricted from doing an additional room charge for 24 hours if you cash out funds without playing at least 10%? of the loaded amount. This isn't an issue if you're looking to do this as a one-time transaction.

 

Buying the promotional play via the cruise planner locks the promotional amount and it must be played through before cashing out. The credits purchased via the room charge method do not have this restriction.

[TFree]

@PumpkinPatches: I can't tell from your post if you are talking about purchasing pre-cruise slots credit or pre-cruise table play credits.

 

Table play pre-purchase is different from slots.  I purchased some slot play credit pre-cruise once when I maxed out the amount of table play we could pre-purchase. It worked out, but I understand that the slots work differently from ship to ship. So I have nothing really to offer you on explaining slots, other than that with the 10% bonus you might come out ahead, but more likely a little behind and will have successfully converted most of your OBC to real money.

 

Table play is easier to explain, and as far as I know, it is the same on all ships.  You buy it in $50 increments, and you get $55 in table play promo chips.  You can't cash in the promo chips.  So you have to play them all.  We just play hand by hand, setting aside any winnings (paid in real chips) and continuing to play the promo chips until they are all gone.  Then you either cash in the real chips, or keep playing.  We have actually ended up ahead most of the time (the 10% bonus helps).  I don't think doing this is in any way considered a loophole or bad form by the player.  I suppose that Celebrity hopes you keep playing after using up your promo chips, but there would be no way I can think of to enforce that.

 

Tom & Judy

[drdaddy]

Concerning the promotions. 

 

I will be on a B2B2B in October. I was wondering if there was any way that the casino would care if I had leftover promotional chips to use, say, on the second trip? Also, can I just hold on to regular chips from the previous cruise to use on the next cruise?

 

Why I would hold on to regular chips, I don't know.  But interesting question about the promotional ones.

 

 

[TFree]

49 minutes ago, drdaddy said:

Concerning the promotions. 

 

I will be on a B2B2B in October. I was wondering if there was any way that the casino would care if I had leftover promotional chips to use, say, on the second trip? Also, can I just hold on to regular chips from the previous cruise to use on the next cruise?

 

Why I would hold on to regular chips, I don't know.  But interesting question about the promotional ones.

 

 

We were on a B2B cruise last year, and I asked a different question: can I carry over some of my large onboard credit from the first cruise to the second cruise. I was assured by others on these boards that the answer to that question was no.
 

I did not think about the option you are suggesting. What if I just used all of my OBC to buy promo chips, and kept some of  them for the second cruise? I don’t see how that would not work. I think the reason it never occurred to me was that we had already maxed out the amount of 10% bonus  Pre-cruise casino purchases that we could make. If we had just used remaining OBC to buy chips to use in the casino, I assume we would then get regular chips? Maybe not. I assume someone will answer that part of the question.

 

Tom & Judy