We are now back home from our 17 night cruise through Panama Canal on
Norweigan Sky. It turned out that 17 days was a bit much - especially since many of
the days were at sea. Without too much of interest to me I found myself
spending a lot of time in the casino - very ironic - I live in Vegas now and can
gamble any time I want to, and here I was at sea in a casino. The casino host
said I may be able to qualify for free cruises. Apparently if you spend about
4 hrs a day on $1 slots or table games (not sure of exact requirements) you
can get room free and possibly other extras comped depending on play. Their
methods of rating you on the Sky seemed to be very loose, with just telling the
slot people when you were going to start playing and end playing, and they
didn't seem to really mark down what machines you were on or how many coins you
were playing.
Some Norweigan ships now have slot club cards and are coinless, but not the
Sky and some of the ships.
As previously posted, the VP was awful. All the tables were pretty much of
the 6/5 variety, whether you were playing DDB, DB, B, or JB. Also you needed
to play 10 coins to get the proper $8000 royal, otherwise 5 coins got you
$1500! There was a quarter progressive with slightly better paytables, but still
really bad. Blackjack was the better game to play, with doubling after
splitting, 6 decks, dealer stands on soft 17, up to 4 resplits except for aces.
Dealers used strip shuffle which seemed to get the decks into "clumpy" order. Let
It Ride, Caribbean Stud, 3 Card Poker, craps, and roulette also offered.
ยทยทยท
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I received my Harrahs letter with Sept. cashback and it seems to indicate
that if I cash it on 2 dates (one each in Oct. and Nov.) I would get double
cashback. If so, this is a major improvement. A calendar shows various specials
(not all that special). I'll try cashing the check Oct. 30 and see what
happens.
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