I'm aboard the Sapphire Princess right now on a free cruise to Alaska from the Venetian. The Venetian has been very nice to us (and also Players Travel which they work through). We are getting free drinks from the casino bar (any time it is open), free internet service (a major bonus), and even free laundry! Also a cocktail party and dinner one night in the "gourmet" restaurant aboard - Sabatini's - which normally costs $20 extra fee.
VP is bad as you might expect. They have multidemonitation machines with ugly ducks, 6/5 JB, 7/5 DDB and DB, etc. Machines are 10 coins, so a quarter machine is like playing a fifty-center. At higher levels of $1 and more the pay tables become a little better, but not much. It did seem as though some people were winning last night. The man next to me playing $1 dueces got 2 sets in about 1 minute and cashed out for $2000. I played quarter deuces and got diddly, switched to DDB and got aces and kings, but eventually ended up losing $.
I was able to pick up the cashback I had made on a Carnival cruise earlier in the year. Carnival, Princess, Costa and several other cruises are all owned by the same overall cruise company. Now their players clubs are combined, so if you get cashback on one, you can pick it up on the next cruise you take on one of thier cruises. Cashback is cash! Nice. I had played a lot on the Carnival Pride in March and actually ended up winning about $8000 on bad DDB (after 2 $1 royals, bad loss at first wiping out 1 royal). So I had over $1000 cashback to pick up.
Many of the cruise ships now have tracking - but unfortunately Princess is not yet equipped, so no cashback from this cruise. The casino director said soon you would be able to insert your room key for tracking and also take cash advances for play! (no 3% fee for the future of this).
The food so far is disappointing. Food on Carnival Pride and Spirit were excellent. So far food far inferior to that and to our previous Princess cruise of about 8 years ago. The buffet had no egg station for morning breakfast for example (no eggs made to order). The buffet is 24 hrs but food for late night was excactly the same as dinner food. Also no free fruit juice or punch for dinner on buffet! We will have to see how food in the main dining room shapes up for rest of trip.
Ship is large and beautiful - 2600 passengers, but so far no signs of lines or crowding because people are spread out. Havent seen shows yet.
More soon - Linda at sea...
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