Every month, Royal Caribbean has a different casino offer for its high roller members, and this month's has a new fee.
Cruisers have noticed that along with its May offer of a complimentary cruise, there's now a booking fee that goes with.
Periodically (and seemingly randomly), Royal Caribbean's Casino Royale program will send to its members offers to sail for free or at a reduced rate. These are targeted offers for people that gamble a lot on Royal Caribbean ships.
What's different this month is there's now a fee to go along with the "free" cruise offer.
Here's what the booking fee looks like, and why it's generating a lot of chatter among those that like to cruise and gamble.
There's a new $100 casino comp fee
As soon as the new casino offers started rolling into cruisers' accounts, many saw the same thing: a new fee.
The $100 casino comp fee means you'll need to pay $100 for a complimentary cruise, along with the port fees and taxes.
It's a nominal fee for what is otherwise representative of thousands of dollars off a cruise fare, but it's not what cruisers have typically found.
In the example provided by Royal Caribbean Blog reader madkidd00000007, the offer is for a complimentary Balcony or Oceanview cabin for two. It has a $100 booking fee per stateroom.
The offer is valid to be booked by May 31st for sailings the depart between May 4 and December 31, 2026.
To be fair, this isn't the first time we've seen this fee. A similar fee happened once a few months ago on an offer for two rooms, but it's back again today.
According to Ampurp85, they were told the fee is to supplement the fact it's a better-than-usual offer.
"The rep says there will now be some offers that have a booking fee. Either because they will offer better rooms or longer cruise dates."
The representative added that in the event of a cancellation, everything but the booking fee is refundable. Moreover, this booking fee will not be on all offers, just certain ones.
How to get complimentary casino offers
Booking fee or not, you may be curious how to qualify for a "free" cruise.
Truthfully, there isn't a rhyme or reason that can be determined how to consistently receive offers other than playing often in the casino on every sailing you take.
Certainly, reaching higher casino loyalty tiers helps.
While not a hard and fast rule, it seems more offers go out to casino players in the Signature and Masters tier than Prime. But that doesn't mean those in Choice or Prime don't receive offers as well.
Moreover, if you do get an offer, it's important to play in the casino and spend enough onboard. It's been a common observation from casino players that any complimentary cruise you take, there's an unwritten expectation that you'll gamble enough on that sailing too. Otherwise, the quantity of future offers may decrease.
How much do you need to gamble? Most cruisers believe you need to earn at least 200 points on a comped cruise.
Casino offers have been changing this year
One theme so far with Casino Royale has been they're not doing the same old predictable things.
Since the new casino calendar year began in April, there have been some big changes to Royal Caribbean's casino program.
The biggest has been for the annual complimentary cruise that is included with the Prime tier and higher.
Instead of having an an exclusion list of which sailings aren't eligible for the annual complimentary sailing, there's now a list of included sailings. All other cruises are not available.
In addition, Casino Royale introduced a variety of program changes related to earning points and tracking points.
The Royal Caribbean app now shows your casino points and status, further integrating casino loyalty with cruise loyalty.
Another key change is Signature level players now receive onboard credit based on the length of their sailing. Previously, Signature players didn’t receive any onboard credit at all.
Royal Caribbean also increased the earning requirement for video poker to $15 per point. That means you now have to wager more money to earn the same number of points.
Lastly, the onboard instant offers seem to have been cut back. While nothing has been announced by the line, cruisers have noticed the cabin categories offered were lower than before, and the amount of free play was reduced.
