Help! Non gambler that wants to get to Prime level.

[ElmoHongZito]

Family of 4 with teen and preteen. Just did our first cruise last month during Thanksgiving on Oasis of the seas. We got 2 side-by-side ocean balcony staterooms because I could not imagine us 4 sharing one stateroom. I just booked a 7 day cruise on Harmony of the Seas for the girls spring break and just the sailing alone (not including gratuities or any add-ons) is costing us $5646. These are central park balcony rooms. Ocean view balcony was significantly more expense. 

Would be nice to be offered a free cruise now and again like I read so many people here have taken advantage of through the Casino Royale Club. Are those cruises usually just for me + 1? In other words would I still have to pay full cruise fair for my 2 daughters if I ever get a free cruise offer? 

I do not gamble but I’m not against it either. Was thinking of trying to get to Prime status on this upcoming sailing in March so I can hopefully earn 2 free cruises. 

How quickly do you think I can get to 2500 points on the highest per spin slot machine I can find? The idea is whether I am up or down I at least break even on what the free cruises would have cost me had I not earned through the casino. Hopefully come out ahead. I do not want to spend an excessive amount of time in the casino either because I am there to enjoy time with the family. 

Thanks in advance for any answers to my questions. 

[tonyfsu21]

44 minutes ago, ElmoHongZito said:

Family of 4 with teen and preteen. Just did our first cruise last month during Thanksgiving on Oasis of the seas. We got 2 side-by-side ocean balcony staterooms because I could not imagine us 4 sharing one stateroom. I just booked a 7 day cruise on Harmony of the Seas for the girls spring break and just the sailing alone (not including gratuities or any add-ons) is costing us $5646. These are central park balcony rooms. Ocean view balcony was significantly more expense. 

Would be nice to be offered a free cruise now and again like I read so many people here have taken advantage of through the Casino Royale Club. Are those cruises usually just for me + 1? In other words would I still have to pay full cruise fair for my 2 daughters if I ever get a free cruise offer? 

I do not gamble but I’m not against it either. Was thinking of trying to get to Prime status on this upcoming sailing in March so I can hopefully earn 2 free cruises. 

How quickly do you think I can get to 2500 points on the highest per spin slot machine I can find? The idea is whether I am up or down I at least break even on what the free cruises would have cost me had I not earned through the casino. Hopefully come out ahead. I do not want to spend an excessive amount of time in the casino either because I am there to enjoy time with the family. 

Thanks in advance for any answers to my questions. 

This approach is not advised. Based simply on the casino point formula alone @ $5 per point you will spend a significant amount of money unless you are really lucky. Besides everything I mentioned, the casino royale program is no longer what it once was and the heavy discounts are nearly non existent. 

[twangster]

Spring break cruising is expensive because of high demand.  During periods of high demand they may not be eager to fill the ship with casino freebies so your options may be limited.  If you can cruise during off peak season there are greater opportunities but then again cruising is cheaper off peak so that changes the math of gambling your way to lower cost cruising. 

If it was easy to get cheap cruises during peak season everyone would do it.     

[ElmoHongZito]

34 minutes ago, tonyfsu21 said:

This approach is not advised. Based simply on the casino point formula alone @ $5 per point you will spend a significant amount of money unless you are really lucky. Besides everything I mentioned, the casino royale program is no longer what it once was and the heavy discounts are nearly non existent. 

So if I get to prime in one sailing I don’t earn 2 free cruises anymore? 

On our sailing last month we met a couple who’s daughter of only 12 was on her like 35th cruise and they don’t remember the last time they paid for a cruise all thanks to Club Royale. They mentioned sitting at tables where you don’t feel obligated to play every hand claiming that your time at the table carries most of the weight as to the offers you receive. I don’t know how much truth there is to that as it does not match up with any insight I have read on these message boards. However I figured that it is worth exploring. 
 

Maybe I throw $100 into a slot machine a few times and see how many $1 spins on average I get per $100. I think $1 is the the highest bet per spin those machines allow. Am I right? Again, I don’t even understand them. Those slot machines are so darn confusing. Good thing there is absolutely no strategy involved. 

[Pattycruise]

You don’t necessarily need to hit 2,500 pts to earn an instant cruise certificate while onboard.  The lists of free cruises increases as you earn more points onboard snd the list changes monthly.

you can also get offers in your casino Royale account without hitting 2,500 pts.  

the likelihood of you finding a cruise on the instant certificate or in your Club Royale account while the kids are off of school are extremely low, if not non existent.

to earn prime it can be done between April 1 through March 31 and is good for the next current Casino year and I  the next Casino year where you get your free 7 day annual cruise awarded in April- good for anywhere they sail. 

The casino comps are good for 2 people paying only port fees and taxes. The room category offered will depend on the amount you gamble.  More than likely interior cabins, though my 2 friends earned 3,000 pts on a 1 week cruise and mostly have balcony offers. You can pay to add 2 more people to your cabin, but it’s typically a lot more $-but shouldn’t be the cost you just quoted!! I think you must be at least prime to get a discount on a second cabin, it’s 5% 

 

[sleepy425]

17 minutes ago, ElmoHongZito said:

So if I get to prime in one sailing I don’t earn 2 free cruises anymore? 

On our sailing last month we met a couple who’s daughter of only 12 was on her like 35th cruise and they don’t remember the last time they paid for a cruise all thanks to Club Royale. They mentioned sitting at tables where you don’t feel obligated to play every hand claiming that your time at the table carries most of the weight as to the offers you receive. I don’t know how much truth there is to that as it does not match up with any insight I have read on these message boards. However I figured that it is worth exploring. 
 

Maybe I throw $100 into a slot machine a few times and see how many $1 spins on average I get per $100. I think $1 is the the highest bet per spin those machines allow. Am I right? Again, I don’t even understand them. Those slot machines are so darn confusing. Good thing there is absolutely no strategy involved. 

A lot of machines go over $1/spin max bid, so beware and make sure you understand what you are betting if you do wander into the casino. 

[bakingbad3]

I actually just posted something about this in a different thread!  Here are my thoughts:

Bottom line up front: You can get there in as little as an hour, but you need to have an appropriately sized bankroll.  If you can walk into the casino with $12,500 cash, you will get to Prime.  You will likely pay somewhere between $1,000 and $3,000 for your trouble.  

So how do you do it? Find one of the all-digital slot machines.  You are looking for buttons on the bottom part that say "x lines" with "x" being numbers like 1, 15, 25, 50, whatever.  The higher the better.  You should be able to find one that says 200 or 300 as one of the highest values.  You are also looking for a denomination button, or a 2 by 2 grid of a cluster of buttons.  They should say "1 c", "5 c", and so on.  This is the bet amount.  You are looking for at least 25 cents.  You should be able to find a machine that has somewhere around 200 lines to play and lets you bet 25 cents a line.  Find it?  Good, that's your machine.  Start feeding it $100 bills.  Pick the highest line amount and the highest denomination amount.  Hit the "spin" button. You should be betting about $50 a spin.  You can just smack the button over and over to skip the animations, though you might end up on a machine with mini-games that force you to interact.  There is zero skill involved in these.  Just go as quickly as you can.  If you can bet once every 5 seconds, you'll hit Prime in 21 minutes after pushing the spin button exactly 250 times.  Though chances are you'll play slower, and who knows, you might even get a hand pay (which is when you win an amount on a single spin that exceeds a certain threshold (I believe it is $1200 or something like that) where the attendant has to pay you in person and get your tax info and stuff).  So conservatively, let's call it 2 hours.  But definitely should be doable in a single sitting.  You might burn through a lot of your $100's in a row, but the game should ebb and flow and my guess is that you'll end up down a couple thousand, give or take, when you're through.  Though you could be down ten thousand or more.  But as long as you start with $12,500, you'll get to Prime guaranteed.  

And that's it!  Congrats on getting to Prime!

If you're interested in my logic and math, or how to reduce the risk of this costing a lot more than a couple grand, read on.  

How do I arrive at my conclusions?  A huge part of my math revolves around the "RTP" value, which stands for "return to player".  These are values set by the casino and dictate how much money, over a long period of time, each machine will return to the player.  In Vegas, slots are usually in the mid to high 90s, meaning that if you spun a $10,000 penny slot machine a million times, you'd leave with $9,600 assuming it had a 96% RTP.  I am assuming that Royal has an 85% RTP.  I may be over or under estimating that, but I am confident that this is fairly accurate.  Here's why.  A good video poker machine in Vegas will have an RTP extremely close to 100%, like 99.5% or higher.  Some even have a hair over 100% RTP, believe it or not.  But the general consensus is that on Royal, video poker RTP is terrible.  So I assume that means it is somewhere the 90-95% range.  Call it 92.5%.  Royal gives you 1 point for every $10 you put through a video poker machine.  But they give you 1 point for every $5 you put through a slot machine.  This isn't out of the kindness of their hearts.  Logically this must be because slots have an RTP that is around twice as bad as video poker.  So that's how I get to 85% RTP for slots.  If you brought in 1,250,00 pennies and you played a single penny machine 1,250,00 times, you would walk away with Prime status and be almost statistically guaranteed to have roughly 1,062,500 pennies left over.  But it would take you over 72 days of playing 24/7 to do this.  Obviously we can't play a penny at a time.  So we trade statistical certainty of the outcome for time spent playing.  Playing $50 hands as in my instructions above, this could take less than a half an hour.  But the chances that you end the session down 6, 8, 10 thousand dollars are not insignificant (you could also end the session up several thousand dollars too!).  You have to trade your comfort level with knowing the final result (which if you remember will ALWAYS converge to you losing $1,875) with the amount of time you are willing to sit and play.  There is a lot of math that goes into figuring out the odds, and it depends on the standard deviation of the pay table (which is impossible to know and varies greatly by game).  But for our purposes we can just double the amount of time it takes to get to Prime for every time you cut the bet size in half.  My conservative guess for the $50 bet size was 2 hours, so $25 bets would take you 4 hours, $10 bets would take you 10 hours, and $2 bets would take you 50 hours (though with $2 bets you should never have a hand pay and could always play fast, so this may actually be closer to 10 hours at a consistent 5 seconds a spin).  If you had groups of people doing each different strategy, the group making $50 bets would have some people leaving the casino with Prime status and $1,000 left over, while others would be leaving with Prime status plus $20,000 in their pocket.  The group playing the $2 hands would all leave with Prime and with cash amounts somewhere between $9,000 and $12,000.  But they traded more time at the machine for that tighter window of likely outcomes.

Hope this helped!  The most important thing to remember is this: Royal does not lose money on the casino program.  Statically, they are charging each person who makes it to Prime $1,875 to get there.  Some pay more, some pay less, but the house always wins.

 

[tonyfsu21]

This advice is great if you are a gambler and will be in the casino enjoying everything there is to enjoy in the casino regardless of the points. I wouldn’t advise someone who is not a seasoned casino player to pump money into a machine or a table to try and get to prime for the free drinks and crappy casino certificates. I just doesn’t make good sense.

[Pattycruise]

18 minutes ago, ElmoHongZito said:

So if I get to prime in one sailing I don’t earn 2 free cruises anymore? 

On our sailing last month we met a couple who’s daughter of only 12 was on her like 35th cruise and they don’t remember the last time they paid for a cruise all thanks to Club Royale. They mentioned sitting at tables where you don’t feel obligated to play every hand claiming that your time at the table carries most of the weight as to the offers you receive. I don’t know how much truth there is to that as it does not match up with any insight I have read on these message boards. However I figured that it is worth exploring. 
 

Maybe I throw $100 into a slot machine a few times and see how many $1 spins on average I get per $100. I think $1 is the the highest bet per spin those machines allow. Am I right? Again, I don’t even understand them. Those slot machines are so darn confusing. Good thing there is absolutely no strategy involved. 

Table play has points calculated by $ amount per hand, # of hands played and time at the table.  They punch you into the table when you sit, and they pause you if you sit out a hand or leave for the bathroom etc.   if you are going to attempt the  tables go to the Learn to play sessions onboard -usually night 1 and maybe day 2. (Depends on the itinerary) also learn the payouts, not all dealers are good with them and it’s typically not in your favor.     If you can sit for an hour on $100 that’s great!  You can then go to the host and ask how many table points you have and try to generalize your points earned for that table time and in the future if you continue to play the same $ amount per hand and similar #’s of people sitting at the table then your points should be similar per hour.  If you were playing with 2 people at the table and now there are 7 people at the table you’re playing fewer hands per hour. 
 

Slots. For every $5 played you earn - point.  Some machines you can set the $amount(or cents) . A 1 penny machine at max bet may be $1.20 per hand.  If you change the value played to 2 cents and play max bet it would be $2.40 per hand (this is just an example.  The cheapest hand on 1 cent may be 20 credits (20 cents).

then you have 88 cent machines that can multiply to 1.76, 2.64 , up to 8.88 per hand or on another line you might have 22 cents etc.  

if you are going to play a machine and look for a jackpot you would need to understand if you need to play a certain amount to be eligible for the big payout. A machine that comes to mind is Quickhits…play $1.50 per spin to be eligible for top win. 
I’ve sat at machines and asked the person next to me “what do I need to know? “-this is if their machine is identical to mine.  Most want to share their knowledge.

my last cruise a guy was playing $35 per spin on video poker.  Idk how much he played but he hit for $96k.  I’m sure he’s a high roller,  his wife mentioned he hit for $80k in another casino.  Video poker only earns 1pt for every $10 played.

I’ve sat at machines and my $100 got me  barely any points.  You need to have the machine payout to keep playing on THEIR money, not just you putting in $.

I’ve never heard of prime earning 2 free cruises, maybe that’s a thing of the past? Also my explanation for the free annual cruise for Prime is of course subject to change when April comes around.

 

[twangster]

In addition I'd add that you will need to invest some time towards this effort.  Will your family be okay being without you while spend hour after hour in the casino?   

Also you better not have a problem with cigarette smoke.  

[ElmoHongZito]

14 hours ago, bakingbad3 said:

I actually just posted something about this in a different thread!  Here are my thoughts:

Bottom line up front: You can get there in as little as an hour, but you need to have an appropriately sized bankroll.  If you can walk into the casino with $12,500 cash, you will get to Prime.  You will likely pay somewhere between $1,000 and $3,000 for your trouble.  

So how do you do it? Find one of the all-digital slot machines.  You are looking for buttons on the bottom part that say "x lines" with "x" being numbers like 1, 15, 25, 50, whatever.  The higher the better.  You should be able to find one that says 200 or 300 as one of the highest values.  You are also looking for a denomination button, or a 2 by 2 grid of a cluster of buttons.  They should say "1 c", "5 c", and so on.  This is the bet amount.  You are looking for at least 25 cents.  You should be able to find a machine that has somewhere around 200 lines to play and lets you bet 25 cents a line.  Find it?  Good, that's your machine.  Start feeding it $100 bills.  Pick the highest line amount and the highest denomination amount.  Hit the "spin" button. You should be betting about $50 a spin.  You can just smack the button over and over to skip the animations, though you might end up on a machine with mini-games that force you to interact.  There is zero skill involved in these.  Just go as quickly as you can.  If you can bet once every 5 seconds, you'll hit Prime in 21 minutes after pushing the spin button exactly 250 times.  Though chances are you'll play slower, and who knows, you might even get a hand pay (which is when you win an amount on a single spin that exceeds a certain threshold (I believe it is $1200 or something like that) where the attendant has to pay you in person and get your tax info and stuff).  So conservatively, let's call it 2 hours.  But definitely should be doable in a single sitting.  You might burn through a lot of your $100's in a row, but the game should ebb and flow and my guess is that you'll end up down a couple thousand, give or take, when you're through.  Though you could be down ten thousand or more.  But as long as you start with $12,500, you'll get to Prime guaranteed.  

And that's it!  Congrats on getting to Prime!

If you're interested in my logic and math, or how to reduce the risk of this costing a lot more than a couple grand, read on.  

How do I arrive at my conclusions?  A huge part of my math revolves around the "RTP" value, which stands for "return to player".  These are values set by the casino and dictate how much money, over a long period of time, each machine will return to the player.  In Vegas, slots are usually in the mid to high 90s, meaning that if you spun a $10,000 penny slot machine a million times, you'd leave with $9,600 assuming it had a 96% RTP.  I am assuming that Royal has an 85% RTP.  I may be over or under estimating that, but I am confident that this is fairly accurate.  Here's why.  A good video poker machine in Vegas will have an RTP extremely close to 100%, like 99.5% or higher.  Some even have a hair over 100% RTP, believe it or not.  But the general consensus is that on Royal, video poker RTP is terrible.  So I assume that means it is somewhere the 90-95% range.  Call it 92.5%.  Royal gives you 1 point for every $10 you put through a video poker machine.  But they give you 1 point for every $5 you put through a slot machine.  This isn't out of the kindness of their hearts.  Logically this must be because slots have an RTP that is around twice as bad as video poker.  So that's how I get to 85% RTP for slots.  If you brought in 1,250,00 pennies and you played a single penny machine 1,250,00 times, you would walk away with Prime status and be almost statistically guaranteed to have roughly 1,062,500 pennies left over.  But it would take you over 72 days of playing 24/7 to do this.  Obviously we can't play a penny at a time.  So we trade statistical certainty of the outcome for time spent playing.  Playing $50 hands as in my instructions above, this could take less than a half an hour.  But the chances that you end the session down 6, 8, 10 thousand dollars are not insignificant (you could also end the session up several thousand dollars too!).  You have to trade your comfort level with knowing the final result (which if you remember will ALWAYS converge to you losing $1,875) with the amount of time you are willing to sit and play.  There is a lot of math that goes into figuring out the odds, and it depends on the standard deviation of the pay table (which is impossible to know and varies greatly by game).  But for our purposes we can just double the amount of time it takes to get to Prime for every time you cut the bet size in half.  My conservative guess for the $50 bet size was 2 hours, so $25 bets would take you 4 hours, $10 bets would take you 10 hours, and $2 bets would take you 50 hours (though with $2 bets you should never have a hand pay and could always play fast, so this may actually be closer to 10 hours at a consistent 5 seconds a spin).  If you had groups of people doing each different strategy, the group making $50 bets would have some people leaving the casino with Prime status and $1,000 left over, while others would be leaving with Prime status plus $20,000 in their pocket.  The group playing the $2 hands would all leave with Prime and with cash amounts somewhere between $9,000 and $12,000.  But they traded more time at the machine for that tighter window of likely outcomes.

Hope this helped!  The most important thing to remember is this: Royal does not lose money on the casino program.  Statically, they are charging each person who makes it to Prime $1,875 to get there.  Some pay more, some pay less, but the house always wins.

 

Fun read. I’m curious…where do you spend your time in the cruise casino? 
 

Using your slots strategy posted above, if both me and my wife walk into the casino with large enough bank rolls we can both get to Prime and hopefully not be down more than 2k each so that we can hopefully get free cruises for our family of 4 (2 rooms). However if those free cruise dates are never during times when my daughters are off of school (as mentioned in another post above) then I may just be wasting my time trying to earn free cruises. Bummer!

[ElmoHongZito]

14 hours ago, twangster said:

In addition I'd add that you will need to invest some time towards this effort.  Will your family be okay being without you while spend hour after hour in the casino?   

Also you better not have a problem with cigarette smoke.  

When I was on an oasis class ship last month it appeared to me that one side of the casino was smoke free (port or aft? the side where the entrances are). I only smelled cigarette smoke when I went to the other side. 

[ElmoHongZito]

14 hours ago, tonyfsu21 said:

This advice is great if you are a gambler and will be in the casino enjoying everything there is to enjoy in the casino regardless of the points. I wouldn’t advise someone who is not a seasoned casino player to pump money into a machine or a table to try and get to prime for the free drinks and crappy casino certificates. I just doesn’t make good sense.

Free drinks does not interest me too much as I am not a big drinker. Free cruises is what I would be targeting. 

[mac66]

No such thing as a "free cruise". You are still paying for it, just in different way.

[DoomSlayer]

As much as I like the Casino and the comps I get, I would not advise anyone to start playing just to get the comps if they were not already inclined to play in the casino.  If you enjoy the casino, then go for it, but don't gamble any more than you can afford to lose and don't get caught in a trap of chasing a status just because.  For family trips with the kids, I usually end up having to pay for them the old-fashioned way because they tend to be in black out times for comps because of school schedules -- no benefits during these times. I tend to not play in the casino on these trips too because I would rather spend time with them rather than a game.  I usually play in the casino on trips with just me and my wife after the evening shows because she likes to play too.  All-in-all, I would say I am probably more break even with the comp cruises and perks in the long run.  As Mac66 correctly stated:

52 minutes ago, mac66 said:

No such thing as a "free cruise". You are still paying for it, just in different way.

 

[tonyfsu21]

9 hours ago, ElmoHongZito said:

Free drinks does not interest me too much as I am not a big drinker. Free cruises is what I would be targeting. 

It’s not worth it, trust me. There’s nothing “free” in the casino. The amount of money you are going to potentially lose trying to get to prime is silly when you consider the “free” cruises are normally inside cabins on undesirable sailings and the fact that you dont drink alcohol so you can’t take advantage of the free casino drinks. 

[Al Miller]

You will almost always spend more in gambling than the value of anything they will offer you for "Free."

There are exceptions. My brother won 1000 dollars on the first day of his cruise and spent that back out for the rest of the week. He had a few more small wins over the week and ended up with 1500 points without spending any of his own money. He got a free inside offer. So you can luck out, but you will have to put in the time. He probably spent 20 hours in the casino during the sailing. He enjoys gambling anyway so win/win for him.

[TXcruzer]

On 12/17/2022 at 5:15 PM, bakingbad3 said:

I actually just posted something about this in a different thread!  Here are my thoughts:

Bottom line up front: You can get there in as little as an hour, but you need to have an appropriately sized bankroll.  If you can walk into the casino with $12,500 cash, you will get to Prime.  You will likely pay somewhere between $1,000 and $3,000 for your trouble.  

So how do you do it? Find one of the all-digital slot machines.  You are looking for buttons on the bottom part that say "x lines" with "x" being numbers like 1, 15, 25, 50, whatever.  The higher the better.  You should be able to find one that says 200 or 300 as one of the highest values.  You are also looking for a denomination button, or a 2 by 2 grid of a cluster of buttons.  They should say "1 c", "5 c", and so on.  This is the bet amount.  You are looking for at least 25 cents.  You should be able to find a machine that has somewhere around 200 lines to play and lets you bet 25 cents a line.  Find it?  Good, that's your machine.  Start feeding it $100 bills.  Pick the highest line amount and the highest denomination amount.  Hit the "spin" button. You should be betting about $50 a spin.  You can just smack the button over and over to skip the animations, though you might end up on a machine with mini-games that force you to interact.  There is zero skill involved in these.  Just go as quickly as you can.  If you can bet once every 5 seconds, you'll hit Prime in 21 minutes after pushing the spin button exactly 250 times.  Though chances are you'll play slower, and who knows, you might even get a hand pay (which is when you win an amount on a single spin that exceeds a certain threshold (I believe it is $1200 or something like that) where the attendant has to pay you in person and get your tax info and stuff).  So conservatively, let's call it 2 hours.  But definitely should be doable in a single sitting.  You might burn through a lot of your $100's in a row, but the game should ebb and flow and my guess is that you'll end up down a couple thousand, give or take, when you're through.  Though you could be down ten thousand or more.  But as long as you start with $12,500, you'll get to Prime guaranteed.  

And that's it!  Congrats on getting to Prime!

If you're interested in my logic and math, or how to reduce the risk of this costing a lot more than a couple grand, read on.  

How do I arrive at my conclusions?  A huge part of my math revolves around the "RTP" value, which stands for "return to player".  These are values set by the casino and dictate how much money, over a long period of time, each machine will return to the player.  In Vegas, slots are usually in the mid to high 90s, meaning that if you spun a $10,000 penny slot machine a million times, you'd leave with $9,600 assuming it had a 96% RTP.  I am assuming that Royal has an 85% RTP.  I may be over or under estimating that, but I am confident that this is fairly accurate.  Here's why.  A good video poker machine in Vegas will have an RTP extremely close to 100%, like 99.5% or higher.  Some even have a hair over 100% RTP, believe it or not.  But the general consensus is that on Royal, video poker RTP is terrible.  So I assume that means it is somewhere the 90-95% range.  Call it 92.5%.  Royal gives you 1 point for every $10 you put through a video poker machine.  But they give you 1 point for every $5 you put through a slot machine.  This isn't out of the kindness of their hearts.  Logically this must be because slots have an RTP that is around twice as bad as video poker.  So that's how I get to 85% RTP for slots.  If you brought in 1,250,00 pennies and you played a single penny machine 1,250,00 times, you would walk away with Prime status and be almost statistically guaranteed to have roughly 1,062,500 pennies left over.  But it would take you over 72 days of playing 24/7 to do this.  Obviously we can't play a penny at a time.  So we trade statistical certainty of the outcome for time spent playing.  Playing $50 hands as in my instructions above, this could take less than a half an hour.  But the chances that you end the session down 6, 8, 10 thousand dollars are not insignificant (you could also end the session up several thousand dollars too!).  You have to trade your comfort level with knowing the final result (which if you remember will ALWAYS converge to you losing $1,875) with the amount of time you are willing to sit and play.  There is a lot of math that goes into figuring out the odds, and it depends on the standard deviation of the pay table (which is impossible to know and varies greatly by game).  But for our purposes we can just double the amount of time it takes to get to Prime for every time you cut the bet size in half.  My conservative guess for the $50 bet size was 2 hours, so $25 bets would take you 4 hours, $10 bets would take you 10 hours, and $2 bets would take you 50 hours (though with $2 bets you should never have a hand pay and could always play fast, so this may actually be closer to 10 hours at a consistent 5 seconds a spin).  If you had groups of people doing each different strategy, the group making $50 bets would have some people leaving the casino with Prime status and $1,000 left over, while others would be leaving with Prime status plus $20,000 in their pocket.  The group playing the $2 hands would all leave with Prime and with cash amounts somewhere between $9,000 and $12,000.  But they traded more time at the machine for that tighter window of likely outcomes.

Hope this helped!  The most important thing to remember is this: Royal does not lose money on the casino program.  Statically, they are charging each person who makes it to Prime $1,875 to get there.  Some pay more, some pay less, but the house always wins.

 

OR, hear me out here, you can just pay the cruise fare........................

[Ampurp85]

I will echo the sentiments that based on what you want, chasing prime for "free" cruises aren't in the cards for you. Prime is great if you want free drinks, discounted internet and possible room comps but you already gamble. The free cruise offers aren't in the summer or during spring break. I gamble, so making prime was a bonus for something I already do. I cruise between Sept-Nov and Jan-Feb, which is when the offers are usually available. I don't smoke, it actually bothers my allergies but even the nonsmoking section will get smoke or have smokers who don't follow the rules. Also, I can't imagine someone having the fortitude to sit at a machine/table for long if they don't like gambling.

[Censored]

On 12/18/2022 at 8:41 AM, ElmoHongZito said:

Fun read. I’m curious…where do you spend your time in the cruise casino? 
 

Using your slots strategy posted above, if both me and my wife walk into the casino with large enough bank rolls we can both get to Prime and hopefully not be down more than 2k each so that we can hopefully get free cruises for our family of 4 (2 rooms). However if those free cruise dates are never during times when my daughters are off of school (as mentioned in another post above) then I may just be wasting my time trying to earn free cruises. Bummer!

I always go to the casino host and ask for a print out of the list of cruises that I could possibly win. , as you are correct, many of those qualifying cruises are either already full or not good for your personal schedule.

 

[Bean79]

From what I read so far you should stay out of the casino. You do not get a "free" cruise, you pay for it in the casino. Plus you have kids so when you want to take your "free" cruise you most likely will be able to because they are offered during off peak seasons.

[WAAAYTOOO]

Nothing is ever really free. But I will tell you that I have saved tens of thousands of dollars over the years through casino comps.  Overall, it's a winner for us.

[ElmoHongZito]

1 hour ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

Nothing is ever really free. But I will tell you that I have saved tens of thousands of dollars over the years through casino comps.  Overall, it's a winner for us.

I guess it depends on your lifestyle. My wife is a teacher and my kids are still in grade school so a free family cruise during off peak dates is no value to us. I’m also not a big drinker so free drinks is not a big deal for me either.

[Censored]

3 hours ago, Censored said:

I always go to the casino host and ask for a print out of the list of cruises that I could possibly win. , as you are correct, many of those qualifying cruises are either already full or not good for your personal schedule.

 

I would agree that in most cases the Prime status is achievable between $1500-$2,000  Avoid volatile slots. Try to recycle the casinos money..

 

[Censored]

2 hours ago, Bean79 said:

From what I read so far you should stay out of the casino. You do not get a "free" cruise, you pay for it in the casino. Plus you have kids so when you want to take your "free" cruise you most likely will be able to because they are offered during off peak seasons.

Disagree with this statement. People dont realize the ongoing weekly/monthly comped cruise offers sent via email.   Further there is free play attached to them.  I can cruise every single month if I want to, many time its a suite as well.  I am far ahead cruising this way.

[ElmoHongZito]

14 minutes ago, Censored said:

Disagree with this statement. People dont realize the ongoing weekly/monthly comped cruise offers sent via email.   Further there is free play attached to them.  I can cruise every single month if I want to, many time its a suite as well.  I am far ahead cruising this way.

Is it the same free play that the other passengers get to use within first 2 days? Or is it something more aggressive? 

[ElmoHongZito]

20 minutes ago, Censored said:

I would agree that in most cases the Prime status is achievable between $1500-$2,000  Avoid volatile slots. Try to recycle the casinos money..

 

By “volatile slots” are you referring to all slot machines or specific ones? 

[Censored]

On 12/18/2022 at 5:55 PM, tonyfsu21 said:

It’s not worth it, trust me. There’s nothing “free” in the casino. The amount of money you are going to potentially lose trying to get to prime is silly when you consider the “free” cruises are normally inside cabins on undesirable sailings and the fact that you dont drink alcohol so you can’t take advantage of the free casino drinks. 

old school news. much has changed. I am way ahead with comped cruises than paying for them

[tonyfsu21]

24 minutes ago, Censored said:

old school news. much has changed. I am way ahead with comped cruises than paying for them

@CensoredI am on the same page as you, I play all hours of the night (and sometimes days depending on if my wife & kids are not ready to murder me). I am simply conveying the fact that if you are not a serious gambler or at a minimum enjoy gambling then there is no point in achieving prime status for the crappy discounts. I have saved many 10’s of thousands on suites via casino discounts and have also enjoyed the free play so I get it. The point is, the casual player popping .25 into the slots and gambling $10/hr is not going to get you anywhere and if that’s “old school news” then I guess I simply agree to disagree. 

[WAAAYTOOO]

13 minutes ago, tonyfsu21 said:

@CensoredI am on the same page as you, I play all hours of the night (and sometimes days depending on if my wife & kids are not ready to murder me). I am simply conveying the fact that if you are not a serious gambler or at a minimum enjoy gambling then there is no point in achieving prime status for the crappy discounts. I have saved many 10’s of thousands on suites via casino discounts and have also enjoyed the free play so I get it. The point is, the casual player popping .25 into the slots and gambling $10/hr is not going to get you anywhere and if that’s “old school news” then I guess I simply agree to disagree. 

Tony, I totally agree with you regarding the "casual player".  Over and over again, I have warned casual players away from trying to become Prime just for the "free" drinks and casino discounts.  Bottom line....if you aren't a gambler and don't plan on playing in the casino ANYway, stay away....or at least, keep your expectations sane.  I'm going to spend my time and money in the casino.  It's what I do and I enjoy it.  I might as well get some status and benefits for doing that, but those who wander in and think they're going to get a lot of freebies for playing the penny slots couldn't be more wrong.

[Censored]

1 hour ago, tonyfsu21 said:

@CensoredI am on the same page as you, I play all hours of the night (and sometimes days depending on if my wife & kids are not ready to murder me). I am simply conveying the fact that if you are not a serious gambler or at a minimum enjoy gambling then there is no point in achieving prime status for the crappy discounts. I have saved many 10’s of thousands on suites via casino discounts and have also enjoyed the free play so I get it. The point is, the casual player popping .25 into the slots and gambling $10/hr is not going to get you anywhere and if that’s “old school news” then I guess I simply agree to disagree. 

over a period of a one week cruise or 9-11 days, a casual cruiser/gambler may achieve points to get a free inside cabin ....maybe prime. but the 30cent player...forget it. Waste of money but maybe they just enjoy the entertainment.  Most times I get a junior suite then I upgrade it through casino royale customer service for very little in many cases up to sky suites. Depends on who's manipulating the all the data.  I check weekly my comped cruises.... right now I have at least a dozen to choose from. I will be on Odyssey of the Seas this Jan for one month GRATIS...and I dont have to gamble a penny. Status already achieved for next cycle April 1.   Grant it , it takes time to figure all this out and you need to stay on top of it. I had a personal casino host, but they stopped doing that for some reason.   Im always calling in to see what upgrades I can get... many times for almost nothing... like 50-100 bucks.   Grand suite and above. 

[Censored]

On 12/17/2022 at 6:15 PM, bakingbad3 said:

I actually just posted something about this in a different thread!  Here are my thoughts:

Bottom line up front: You can get there in as little as an hour, but you need to have an appropriately sized bankroll.  If you can walk into the casino with $12,500 cash, you will get to Prime.  You will likely pay somewhere between $1,000 and $3,000 for your trouble.  

So how do you do it? Find one of the all-digital slot machines.  You are looking for buttons on the bottom part that say "x lines" with "x" being numbers like 1, 15, 25, 50, whatever.  The higher the better.  You should be able to find one that says 200 or 300 as one of the highest values.  You are also looking for a denomination button, or a 2 by 2 grid of a cluster of buttons.  They should say "1 c", "5 c", and so on.  This is the bet amount.  You are looking for at least 25 cents.  You should be able to find a machine that has somewhere around 200 lines to play and lets you bet 25 cents a line.  Find it?  Good, that's your machine.  Start feeding it $100 bills.  Pick the highest line amount and the highest denomination amount.  Hit the "spin" button. You should be betting about $50 a spin.  You can just smack the button over and over to skip the animations, though you might end up on a machine with mini-games that force you to interact.  There is zero skill involved in these.  Just go as quickly as you can.  If you can bet once every 5 seconds, you'll hit Prime in 21 minutes after pushing the spin button exactly 250 times.  Though chances are you'll play slower, and who knows, you might even get a hand pay (which is when you win an amount on a single spin that exceeds a certain threshold (I believe it is $1200 or something like that) where the attendant has to pay you in person and get your tax info and stuff).  So conservatively, let's call it 2 hours.  But definitely should be doable in a single sitting.  You might burn through a lot of your $100's in a row, but the game should ebb and flow and my guess is that you'll end up down a couple thousand, give or take, when you're through.  Though you could be down ten thousand or more.  But as long as you start with $12,500, you'll get to Prime guaranteed.  

And that's it!  Congrats on getting to Prime!

If you're interested in my logic and math, or how to reduce the risk of this costing a lot more than a couple grand, read on.  

How do I arrive at my conclusions?  A huge part of my math revolves around the "RTP" value, which stands for "return to player".  These are values set by the casino and dictate how much money, over a long period of time, each machine will return to the player.  In Vegas, slots are usually in the mid to high 90s, meaning that if you spun a $10,000 penny slot machine a million times, you'd leave with $9,600 assuming it had a 96% RTP.  I am assuming that Royal has an 85% RTP.  I may be over or under estimating that, but I am confident that this is fairly accurate.  Here's why.  A good video poker machine in Vegas will have an RTP extremely close to 100%, like 99.5% or higher.  Some even have a hair over 100% RTP, believe it or not.  But the general consensus is that on Royal, video poker RTP is terrible.  So I assume that means it is somewhere the 90-95% range.  Call it 92.5%.  Royal gives you 1 point for every $10 you put through a video poker machine.  But they give you 1 point for every $5 you put through a slot machine.  This isn't out of the kindness of their hearts.  Logically this must be because slots have an RTP that is around twice as bad as video poker.  So that's how I get to 85% RTP for slots.  If you brought in 1,250,00 pennies and you played a single penny machine 1,250,00 times, you would walk away with Prime status and be almost statistically guaranteed to have roughly 1,062,500 pennies left over.  But it would take you over 72 days of playing 24/7 to do this.  Obviously we can't play a penny at a time.  So we trade statistical certainty of the outcome for time spent playing.  Playing $50 hands as in my instructions above, this could take less than a half an hour.  But the chances that you end the session down 6, 8, 10 thousand dollars are not insignificant (you could also end the session up several thousand dollars too!).  You have to trade your comfort level with knowing the final result (which if you remember will ALWAYS converge to you losing $1,875) with the amount of time you are willing to sit and play.  There is a lot of math that goes into figuring out the odds, and it depends on the standard deviation of the pay table (which is impossible to know and varies greatly by game).  But for our purposes we can just double the amount of time it takes to get to Prime for every time you cut the bet size in half.  My conservative guess for the $50 bet size was 2 hours, so $25 bets would take you 4 hours, $10 bets would take you 10 hours, and $2 bets would take you 50 hours (though with $2 bets you should never have a hand pay and could always play fast, so this may actually be closer to 10 hours at a consistent 5 seconds a spin).  If you had groups of people doing each different strategy, the group making $50 bets would have some people leaving the casino with Prime status and $1,000 left over, while others would be leaving with Prime status plus $20,000 in their pocket.  The group playing the $2 hands would all leave with Prime and with cash amounts somewhere between $9,000 and $12,000.  But they traded more time at the machine for that tighter window of likely outcomes.

Hope this helped!  The most important thing to remember is this: Royal does not lose money on the casino program.  Statically, they are charging each person who makes it to Prime $1,875 to get there.  Some pay more, some pay less, but the house always wins.

 

I very rarely see anybody play $50 spins. But I am going to agree with you.  You need to find a machine that has "low volatility "  Double Diamond" for instance.  Dragon link, Lightning will eat up your bank roll fast.   Old school machines are best.   I watch some YouTubers who's past occupation was fixing and maintaining slot machines.  Many techs agree that cruise machine slots are the best to play ...better than land based casinos and tribal.  I love video poker, but for some reason the odds are not as good  and yes, it will take forever to accumulate points. I dont even look at points anymore regardless.   Top Dollar is a great machine to play a huge bank roll through. It may eat up fast at times, but eventually you will hit.. and sometimes very big.  

[Censored]

2 hours ago, ElmoHongZito said:

By “volatile slots” are you referring to all slot machines or specific ones? 

specific slot machines. The newer flashier ones tend to be more volatile.  Stick to old school machines.  Play highest denomination.   Be patient, you will hit.  Avoid Lightning/dragon link,  Huff n puff.  

[ScooterScott22]

On 1/3/2023 at 12:32 PM, WAAAYTOOO said:

Nothing is ever really free. But I will tell you that I have saved tens of thousands of dollars over the years through casino comps.  Overall, it's a winner for us.

Hearing a lot of negativity towards Prime and that it is not worth the perks they provide.  Glad to hear that it is working. 

There are quite a few people in the world that do actually enjoy casino gaming as a form of entertainment.  For those folks the time and money spent gaming IS their "fun".  Any perks that happen to come with that is a bonus no matter how some people feel about the program.  The key is that people have their entertainment dollars and they can enjoy them as they like.   

Good luck on getting to prime.

[WAAAYTOOO]

1 hour ago, ScooterScott22 said:

Hearing a lot of negativity towards Prime and that it is not worth the perks they provide.  Glad to hear that it is working. 

There are quite a few people in the world that do actually enjoy casino gaming as a form of entertainment.  For those folks the time and money spent gaming IS their "fun".  Any perks that happen to come with that is a bonus no matter how some people feel about the program.  The key is that people have their entertainment dollars and they can enjoy them as they like.   

Good luck on getting to prime.

BINGO !  This is us....

[Ampurp85]

I agree with @WAAAYTOOOand the others.

For me playing at the casino is my fun, I enjoy gambling, I am not actively working towards prime. It is a great extra perk but it's not my ultimate goal. My two land-based vacations are to casinos this year and the road trip on the end of my Oct Allure sailing from Texas includes an overnight stop at the Harris in Louisiana because I loved that place when I was last there. 

[teddy]

1 hour ago, ScooterScott22 said:

Hearing a lot of negativity towards Prime and that it is not worth the perks they provide.  Glad to hear that it is working. 

There are quite a few people in the world that do actually enjoy casino gaming as a form of entertainment.  For those folks the time and money spent gaming IS their "fun".  Any perks that happen to come with that is a bonus no matter how some people feel about the program.  The key is that people have their entertainment dollars and they can enjoy them as they like.   

Good luck on getting to prime.

Exactly. 

I'm sure I spend some of my entertainment money in ways that some people think is wrong.  Hell, there are people we know who think we're wrong for just spending money on a cruise.

[tonyfsu21]

On 1/3/2023 at 1:51 PM, ElmoHongZito said:

By “volatile slots” are you referring to all slot machines or specific ones? 

When I think “volatile slots” all I hear is the jingle from Heidi’s Bier Haus slot machine for some reason….

[monctonguy]

I have never been offered anything from Royal's Casinos...and while I don't spend a lot there, I am sure over the past dozen cruises I have spent thousands and thousands.

 

I have only sailed Celebrity once...and gambled the same as I would on Royal....and its unbelieve the offers they give me for 10 day free cruises with Veranda rooms.....based on my gambling???!

 

Are Royals and Celebrity's casino programs linked somehow or?

[B&S]

On 12/17/2022 at 5:28 PM, Pattycruise said:

Table play has points calculated by $ amount per hand, # of hands played and time at the table.  They punch you into the table when you sit, and they pause you if you sit out a hand or leave for the bathroom etc.   if you are going to attempt the  tables go to the Learn to play sessions onboard -usually night 1 and maybe day 2. (Depends on the itinerary) also learn the payouts, not all dealers are good with them and it’s typically not in your favor.     If you can sit for an hour on $100 that’s great!  You can then go to the host and ask how many table points you have and try to generalize your points earned for that table time and in the future if you continue to play the same $ amount per hand and similar #’s of people sitting at the table then your points should be similar per hour.  If you were playing with 2 people at the table and now there are 7 people at the table you’re playing fewer hands per hour. 
 

Slots. For every $5 played you earn - point.  Some machines you can set the $amount(or cents) . A 1 penny machine at max bet may be $1.20 per hand.  If you change the value played to 2 cents and play max bet it would be $2.40 per hand (this is just an example.  The cheapest hand on 1 cent may be 20 credits (20 cents).

then you have 88 cent machines that can multiply to 1.76, 2.64 , up to 8.88 per hand or on another line you might have 22 cents etc.  

if you are going to play a machine and look for a jackpot you would need to understand if you need to play a certain amount to be eligible for the big payout. A machine that comes to mind is Quickhits…play $1.50 per spin to be eligible for top win. 
I’ve sat at machines and asked the person next to me “what do I need to know? “-this is if their machine is identical to mine.  Most want to share their knowledge.

my last cruise a guy was playing $35 per spin on video poker.  Idk how much he played but he hit for $96k.  I’m sure he’s a high roller,  his wife mentioned he hit for $80k in another casino.  Video poker only earns 1pt for every $10 played.

I’ve sat at machines and my $100 got me  barely any points.  You need to have the machine payout to keep playing on THEIR money, not just you putting in $.

I’ve never heard of prime earning 2 free cruises, maybe that’s a thing of the past? Also my explanation for the free annual cruise for Prime is of course subject to change when April comes around.

 

Since when can a 12 year old be to prime status?  You have to be at least 18 years old.