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Landing a "Free" Cruise without Gambling

By Jason Little

Introduction

In 2023 and 2024, I booked 93 days worth of “free” cruises. How?

Most cruise lines have a casino and they are always looking for new players to slot into their machines. If you are a gambler, or look like one, you can often get offers for “free” cruises. These typically include the cost of your cabin, but you will need to pay port fees, mandatory gratuities, and any extras like wifi or drink packages.

An Example Offer

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My Carnival Fun Match cruise was a similar 22 days, with a balcony, on Carnival Luminosa, from Brisbane to Seattle by way of New Caledonia, Fiji, Tahiti, Moorea and Honolulu.

Ok. “Free” is good and all, but what does that really mean?

In the case of Carnival, here is what you can expect.

  • $200 deposit per cabin.
    Available as onboard credit.
  • $120-$400 in port fees per person.
    Ports charge different fees.
  • $16.50 per day per person mandatory gratuity.
    Some tip extra but it’s usually a smaller amount.

For the offer pictured, cruising solo, we would pay the following.

  • $200 deposit usable for anything aboard.
  • $400 for port fees for 9 stops around the Pacific.
  • $496 for gratuities across 31 days of sailing.

Since we get the deposit back as credit, that works out to $28.90 per day for our 31 day cruise. Shorter cruises can cost a little more per day in that they pack in more ports in fewer days so for a seven day cruise you might expect to pay around $50 per day.

Food and basic drinks will be included, as well as premium drinks in the casino, but you will need to pay extra for wifi, excursions, premium drink packages or gambling.

Get a “Free” Cruise Offer

Cruise ship casinos want gamblers. Consequently, there are many ways for people with moderately low level casino status (Caesars Diamond, MGM Gold, Hard Rock Icon, etc) to parlay that into an offer. Sometimes all you need is a free cruise offer from a competing cruise line.

Get Casino Status

There are easy and hard ways to get casino status.

The hard way is to earn it.

  • Gambling $100,000/year at one casino.
    Probably not a good idea.

The easy way is to leverage a Casino’s partners.

  • Wyndham Diamond matches to Caesars Diamond.
  • Paid versions of Founders Card grant Caesars Diamond.
  • Until 2023, Hyatt Explorist matched to MGM Gold.

Of these approaches, I am not a fan of Founders Card which has always been a fairly confusing product with mixed value.

Instead, I recommend getting the Wyndham Business Earner. This credit card grants automatic Wyndham Diamond status and pays for itself several times over.

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Wyndham Business Earner - Reviewed
  • Wyndham & Caesars Diamond.
  • 10% discount on award bookings.
  • 8x earnings on gas.

Submit a Carnival Fun Match

For Carnival, all you need to do to get an offer is to submit a “Fun Match” online.

Here is how it works.

  1. Get casino status (Caesar’s Diamond, MGM Gold, etc).
  2. Submit a Carnival Fun Match with a picture of your casino card.
    A screenshot usually works.
  3. Complete your Carnival profile, including salutation and state.
    These are often left blank and MUST be filled in.
  4. Wait 2-4 weeks for a free cruise offer in your inbox.
    Usually they start with lower offers first.
  5. Click on the link in your offer email and book your cruise.
    Be aware that if you no show, they will charge you full price.

Apply at UR Comped

UR Comped is a third party site where you can submit casino status and cruise ship offers. They will then take that information and see what offers they can drum up for you. Many people have great luck with this, but I’ve not yet tried it personally.

Ocean Prime and MSC

Ocean Casino in Atlantic city offers a truly free cruise (no fees) with MSC as part of its loyalty program for Prime status and higher. Nick from Frequent Miler has a good writeup going over the details. It’s possible Ocean has stopped providing cruises on matches.

Wynn and Holland America

Wynn offers a “free” Holland America cruise with Platinum status. They have been known to offer matches to Platinum from Caesar’s Diamond and MGM Gold. To get the cruise, you must complete two stays at Wynn. Many Vegas casinos have been known to impose a 72-hour separation between comped stays and the rumor mill suggests the Wynn stays may need to be 72 hours apart.

Keep the Gravy Train Sailing

If you accept a casino offer, and never visit the casino, you won’t get in any trouble, but chances are you won’t be getting any more offers from that particular company and the free cruise gravy train will end.

So how do you keep it alive?

Well, the casino will offer you more cruises if they think doing so will profit them.

For more on this, see our article on the Art of Cruise Ship Gaming.

Credit / Tip of the Hat

Nick Reyes at Frequent Miler was really the first to document this well from a points and miles perspective. In 2023, he went on a quest to see how far he could cruise for free. My own journey started off based on Nick’s guide. It is more detailed than what you will find here and I can’t recommend it enough.