These are great questions, so continue asking, as these could be helpful for other folks too.
I didn’t really answer this part: Are some cruise lines better than others?
It’s really just what the specific boat offers. Always, always try to check YouTube for the most current “slot tour” videos. Cruises, in particular, shuffle games in and out all the time. If you see a video of your Royal Caribbean ship from early 2025, let’s say, it may be completely different in August 2026.
Yes, you’ll have to do some detective work, as many of these videos are of people quickly zooming through a casino and not focusing on any one thing. Sometimes I’m really splicing together footage from a number of people to get a good sense of what slots are currently on board. But that’s important, as if you get on a boat with barely anything AP, you’ve just wasted a week (at least from a slots perspective).
Something else I’ve considered but haven’t really acted on much yet: Where is the port located? The way I figure, a port from a state that tends to have a number of APs in a regular casino—Florida, for instance—might be more likely to have knowledgable folks on the boat too. But when push comes to shove, I usually just opt for convenience rather than a guess on a port that might have fewer APs.
If you do go this route, I think taking a cruise ship that departs from somewhere outside of the U.S. would be the best bet. That said, Europeans, for instance, might not be as gambling-heavy as Americans, so who knows? I will try this at some point and report back.
Otherwise, as always, be careful using your players card. That might sound a little counterintuitive, as you need to show play, so how do you do that without using a card? Use it for the long-run games. Do not use it for anything in the 1-20 spins category. I’ve been kicked off Norwegian because I got sloppy and wasn’t doing this. I’ve heard of people getting booted from Carnival as well.
The people working on the ship—often foreign-born folks who don’t know anything about advantage play, including the higher-ups—won’t be the problem. It’s the number-crunchers looking at your results after your cruise.
Ben Rosenthal
