As I sat on my balcony looking at the Rock of Gibraltar in the distance, I couldn’t believe I’d paid just $72 per night for me and my husband to take a 14-night transatlantic cruise.
Like many other passengers I talked to during the crossing, I’d booked my cheap cruise through a Carnival Players Club offer. My specific offer gave me a “free” balcony room, $50 of casino credit and complimentary drinks while playing in the casino.
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But unlike many passengers who booked Carnival Players Club offers, I hadn’t gambled my way to a cruise. Instead, I’d used a chain of status matches to get casino status and sign up for a Carnival Fun Match. Then, I obsessively checked the Fun Match cruise offers until I found one I couldn’t resist.
Read on to learn how I did it and how you can, too.
How I got casino status without gambling
To get a Carnival Fun Match, I needed to submit proof of status in another casino’s players club or loyalty program.
I have Caesars Rewards Diamond status, but I don’t believe I’ve ever gambled at a Caesars casino — although I have earned reward credits on hotel stays, shopping and dining in Las Vegas. The truth is my activity with Caesars is far too limited to have earned Diamond status with the program. Instead, I have Caesars Diamond status via a match from Wyndham Rewards Diamond status.
You can earn Wyndham Diamond status through the end of the next calendar year if you stay with Wyndham for at least 40 qualifying nights in a calendar year. However, the Wyndham Rewards Earner® Business Card offers automatic Wyndham Diamond status for as long as you have the card.
I initially held Wyndham Diamond status through a series of status matches that are no longer available, but after using my Wyndham status for the Carnival Fun Match, my status expired. Now, I hold Diamond status as a Wyndham Business cardholder.
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Caesars now requires you to “have earned Tier Status with your current loyalty program in order for your status to be matched.” But Diamond status from holding the Wyndham Business card counts as an earned status to match to Caesars Rewards.
To summarize, I got Wyndham Diamond status via a no-longer-available status match — but you can still get it by holding the Wyndham Business card. Then, I matched this status to Caesars Rewards online. In previous years, it has taken a few weeks for my match to go through, but this year, it took about a month.
Leveraging status matches
With Caesars Diamond status in hand, it was time to request a Carnival Fun Match in the hopes of scoring a free or cheap cruise.
You can register for the Carnival Players Club Fun Match program if you are 21 or older and a legal resident of one of the 50 U.S. states or Washington, D.C. Once you do so, you won’t get elite status, but you might get discounted cruise offers. Even if you already are a member of Carnival Cruise Line’s VIFP Club loyalty program, you can still register for a Fun Match.
To register, you’ll need to input your VIFP Club number and email; if you don’t have a VIFP account, you can create one. Either way, check the box for “I would like to receive emails for special offers and/or information from Carnival” to get offers in your inbox.
I submitted proof of my Caesars Rewards Diamond status by taking photos of both sides of my physical Caesars Diamond card I’d picked up in Las Vegas. If I had more casino statuses, I could have uploaded more than just one and might have gotten better offers. You’ll likely get better offers if you go that route and submit proof of status with other casino loyalty programs.
Related: How to earn free cruises and perks with casino loyalty programs on land and at sea
Carnival Fun Match offers
Once you register for a Carnival Players Club Fun Match, you might see offers via email within a week. However, some travelers have reported registering for Fun Match and only receiving discounted cruise offers. You might go through all the effort of status matching and still not get any offers for a “free” cruise.
When I wrote this story, the Carnival Fun Match website said travelers who register will get “drinks included + upgrades + $50 to spend in the casino.” You should get at least whichever offer is currently on the Fun Match registration page.
Otherwise, there are no rules or official guidance regarding the types of Fun Match offers you might receive or how long you might receive offers. Each offer you let expire could be the last offer you see. Once you book a Fun Match offer, the flow of offers into your email inbox will likely end … at least, until you’ve gone on your cruise and Carnival has assessed your level of play in its onboard casino.
I started getting Fun Match emails in my inbox within a week of registering in January 2022. Until I booked a Fun Match offer in March 2023, I got one to four emails with Fun Match offers per week.
Some Fun Match offers were for cruises starting at $55 per person, per day (plus taxes, fees and gratuities), based on double occupancy. With these offers, I could have gotten complimentary drinks in the casino and bonus cash from Carnival based on how many points I accrued in the casino during my cruise. For reference, you’ll earn 1 point for every $2.50 you wager through slot machines.
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Other offers included a “free” cruise with complimentary drinks in the casino and a $50 FunPlay credit. Some offers even included balcony rooms, although these were more limited than ocean-view rooms, which in turn were more limited than windowless inside rooms.
A “free” cruise, mind you, isn’t really free. You’ll still need to pay a deposit (which you’ll get back in onboard credits), plus taxes, fees and gratuities.
After a while, I forgot about the Fun Match offers, as they got hidden in the Promotions tab of my inbox. But once I rediscovered them in late 2022, I checked my cruise offers daily.
You might find hundreds of offers when you click through to see the eligible cruises for a specific offer. Most are usually for cruises to the Caribbean, the Bahamas or Mexico in inside cabins. You can filter by cruise destination, departure port, length of cruise and sail date.
You can select an ocean-view room, balcony or suite if they’re available for the sailing, but you will often need to pay more to upgrade to these room types.
Carnival is not in the business of giving away free cruises if it believes it could sell them for more. The best Fun Match deals will likely be on shoulder-season sailings, last-minute cruises and other itineraries that are unlikely to sell out. Don’t expect to find a “free” offer on a popular Christmas cruise or a summer cruise on the line’s newest ship.
With this understanding, my husband and I decided that if we were going to accept a Fun Match offer, we wanted a “free” balcony cabin on a transatlantic, transpacific or Panama Canal full transit cruise. We had high hopes and were willing to risk not booking an offer for the chance to book one of these extended cruises with a balcony.
After a few months of daily checks, we saw a Fun Match “free” cruise offer for an April 2024 transatlantic cruise from Barcelona to Port Canaveral (near Orlando) in a balcony cabin. This offer perfectly fit our criteria — a balcony cabin on a transatlantic cruise — so we booked it with a $200 deposit before it disappeared. After all, months of searching had taught me that offers can go away quickly.
As you can see, our “free” cruise wasn’t free. But even after the $391 in taxes and fees and $406 in prepaid gratuities, we got a great deal on our transatlantic voyage. It cost just $36 per person, per night — and that included meals in the ship’s multiple complimentary restaurants, onboard entertainment and transportation across the Atlantic.
Plus, about six months before our cruise, a Chase Offer appeared for Carnival that let us get some cash back while paying for the remainder of our cruise cost.
Related: I earned a ‘free’ cruise in a ship casino — here’s what it cost, plus tips for getting comped
Was it worth it?
The Carnival Fun Match was worth it for me. I enjoyed our extended cruise on Carnival Glory and would certainly book another casino offer. It takes patience and stubbornness to wait for the perfect offer that might never come, but I was happy we waited to use my Fun Match offer for a balcony cabin on a 14-night transatlantic cruise.
Once on board, I felt no pressure to gamble despite cruising on a casino offer. You could theoretically never visit the cruise ship casino while sailing on a Fun Match cruise. But since my husband and I had complimentary drinks when playing in the casino as part of our Fun Match offer, we did spend some time at Carnival Glory’s Camel Club Casino. I stuck to 1-cent slots, ended up about even and enjoyed a few hard seltzers most evenings.
My limited casino play was enough. I’ve now started getting new “free” inside cabin cruise offers from Carnival Players Club and am considering booking another cruise if I find the right offer. Panama Canal, here we come!
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