Ocean Casino Resort in Atlantic City has had a popular status matching promotion for years. Part of the reason for its popularity has been the ability to match to Ocean Prime status and get a “free” MSC cruise. My wife and I cruised in Europe twice with this benefit and had great trips (see our reviews here and here). Unfortunately, the partnership between Ocean Casino and MSC is ending abruptly. A new cruise partner is going to be launched in a couple of months, but if you qualify for the current cruise benefit you’ll need to book quickly.
Ocean sent the above email to members yesterday advising them that the travel benefits of Ocean Prime status are changing. The partnership with MSC is ending in just a month on May 1, 2025. Members who currently have Ocean Prime status also need to have earned 250 tier points in order to qualify for travel benefits. If you fit those two requirements, you have until April 30, 2025 to book your MSC cruise benefit and you must sail by June 30, 2025.
The timing on that is particularly rough because the MSC cruise benefit has historically become available starting on the 15th day of the month following the month in which you achieve / match to Ocean Prime status. That means that if you matched to Ocean Prime in March and you also earned 250 tier credits, you’ll be able to book a cruise starting on April 15th. However, if you match to Ocean Prime status now, you may be be out of luck as you probably wouldn’t be eligible to book a cruise until May 15th, by which time the partnership with MSC will have ended. However, comments in the MilesTalk Facebook group suggest that some people have had luck booking sooner by emailing MSC with proof of status with Ocean, so it might be possible to match now and book a cruise if you can travel by June 30th.
That said, fi you haven’t yet matched to Ocean Prime and you have the ability to do so, you’d probably have wanted to wait until after July 1st anyway in order to get status through the middle of 2026. Speaking of the ability to match to Ocean Prime, the most popular way would be matching MGM Gold, Caesars Diamond, or Bally’s Superstar to Hard Rock Icon at Hard Rock casino in Atlantic City and then matching Hard Rock Icon to Ocean Prime. Note that all of that must be done in-person in Atlantic City (none of that is possible to do online).
The potential bright spot here is that the email teases a new cruise partner to be announced in July 2025. For those unfamiliar, Ocean Casino Resort’s membership year runs from July 1st to June 30th, hence the need to cruise by June 30th and the launch of a new partnership to come in July.
We obviously don’t yet know what the new cruise partner will be. While it would be exciting to see a partnership with a cruise line that hasn’t yet been active in the matching shenanigans of the past few years (like Celebrity, Norwegian, or maybe Royal Caribbean), it seems more likely that this could be a partnership with Virgin Voyages (which has offered free cruises by match in recent years) or perhaps even Carnival. More importantly, we don’t yet know what kind of gambling requirements may be put in place with a new offering.
Last year, Ocean began requiring that members not only have Prime status but also earn 250 tier credits in order to qualify for travel benefits. Reports indicate that requires several hours of actual gambling that may result in losses that outweigh the travel benefits (beyond the cruise, Prime members also get a complimentary two-night stay at Wynn Las Vegas, which can be very valuable). Additionally, MSC has made the “free” cruise less appealing, with the offer from Ocean now only qualifying for a “free” cruise departing the US (with a $1400 fee added to other sailings, like the ones I’ve taken in Europe that used to be included). Furthermore, the $400 deposit used to come back as an onboard credit, but it now comes back as casino free play or match play, which has significantly less value than onboard credit.
Frankly, I’m surprised that this benefit has lasted as long as it has. With Caesars status very easy to obtain for the past few years (up until February 2025) and it had been possible to match from Caesars Diamond to Hard Rock Icon and onward to Ocean Prime in Atlantic City. While MSC sits more at the budget end of the spectrum in terms of cruise operators, some of their itineraries offered some great port stops. We enjoyed the significantly above-average entertainment on MSC and also loved seeing a number of places in Europe that we may not have otherwise visited. The cruises we booked would have cost $3500-$4500 for our family of four, so getting them for a $400 deposit that we got back as onboard credit plus a small fee for each kid (about $350 per kid) was a smoking deal.
Earlier this year, I visited Atlantic City to match my Caesars Diamond to Bally’s Superstar with the intention to later match to Hard Rock Icon and onward to Ocean Prime in the hunt for one more “free” MSC cruise. Now, I’ll obviously wait until July to see what the deal is with the new cruise partnership. We can at least hope that there will be good news to come.
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In past years, Ocean has allowed people who match Icon to Prime earlier than July (as early as March I believe?) to keep their status until 2026. This makes sense because nobody is going to want to match in June (or maybe even May) only for it to expire on 6/30/25. Is Ocean doing that again this year?
I’m currently sitting on my last free cruise with MSC unless I can get in on that Philly match. I’ve had really good experiences with MSC. The post and pre customer service is subpar, but on ship it’s solid. Like you mentioned, the entertainment is above average, and I am a fan of the food. MSC is my first and only cruise line so far, so nothing to compare. However, I see myself buying MSC cruises in the future. They are reasonably priced, and capital one shopping has had generous cashback offers. I took a positioning MSC 4 day cruise to get to the free ocean cruise. It was only $518 after all taxes and got $190 back from cap1. Sad to see MSC free cruises go, but it was a great ride and now I’m a cruiser. Never before really interested. Thanks for the great coverage on these matches! You’ve made cruisers out of us
I have been on MSC as well as many other brands. MSC beats out all the low end cruises for me (better than Carnival, Royal, Norwegian, Princess, Holland). I do think Celebrity is better though and so is Virgin. Loved Windstar but that is so drastically different it is hard to compare.