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If you previously followed along and turned your Wyndham Diamond status into a “free” Carnival cruise in a balcony room, it’s time to parlay that into another “free” cruise offer — this time with Royal Caribbean — and with the chance for a couple to combine forces to get up to a junior suite (and with a great stack for family travelers!).
Last year, I wrote about how to turn your Wyndham Diamond status into a “free” (or more accurately a deeply discounted) Carnival cruise (See: Status cruising: Saving $2K+ on a cruise to Europe, Alaska, etc with a match). Now Royal Caribbean is out with a match offer that could get you a “free” cruise of up to 5 nights on their Caribbean itineraries (as well as a couple of options out of Los Angeles). Better yet, if you act fast, family travelers might be able to get this match done in time to stack the free cruise offer with a current “kids sail free” promotion that’s valid until the end of the month. Once again “free” doesn’t really mean no cost, but it certainly does mean low cost relative to the cash prices in several instances — low enough to entice me to check out what Royal Caribbean has to offer.
The Deal
- Royal Caribbean’s Casino Royale loyalty program is running an offer match program whereby you may be able to qualify for a free cruise for two (potentially in a balcony room or even higher if you combine offers)
- Direct link to this deal
Key Terms
- Terms indicate that you are not eligible for this offer if you have sailed with Royal Caribbean since January 2018
- Terms indicate that you can submit a match request only once
- Cruise must be booked within 14 days of receiving your offer
- Terms say you need to call to book, though there is also an online booking request form (though confirmation is not immediate)
- You still pay taxes and port fees. On dates I checked, these appear to be $400-$500 total for 4 passengers on the 4-5 day itineraries, but YMMV depending on your itinerary
- You may have to pay an upgrade fee for a larger room if sailing with a family
- Kids sail free promo has some blackout dates (see this post for more detail)
- Cruises based on availability (and my offers only apply to cruises through 3/31/23)
- Interestingly, a couple playing in two-player mode has the option to combine offers per the terms: “Qualified Recipients within the same household from the same promotional event may combine their complimentary stateroom offers on the same sail date for one (1) category upgrade, not to exceed a Junior Suite or redeem their individual offers”
- See more casino promotion terms here
Quick Thoughts
See that previous status cruising post for details on how to get the Carnival match offer. I used that offer to book a 10-night European cruise that I took earlier this month, but my wife has yet to book her Carnival offer (she had booked a cruise and then cancelled and hasn’t yet rebooked despite receive the free balcony offer from Carnival monthly ever since).
A comment recently came in on my old post about the Carnival offer from reader Mary indicating that Royal Caribbean has a similar offer.
For the purposes of this offer, Royal Caribbean will accept a competing cruise line offer or proof of your land-based casino status. Pro tip: you want to submit the Carnival free balcony room offer, not your Caesars Diamond status (Caesars status alone will only qualify you for a discounted cruise rather than a free cruise. Ask me how I know).
My wife pulled up her most recent Carnival free balcony room offer on the Carnival website and submitted a copy of it to Royal Caribbean. Turnaround time was very fast for her.
A friend of mine submitted for the Royal Caribbean match on Sunday and received an offer from Royal Caribbean on Tuesday afternoon. My wife submitted for the offer Wednesday morning and received an offer for a free balcony room on select Royal Caribbean cruises within a couple of hours (the offer arrived in her inbox early afternoon on Wednesday):
After clicking through the link in the email, her offer type showed up as “up to a balcony stateroom – 5 nights”.
The list of free sailings she was provided run from next week through the end of March (I didn’t quite fit all of them in this screen shot).
As you can see, the eligible cruises range from 3-5 nights and are mostly visiting either the Bahamas or the Eastern or Western Caribbean (with a couple of Los Angeles cruises). The most expensive cruise I price-checked at normal rates is the one that departs San Juan the week before Christmas. That cruise stops at a port every day (St. Thomas, St. Maarten, St. Croix, and Tortola). I assume because of the timing, a balcony room on that cruise is currently running north of $3,500 before taxes (or about $4,000 with taxes).
My understanding based on a friend who has already booked the offer is that you’ll be on the hook for the port taxes (which look like they run around $400 to $500 for a family of four depending on itinerary or less for two passengers). That’s a pretty substantial discount over prevailing rates on a lot of routes (though note that you should shop around because some of the “free” cruises on offer can be inexpensive).
What’s more interesting for family travelers is that through October 31st, Royal Caribbean is offering a “kids sail free” promotion where you don’t pay an additional fee for the kids. Contrast that with my free Carnival offer, which only applied to two adults; I paid about $280 per child for my two kids on my “free” Carnival cruise (plus gratuities). Kids sailing for free right now with Royal Caribbean potentially sweetens the deal a bit here.
All that said, there is a potential wrinkle and a potential bit of intrigue here.
The potential wrinkle is that a friend who booked a room for 3 passengers had to pay a $220 upgrade fee to get a room big enough for 3 passengers. Kids were “free”, but the upgraded room that fits three passengers was not. That’s kind of a bummer, though if the upgraded room is big enough for four passengers, I won’t complain too much about the additional $220 (I’m still waiting on final pricing confirmation on our booking). Note that I’m not sure if this was a function of the specific ship / dates chosen (I see that there are some blackout dates on the “kids said free” promo).
The bit of potential intrigue comes in the terms. According to the terms, if two people in the same household have free stateroom offers, you can combine them for a 1 category upgrade up to a junior suite. While on the one hand I’d probably rather take two cruises than have a junior suite, on the other hand with the window to use the cruise here (you must book within 14 days of receiving the offer and sail by the end of March), you may only find one set of dates that works for you — in which case, having a larger room might work out. I checked out YouTube videos of a junior suite on one of the ships we were considering and the junior suite had a walk-in closet, a bathroom with a bath tub / shower, and a lot more space to lounge than I had in my extended balcony cabin on my recent Carnival cruise.
I noted above that matching from Caesars Diamond only led to a cruise discount rather than a free cruise. Despite the terms saying that you can only submit a match one time, I tried again with my Carnival balcony offer and haven’t heard back. I’d definitely suggest using the Carnival offer if you can get a screen shot of it.
Before this year, I thought I would probably never take a cruise again. I took one years ago, but boats tend to make me seasick and cruising just didn’t seem to fit my style or interests — I thought it just wasn’t for me. However, Carnival won me over with the family-friendly nature of a cruise and the ease of being able to visit multiple places without needing to pack up and move all of our stuff (which is a lot more stuff now that we travel with kids). I said afterwards that I would definitely do it again. Now I’m excited to check out Royal Caribbean and see how it compares to my experience on the Carnival Pride. If I can keep parlaying these free cruise offers with different lines, maybe I’ll get used to this whole cruising thing after all.
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I sent in my match for this many months ago and finally got an offer in my email yesterday. I had written it off as not happening. So there is hope for people who applied but havent heard from them yet.
Same thing just happened to me too! Mine offer says to book by August 8 and has select cruises through October 2023.
@Nick Reyes, do you think there is any hope that I can wait after August 8 and see if they send me another set of qualifying dates? Do you think proactively calling to request a specific cruise after October 2023 would work either?
Same here! Applied months ago. Never heard anything. Got an email today with the free cruise for 2 with free drinks in the casino. Some are interior/window/balcony rooms.
Same here, just got an offer last week. Have until Aug 3 to book
A question for those who got finally matched recently, did the offer get regenerated if you did not book by initial dates?
Link is no longer valid.
Dang, yea looks like it is gone now
Interestingly though, it is still showing up on their main page. The link is definitely broken though:
https://www.royalcaribbean.com/experience/cruise-casinos
I just called Royal Caribbean and they said the offer is suspended for now but may be back in the future.
Thanks for the comments. I’ve marked it dead.
Thanks for the article. It seems the link “https://www.clubroyaleoffers.com/TierOfferCruiseMatchRequest.asp” not active any more. Is there any new link? Thanks
finally got my free offer after months of waiting ……
it must be booked by 3/16 and only has 5 options to choose from.
what a waste.
Navigator Of The Seas April 24, 2023 Los Angeles, California 4 Night Catalina & Ensenada Balcony
Radiance Of The Seas May 06, 2023 Los Angeles, California 5 Night Pacific Coastal Cruise Balcony
Navigator Of The Seas May 08, 2023 Los Angeles, California 4 Night Catalina & Ensenada Cruise Balcony
Anthem Of The Seas May 12, 2023 Southampton, England 2 Night Weekend Getaway Cruise Balcony
Navigator Of The Seas May 15, 2023 Los Angeles, California 4 Night Catalina & Ensenada Cruise Balcony
Has anyone done the Carnival to Royal Caribbean match lately? We are looking at a cruise at the end of November and wondering if I should wait to submit the match until April or May if the availability to book is only 6 months at at time.
I’m very interested in doing this status match offer. I have offers from Vegas, both Caesars and MGM. I’m wondering how far out (in months) do these free cruises go out for? I’m hoping to go in September. Should I wait to submit my offer or do it now?
I have finally received a Carnival Balcony offer. But for the life of me I can’t find a balcony that is available. They all say sold out. All interior or a few ocenviews and thats it. I’ve looked at hundreds of cruises out of florida.
There are few available but all these balcony rooms are on deck 2. Not sure if there is any workaround to book higher deck balcony rooms. Going to try calling and see if it helps.
Availability ebbs and flows. We were on deck 7 on our Carnival cruise. We kept an eye on the same two cruises all year — one had balcony availability come and go and the other never did get balcony rooms available. On the one we booked, we originally booked an obstructed view, but we later cancelled that when Carnival offered free cancellation in Feb 2022 (because we weren’t confident enough about the COVID situation at that time). We eventually rebooked that same cruise, but the second time we were able to book a room on Deck 7 (not obstructed). Note that the obstructed view rooms on the ship we booked weren’t really obstructed (a reader pointed that out to me), so it didn’t really matter much either way.
Got one for Deck 8. 🙂 Also, do not miss checking Chase’s offers. I had two cards where the offer was “spend 100 get 35 back offer on two cards”.
Did you have to call to get the Deck 8 balcony, or did it just show up in availability when you checked again later? I currently have a free balcony cruise offer, but there is almost no balcony availability. Wondering if it would make a difference at all if I called and asked about any additional availability.
let me know if you ever called, seeing same thing on my end!
Is any gambling required when taking advantage of this program? Any other hidden fees or rules buried in their Terms & Conditions?
I don’t think there is any way to require you to gamble. Obviously they expect you’re going to and they probably won’t send you future offers if you don’t gamble, but there is no requirement. Only fees for the Royal Caribbean one were the port taxes on one cruise we booked — the other had a small upcharge for a room big enough for 4 passengers.
@Nick Reyes – Send your Carnival/RC offer to URcomped.com and they will send you even more offers with much later expirations.
I know nothing about how reliable these people are, except that this group seems to be at least semi-connected to RC’s casino royale program. I found this out when RC reached out to me after submitting my Carnival offer, saying that I already have a profile.
If anyone knows anything about URcomped, would love to hear about it.
Got the Carnival free balcony offer for myself and my P2. Timeline:
10/31: joined Carnival Players club and submitted Caesars diamond status using Nick’s trick of sending screenshots of the digital card in the Caesars app
11/10: both of us received free interior room offer
11/11: both of us received free balcony room offer
(did not respond)
11/17: both received free interior room offer again (wondered if this was a downgrade?)
11/18: both received free balcony room offer again
Eligible cruises through August, but most of them (Alaska, Hawaii, fjords) have sold out of the balcony rooms
One question: hoping to do a cruise in June or August, but Nick’s eligible cruises only went through the end of March – think I could wait for a bit and submit the Carnival offer to Royal Caribbean later to get summer cruises to appear? Does RC usually have an active match offer or is this a new thing?
Thanks, Nick, for the really useful post! Love your work!
Finally got our “two player” offer. i had provided a single image with all my best casino loyalty cards (via Wyndham merry go round). my wife submitted her carnival balcony offer. we were both offered oceanview instead of balcony. submitted this morning for “LAX port , 2 rooms, 3 nighter” in january, but waiting to hear back. hoping to upgrade one room to balcony but have the rooms next to each other connected, if thats even an option.
Just call the phone number in the email. Nobody ever responded when I submitted the form to book the Royal Caribbean offer. We finally called them and it was easy to handle over the phone.
Thx. btw, took about 18 days to get the offer.
thanks for letting us know. i submitted mine 3 days ago and was getting a little worried as hadn’t heard anything.
Nick,
I submitted Ceasars Diamond and MGM gold to carnival. Received free interior offer back on 11/05. I’ve been waiting for a balcony. But around 12/15, the offer went away and now there is only a discount.
Should I expect another offer to pop up? Or was the free interior probably going to be the only one?
if have 2 separate offers for free rooms, why not combine them for an upgrade to jr suite as Nick suggested?
Extra privacy among friends
Just got an email from Carnival Cruise Line (funships@carnivalcruiselineemail.com):
CARNIVAL FUN MATCH: FREE* INTERIOR ROOM + FREE DRINKS + MORE
Still holding out for the balcony room offer.
Enjoy!!!
Does Carnival’s offer specify when you need to book the cruise by? per @Nick Reyes – RC gives you only 14 days from receiving an offer to do so.
Does the offer also mention when you have to cruise by? per @Nick Reyes – his offer only applied to cruises thru 3/21/21.
Here are the complete terms of the offer: https://www.carnival.com/cruise-deals/vifp-club/past-guest-offers-FS1/terms.aspx/
“Offer is applicable to new bookings only. Offer is available on select sailings through December 31, 2022.” – Looks like you have to book and complete travel before 12/31/22, which isn’t much time.
I remember the Carnival terms saying that, but did you actually look at eligible sailings? The last time the offer came for us (in October), we were able to pick sailings into fall 2023.
I noticed the same thing. Looks like I can book sailings through June / July 2023 and still get the discounted price. The cruises out of Dover / London look enticing 🙂
All of the European cruises are on the same ship (the Carnival Pride, which is the one I took). That’s not necessarily a bad thing, just an FYI.
The last time we had the offer there was also a 30-day transpacific cruise from Brisbane if you really wanted to test whether the cruising life is for you 🙂
I’m debating between those European cruises and the Alaska cruises from Seattle or SF. I don’t think I’m ready for a 30 day transpacific cruise…
Great data point @Grant! Now give it a new days / week and I bet you get the balcony offer.
FYI @Stevenson: I’m sure it has a “book by” date, but once I started getting those emails from Carnival, I kept getting a new one each month with a new “book by” date. See this comment on the other post for more detail: https://frequentmiler.com/status-cruising-saving-2k-on-a-cruise-to-europe-alaska-etc-with-a-match/#comment-2354637
Even after taking the Carnival cruise you’re still getting free balcony offers, or only your wife has been as cruise was booked under your account?
Has RC been constantly sending you new ones? you mention above how the terms specify that you only have 14 days to book?
No, I did not continue to get Carnival free balcony because I had booked our cruise under my account – just my wife continued to get offers since she hadn’t used the offer.
We booked the RC offer right away, so I don’t know for sure whether they would send new ones. I think it’s a bit different though. Whereas Carnival the carnival Fun Match terms didn’t say address the terms of booking the cruise itself, their monthly emails were advertising an end date in the email like “Hurry! Book by 10/19!”, which seemed to me more like “Sale! Today only!” and designed to encourage booking. Royal Caribbean has the 14-day thing written into the match program terms & conditions, so it felt more like a requirement to book within 14 days. Since that was baked into the terms and conditions of the match offer, I figured they’d probably hold to it.
But at the end of the day, I only know that Carnival kept sending the offers because we weren’t ready to book a cruise and thus didn’t feel any pressure to book before the first end date….or the second one….or the third….and it kept going from there. When the Royal Caribbean thing came around, we were able to grab a cruise during a convenient time and knew we were interested, so there was no sense in waiting it out.
Just got my Carnival offers (posted about it in the Carnival thread) and thinking about holding off on submission to RC until Black friday deals and/or Amex returns with their cruise spend offers, because of RC’s “book within 14 day language”. Thanks again for your help
I got that email at first too. Then after a few days, I got an email with a free Balcony offer. I am booking the England Dover to the Norwegian Fjords!
Got offer back in May, booked fjords with dates spanning july 4th 2023. Be mindful of London airport taxes for flights back home and transport needef to/from Dover. Otherwise terrific offer.
I’ll be on that one too! And yes, the airport taxes and flight availability with miles is eye opening for peak summer travel to Europe. Any tips for cheaper LHR-Dover travel other than the Carnival bus, by any chance? Thanks.
Awesome, I was looking at those London / Dover cruises too. Have an awesome time 🙂
Thanks for this post! Such a great deal.
Posting a data point.
I submitted Caesars Diamond to both the Royal and Carnival offers on 30 OCT.
I received a Carnival offer for $500 off on 2 NOV, select free rooms on 3 NOV, free interior on 4 NOV and free balcony on 5 NOV, with sailings into FEB 2024.
Still no offer from Royal, but I went to re-submit through Royal using my Carnival offer and received a notice basically saying we got your submission last week be patient, it could take 10-15 days to receive an offer.
Great data point! Bummer that you submitted Caesar’s Diamond to Royal. That’s only going to get a discount offer – if you waited and then submitted the Carnival balcony offer to Royal, you’d have gotten the Royal free cruise offer. I tried later submitting a Carnival balcony offer to Royal and they said no, you’ve already taken a swing at this and aren’t eligible again.
@Casey Good for you. How did Carnival’s “select free room” email offer look? I submitted my Caesars Diamond before you did and only received the $500 offer.
Did you submit a digital or physical Caesars card?
The “select free rooms” email below
subject:
Choose from select FREE Rooms on your next cruise!
body:
We would like to extend you a special Carnival Players Club® offer available on select sailings through May 2023. Book your cruise by November 30, 2022 and you’ll get:
SELECT FREE* ROOMS
Excludes taxes, fees, port expenses and deposit
+ DRINKS ON US!†
included for you while playing in the casino
Book Now button
*Pay from $50 per person for sailings 5 days or shorter and you’ll get $50 Onboard Credit per person
Want to take a longer vacation?
No problem!
*Pay from $100 per person for sailings 6 days or longer and you’ll get $100 Onboard Credit per person
As for the Caesars card, I used Nick’s advice. Downloaded the app, screenshot the digital card and submitted the same image for both the front and back.
Can you book a cruise for later than March? Thank you for all the great tips!!
Has anyone gotten a response since this got posted? I did it the same day, so I would have expected an answer by now.
You mean a response from Royal Caribbean? I actually tried a second time with a different email address using my carnival free balcony offer (as noted in the post, my wife got the free Royal Caribbean offer with her free Carnival offer, but I tried submitting Caesar’s diamond instead to see if I would get a different offer and my offer was worse (discount only) so I tried again a day or two before I posted this. I just finally got an email from them today saying that I wasn’t eligible because their records show I had already submitted previously. So maybe they’re just backlogged.
My wife submitted hers a day after this post came out and got a reply within 24hrs. Seems there system is a little messed up and does not always go in order.
Strange, maybe if I don’t hear from them by Monday I’ll see if I can follow up. Thanks.