In this episode of the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast, host Justin Vacula shares his recent experience on the Holland America Nieuw Statendam cruise, obtained through a Wynn Las Vegas tier match offer.
Justin details his journey, including his flights with JetBlue, stay at Hyatt Centric Las Olas, and various stops at Half Moon Cay, Grand Turk, Amber Cove, and Nassau.
He provides insights on the cruise’s dining options, onboard entertainment, the casino experience, and tips for maximizing value using credit card points and loyalty programs.
Justin also discusses his challenges with a casino backoff and ends the episode by inviting listeners to upcoming events and travel meetups.
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction to Low-Cost Travel
00:48 Cruise Experience with Holland America
01:54 Booking and Preparations
03:51 Journey to Fort Lauderdale
05:56 Boarding the Cruise
06:50 Life Onboard: Room and Amenities
12:07 Dining Options and Food Quality
16:36 Casino and Entertainment
19:33 Intelligent Gambling Tips
20:03 Blackjack Rules and Strategies
21:16 Casino Account Issues
24:26 Cruise App and Information Gaps
25:16 Exploring Path UK
27:28 Grand Turk Adventures
28:14 Amber Cove Highlights
30:10 Nassau Bahamas Experience
35:01 Final Thoughts and Future Plans
36:28 Closing Announcements and Support
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Rough Transcript:
Theme Song: [00:00:00] Travel at low cost with points and miles. Credit card rewards bring the smiles. Many adventures, tales to be told. Make and save money, the world will unfold.
Fight the war on happiness, pick up the gold. Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast breaks the mold.
Justin Vacula: You’re listening to the Herdy Gerdy Travel Podcast. I’m your host, Justin Vukula, here to help you travel the world at next to no cost, credit card points, miles, benefits, and loyalty programs, make money, save money, and take advantage of great deals. Thanks for joining me for today’s episode, Holland, America, Nieuw, Stottendam, Cruiser Report.
I’ll talk about a recent cruise I completed with Holland America, thanks to a win [00:01:00] Las Vegas tier match offer. Visit meetup. com slash Philly miles and points to RSVP for monthly greater Philadelphia travel credit miles and points meetups. I host in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. The next meetups are March 23rd and April 13th, 2025.
Find a link in the show notes for more content between podcast episodes. Follow hurdy gurdy travel podcast on Facebook and X. Follow Justin Vukula on Instagram, subscribe to Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast on YouTube, where you can become a channel member for daily content, including travel videos, podcast clips, community bonus videos on with today’s episode.
All right. Just back from the Holland America Neu Stotendam cruise. I like saying it like that. That’s the official name Neu Stotendam. As I mentioned in the introduction, this was a win status match offer. [00:02:00] In 2024, Wynn had a brief amount of time where you can present a competing casino players card and match to platinum status.
If you stayed for two nights at Wynn Las Vegas, you got a free cruise or comp cruise from Poland America. And the tier match also gave a 150 birthday dinner, a spot credit, and I believe some other minor benefits like attending masterclasses. With Mandy passed by guest guests. We had combined our stays, so I was a guest on one of her nights, she was a guest on one of my nights.
We combined the reservations back to back, and that qualified. There was also a stack with American Express fine hotels and resorts credit, 200 off, and extra benefits using a booking with the Amex Travel Portal and the Personal Platinum Card. So there are a lot of ways to match and save money doing this.
Either matching from Caesar’s diamond, which was previously a freebie from matching from Wyndham [00:03:00] diamond status from the Wyndham business earner card, not the Wyndham business earners card or simply MGM gold or higher status earning MGM status through the MGM credit card. As I mentioned in many previous episodes and had a dedicated episode to check back and past content about earning Caesar status 2025 and MGM status 2025.
This might come up again, so I give a little bit of the details if Wynn Las Vegas offers a cruise match offer tied to a tier match offer. But from what I heard, the recent match did not offer a complimentary cruise. After the stay at Wynn, I had an email, Congratulations, you’ve qualified for a cruise.
Here’s your cruise certificate, voucher, or code. Contact Holland America. It was very easy to call in and book this cruise. This time I chose a cruise out of Fort Waterdale, as the dates lined up pretty well for that. Flew from Philadelphia International [00:04:00] Airport, where the new Chase Lounge, the Chase Sapphire Lounge had opened.
See a past video on my YouTube channel for A video tour of that using my new Insta360 X4 camera. I flew out of Philadelphia to Boston with JetBlue and then flew JetBlue from Boston to Fort Lauderdale. It was a bit of an on route going east and then south. But looking at Delta, United, AA, and other carriers, I didn’t have many good options with them.
So JetBlue it was. I had lots of JetBlue points from the JetBlue credit card with Barclays. It was nice to use the Sapphire Lounge in both Philadelphia and Boston. And went to Hyatt Centric Las Olas. This was about 15 minutes from the Fort Lauderdale airport, pretty easy to get to and nice hotel. Used a free night certificate for this Hyatt Centric property and enjoyed it.
There was a nice breakfast with Globalist. It was an a la carte or choose your own menu in the breakfast section, not just a standard Hyatt Place breakfast. [00:05:00] It was nicer than that. I also have a video on my YouTube channel of me exploring outside of the hotel in Fort Lauderdale. So stay just the one night.
I always like arriving one night before a cruise. Not trying to leave super early in the morning and get to the cruise port. Then you have a flight delay and that’s really complicated. Don’t want to risk that. We can use our miles and points, use our hotel points for the night before, and have a less stressful experience.
Looking up the Holland America cruise, if I were to have booked an Oceanview row with this Holland America cruise ship, New Stottendal, it would have been about 1, 200 a person, but this comp offer got two guests. And there were small expenses like internet, gratuities. And taxes, so not too bad, maybe about 300, 400 for this.
And the offer also came with a 100 onboard credit that I used to offset the internet. It was about 15 minutes to the cruise terminal. So it [00:06:00] was nice 15 minutes to the hotel and then 15 minutes to the cruise terminal from the hotel. There was a little bit of a delay in the Uber ride on the way. There was a drawbridge and then there was security.
Outside the cruise terminal, a person asked if we had any pew devices, just using that phrase for YouTube, and you simply said no, and they let us pull through, so there was no inspecting the car, there was just a verbal question, and that was it, so that was interesting. Would anyone actually say yes to that question?
I’m not really sure. Upon getting in the terminal, getting dropped off, did not use the cruise parking, just Ubered to avoid that issue, having a rental before, and then just paying for all the parking. There was almost no line. Arrived around 2 p. m. The deadline was 2. 30. And there weren’t many checkpoints to get in.
So it was a very easy boarding process. Coming in, went directly to the room. It was a very spacious room. There were outlets near the beds. You can see a YouTube video I have of the ocean view [00:07:00] room. It was quite spacious. The shower was really big, the bathroom had some space, there was a lot of storage, that was nice, even after unpacking everything, the luggage took about an hour and a half to come, there was still lots of space, different shelves, cubbies, there was even an area with life jackets above the couch, and there was extra space in there, space under the bed, so I was really happy about that.
Packing a lot of luggage to get in here, and Mandy was here as well. So two people, easily unpacking things, having lots of storage space throughout the room. A decent sized desk that was for laptop purposes, I imagine. I used that throughout the cruise, and I also had my portable monitor, so there was enough space for both the laptop and portable monitor.
So it was good. Nice room. This was on Deck 1. There was a little bit of confusion upon getting on the ship, as it was 1122 and was not sure whether it was Floor 1 or Floor 11, and even an attendant didn’t know. It was in an elevator. He’s talking about, oh, what? There’s [00:08:00] no floor. There’s no room on Deck 11, I don’t think, so maybe it’s Deck 1.
There’s no zero and He’s thinking about it. I said, but can we just go to guest services and figure it out? He’s like holding up the elevator and I said again, can we please go to guest services figure it out? Like he didn’t know what was going on. So eventually went to guest services. They said yes, it is indeed floor one so we went to the room and Waited till lunch came.
We already had the breakfast at the hotel. So we weren’t super hungry For lunch. So we waited in the room, the luggage eventually came pretty easy going there throughout the cruise. Notice that it was an older demographic as past podcast guest, Justin Walter had joked about saying that it’s an old cruise.
I wondered why maybe there weren’t as many activities for kids. There was a kids club, but there were no water slides. There was no water park. It was just some smaller tools. So it wasn’t a kid oriented event, like maybe a Disney cruise. Would be, or some of the other cruise lines I’ve gone [00:09:00] on, there were more kits, but this one was very much lacking in the kids department.
So perhaps the fans of Virgin Voyages, oh, you like that it’s an 18 plus cruise, just didn’t have many kids, so that could be helpful for those looking for that. Mandy went to a comedy event. There were a lot of old people jokes about depends and align. That was something like, if your husband happens to be embracing you at the hip.
Don’t just think it’s a sign of love. It might just be that he’s looking to see if we need a hip replacement. But so, all these like old people jokes catering to the crowd. It was interesting. I was even at dinner. I took a picture of the menu as I usually do. I was at a shared table and an older woman next to me said that she was glad she wasn’t the only one who had trouble reading the menu.
And I explained, no, I was just taking a picture. So she didn’t understand what was really going on there. She thought it was an eyesight issue for me. It wasn’t. And then a guy to my right was calling me Tech Savvy. And he mentioned that he had an iPhone for 8 [00:10:00] years. And he has the iPhone 4. So I’m not sure what you can really do with an iPhone 4.
Just making calls, maybe browsing the internet. Maybe you could have 2 apps installed. Maybe you could install the Holland America app. It was a really old app. It was odd. It just wasn’t as intuitive that I would click on dining and it wouldn’t say what the dining times were. So then I went into different menus and eventually found them.
And it was encouraging me to connect to airplane mode, connect to the app, even though I was on the cruise Wi Fi. So that, that was odd as well. But the dinner was very good. We’ll get a little bit into the food later. But first, the internet. I think the internet was fine for streaming. I did pay for the premium internet.
There was the surf stream internet, two different packages, and I believe a premium one as well. So I got the best internet. It wasn’t much more hundred dollar onboard credit to help offset it. And with all the YouTube being podcasting, I want to have good internet to upload and download files. And it was okay for [00:11:00] downloading.
It was a bit long of download times, maybe like 30, 45 minutes. For something that would normally take at home about five, but the upload speed was horrible. It was extremely slow. I was trying to upload my YouTube video of the Chase Sapphire Lounge shortly after I had edited and taken the video while I was on the ship.
I didn’t do it at the hotel, but it took more than 12 hours to upload this YouTube video. It was sometimes faster uploading speeds at work than it was slow again. So it was usually, okay, I’ll start uploading. In the afternoon, and then wait for it to be overnight, and then maybe the file was ready.
Sometimes it was taking up to 20 hours to upload a 3 minute YouTube video. Customer service had no solution, they were just saying, oh, you can take your laptop with you at port, use Wi Fi, but didn’t want to do that, it didn’t fix the problem. So, internet a little bit slow for that. So for those of you who may be podcasting, YouTubing, you want to upload stuff, I would try doing it before the cruise, schedule it for the future.
That’s [00:12:00] what I think I’ll do on future cruises. So lesson learned with Holland. This was the slowest uploading speed of any cruise I’ve been on. So internet aside, I think the food was mostly good. It definitely beat my expectations. The food was mostly behind glass, although there was some where you would use tongs or spoons to take items out of bins, but you could have completely avoided that, as you could have just favored the stations where everything was behind glass, or there were the made to order stations.
Like Wok’s salad bar. There was an egg station for breakfast. They had lots of oatmeal, muesli or muesli, however that’s pronounced, a lot of breads, eggs, sausage, you name it. It was a very large spread for breakfast. They had fried eggs, and then they had an omelette station. So there was a lot to choose from for breakfast.
Lunch had a Mexican station, sandwiches, salad bar, made to order pasta stations, and I really liked the Wok [00:13:00] area. This was called Distant Lands, where they had a spread of fresh veggies. They put them inside of the wok, sauces of your choosing, and tofu, different meats. So the stir fry or wok fried veggies I thought were really good and really healthy options.
So I had that for most of the crews, changing the sauces from day to day, adding or changing a little bit of flavor. They also had Indian food at lunch, as they did with dinner. Dinner, there was the Taste of Thailand section. And also had sushi, sometimes sushi for lunch as well. There was really good Indian food, like lentil dishes, chickpeas, curry, masala, all kinds of Indian vegetarian food.
Some of my favorite on the cruises, Thai food I also mentioned. So the Indian food and the wok fried veggies, I could eat that every day, and I did. The, there was a breadboard section with sandwiches, the homestead section which has Like french fries, meats, carving, things, [00:14:00] different vegetables, sometimes carrots, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, and an area called wild harvest.
The servers came around at the buffet area with water, lemonade, iced tea, so that was nice of them. There were stations for coffee, different fruit juices, and more. So the buffet, I thought was pretty good. It was nice they had the made to order stations. This was something on Virgin Voyages I really liked, that everything was behind glass.
And all the stations, I believe, have been made to order items, so it’s more sanitary and fresher food. Really liked it. So the buffet at Holland America, I was there more often in the buffet than I was in the dining room. Because the dining room didn’t always have healthy choices, and it didn’t have many vegetarian options.
But, I did go to the dining room two or three times. I got things like tortilla mushroom soup, chili rellenos, they were peppers stuffed with cheese and rice. I had a portobello mushroom dish and a lot of other veggie options in the dining room. It usually took about 15 minutes after getting [00:15:00] the menu to actually place an order, so that was a little bit slow.
It’s usually the case in most cruises, one reason I don’t like the dining room. And initially, you would get a shared table, if you wanted a solo table or a table for two, there would be a wait on that. It didn’t seem like there was a way to make reservations in the app, it was just a walk in type. Dinner.
I sat with some, chatted with them, figured out some things about the trip, others experiences. It was alright. There was also a section called New York Deli and Pizza that was open most times. Nothing really special here. Pizza, sandwiches, some fruits. More of the late night availability, I would think, even though it was open during the day, but at that point, if I were to want something, I would just go to the buffet.
There was also an interesting place called the Grand Dutch Café. Sandwiches, quiche, pancakes, coffee, tea, salmon, herring, and a lot of other things with the Netherlands charm. It was open 1130 a. m. to 8 p. m. This was [00:16:00] complimentary for the most part, besides the coffee, tea, and some up charged items. It is interesting in that the buffet, you could just get the coffee for free, but they were charging for it at the Grand Dutch Cafe.
So maybe it was a better type of coffee, but as many podcast listeners will know, I’m not paying for food if I could just get things complimentary. And that was the case for this. The restaurants were not included. There were various upcharge restaurants, bars. I have zero interest in paying anything for restaurants or drinks on board when I could just get things for free.
Really makes no sense to me. I just don’t care. I hope many listeners would also. Save money onto the casino. I had an expectation of going on this ship and Charging to Rome and MSing in a way and that if I’m charging to my credit card I’m playing the minimum of what I need to cash out Then I would gladly make the credit card charges and play on previous cruises I would usually buy in for a thousand or two thousand at the blackjack table play [00:17:00] for about half an hour Maybe a little bit longer And then quit, assuming the games were good rules, preferably when the table is busy, so there are fewer hands that I have to play.
I’m not there to just play the game and straight up gamble. I’m there to get the spend on the credit card, play a little bit, and cash out. I’ve also played video poker on previous cruises, play through my Deposits 1x, cash out. There were about 10 video poker machines with just video poker. I mention just video poker because on previous Carnival Panorama cruise, Many, or maybe all, of the video poker machines also had Keno.
So there were Keno players who were clogging the machines. Keno, of course, being one of the worst casino games to play, but they don’t really care. There was even one person on the previous cruise who said, I just don’t want to think. And, of course, they aren’t thinking because the house edge is tremendous, you know.
With the video poker here, I was seeing a lot of 7 5 jacks or better. There was a single play game that was 1. [00:18:00] 10 credit for the Royal Flush bonus. And there was also 7 5 jacks or better triple play. So this was 0. 255 credit for 3. 75 per hand. Thought that was the better game rather than playing 10 a hand on a 10 credit game.
But this was in the smoking section. The 7 5 jacks are better, around a 96 percent return to player. So, with the credit card charges to roam, if I were to use the Chase Sapphire Reaser, get 3x UR, or Ultimate Rewards, on my deposit, I can play a game that’s a disadvantage to the player, because the Ultimate Rewards are going to offset that disadvantage, and perhaps I get some casino offers, additional comp things.
Not terrible if the game’s around 96, 97, if I’m using a credit card like that’s pretty good. I also have the altitude reserved, which would be 4. 5%, so even on a 96 percent return game, I’m still up a half a percent, plus [00:19:00] possible casino bonuses, casino comps, so I’d be okay to play video poker. A disadvantage, but stacking credit card rewards.
I have a slight advantage. There was also blackjack. It was 3 to 2 if you bet 25 per hand. They had separate tables, 10 tables. Six to five, total garbage, don’t play six to five, blackjack. The three to two table didn’t open until later. Even with the three to two table opened, there were people still playing the six to five, ten dollar game.
So people that just don’t care, they don’t know better. And there were even some people sitting on the six to five game betting twenty five dollars that didn’t move over to the three to two game. A lot of stupidity. What I’d like to do on the podcast is teach you how to be a more intelligent gambler.
and only gamble, you have an advantage. Why would you be playing 6 5 blackjack when 3 2 tables open? Especially if you’re betting 25 per hand. But even if I didn’t have much or wasn’t [00:20:00] willing to gamble much, I just wouldn’t play 6 5 blackjack. I think that’s just horrible. The 3 2 rules were okay ish.
There was no surrender. Strike one, the dealer hits all 17s. Strike two, continue a shuffle machine. Strike three. But they did allow re splitting and double after split. So there was that, and with the table games, there was no fee to charge to your room. Thinking of video poker, that’s around 96 97 percent return a player versus playing a game where maybe you have a 2 percent disadvantage, there’s no fee, then it’s close.
I’ve written articles about this for Travel Zork, and I prefer the video poker option because you’re able to get worked out, and perhaps you hit that royal I did on a previous cruise. So you can check that article out on Travel Zork, the Points and Loyalty Corner, gambling on Carnival Panorama Cruise Ship.
There is also Triple Zero Roulette. I mentioned [00:21:00] Keno as being a terrible casino game. Triple Zero Roulette also horrible game. Single zero roulette is bad. Double zero roulette is bad. Triple is even worse. So don’t play triple zero roulette. I’m not going to take any person seriously that plays triple zero roulette.
So moving on, I tried to buy in at the casino. First, I sat at the blackjack table. I tried to buy in. I was waiting and the pit boss eventually came after five or ten minutes, even after Mandy bought it and said there was a block on my account from quote unquote, The back office, and I couldn’t charge to my room.
I asked why. I mentioned this is my first Holland America cruise. He said there’s no reason that he’d have to look into it. He mentioned that they partnered with Carnival Cruises and other cruise lines. And I told him I was able to deposit with Carnival. And he was asking, oh, you played there, you were able to deposit there.
And I explained, yes, and oh, I don’t know [00:22:00] why there would be a problem with your account. And he said, well, you’re welcome to use cash to buy in. I explained to him, I didn’t bring cash. The point was using my room charge with credit and getting the miles and points on the credit card. And I said, I’m not willing to play anyway if I had to play with cash, but I’m willing to play with credit because of the miles and points.
So I’m basically telling him you’re not going to get action from me unless I can do the room charge. I sat, I waited, he said, oh, I’ll go try to get an answer and nothing developed. Day two, I went back and the host showed me a piece of paper that said, please inform guests of house rules that we reserve the right to deny room charges.
I asked if there was an explanation, what the real issue is, and he said nothing. Then he was talking about, did you deposit and play through all your money on a previous cruise? Because we know there have been people who would try to buy it for, say, 500. They’d play through about 100 on slots or video poker and just cash [00:23:00] out.
Cruise ships don’t like that. I said, no. I sat there. I tracked all my tier credits. I made sure to play through all my money. And then he was saying, oh, maybe the problem is minimal play. And I said, I played through all the money once. I don’t understand what the problem is. I don’t understand why I would get denied room charge.
I’m also here as a casino invited guest and oh, you’ll have to contact them or I’ll have to ask them again, but they’re not giving me an explanation. So it was really strange. So I gambled exactly zero dollars on the ship. I’m not going to just straight up gamble. Just doesn’t make any sense to me. I set a rule 10, 11 years ago that I’m just only going to gamble when I have an advantage.
I’ve made small exceptions in the past for social occurrences. I sat down with the people from Destination Jackpot, their YouTube channel playing video poker, and we were just straight up gambling. But they were doing it for video content and also tier credits, but even then it was their money, not mine.
I’ve also [00:24:00] played blackjack for short sessions with others that would say, Oh, I just want you to go over some hands with me or let’s just play together. Okay, but I’m not going to gamble on this. Three to two, no surrender, dealer hitting all 17s, continuous shuffle machine game, using my own money. Like I said, I didn’t even have money.
I intentionally deposited money in my bank before I left some money at home. I was intending to do the room charges and could not. Moving on, I mentioned about the app was lacking a lot of information, like the times for dining. When to be back on the ship and when to leave the ship, that was really strange.
They distributed all these paper leaflets throughout cruise and it got quite overwhelming. There were just so many of these papers that were passed out that had the times on it. Why wouldn’t the times be on the app? So it was ruffling through the papers and looking for the times of everything. The app didn’t indicate.
Simple information. So the papers eventually piled up, threw some of them away. [00:25:00] Figured it out, but it’s, come on, just have the app be more straightforward and have the more important information like dining times, boarding times, disembarkation. All of that just wasn’t there for some reason. Day two, this was the first cruise stop at Path UK.
Went to a lounge area and got a number, had to take a boat to get to the beach as this was One of these where the cruise ship parked outside and it was a boat ride to get to the island. So it was pretty cool. I used my Insta360 X4 video to take some boat trip footage. I recently released that YouTube video on my Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast channel.
It was a nice boat ride to get there. Looking around, there were several beaches. There were chairs that were available even around 11 a. m. when I got there. As I would think, there’s a competition for chairs that people want to be on the chairs at the beach, but there were many available. There was an island [00:26:00] barbecue area.
I had a Jamaican black bean veggie burger. And there were several roosters in the area. This is an interesting place, a basketball court, pool areas, beach areas, bars, always bars, Half Moon Cay, private island. The boat ride on the way back I thought was even better as it wasn’t as crowded. And it was about 10 minutes to get back to the ship, so pretty good photos on the way back.
And was happy to be back on the ship after about an hour and a half of walking around and having the island barbecue. I also took a video of the island barbecue and put that on YouTube. Day 3 was a sea day. I got an invitation for a captain’s welcome. 7 p. m. welcome toast, meet senior officers, so they gave out free champagne on one of the upper decks and some snacks that were going around.
Nothing exclusive or special, I remember doing this with MSC and you had to have an invitation and it was in a special room and they were checking [00:27:00] the invitations. But this one was less formal and just in the middle of the ship so everybody could have just walked in. So I’m not sure if the invitation was exclusive as casino guests or some other classification, not really sure.
There was some music at the BB King Lounge and the World’s Stage, and during one of the dinners, I sat with one of the band members who was performing. So there were lots of entertainment options for music, comedy, performances, variety shows. Day four, Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos. It was very windy on the upper decks and between the ships.
And it started to rain after I was on the ground for about 20 minutes, it was heavy rain and retreated to the ship, but there were lots of interesting shops. There was a NASA area. that had John Glenn and other space memorabilia, and a beach area. I took footage of the beach, and the space, and the shops, and the far side.
But [00:28:00] after the heavy rain, I definitely retreated, and very much liked the hot shower. There was some nice areas to walk around at Margaritaville area, with a very clean and large pool. In addition to the beach, there’s lots of swimming options. Day five was Amber Cove, Dominican Republic. This was my favorite stop.
Very large area with water slides and ziplines and walking up there was a lot of nature, a lot of different plants, trees, and a really awesome view, a big field with solar panels, livestock, and mountains. So it was cool to get up really high, get a nice view. I have a video of that as well. Lots of video on this as I’ve been more diligent about documenting travel through video rather than just photos.
Near the slides and the zipline area, there is the viewing area with a bar and food, sea shops, ships, and mountains. Some more cool areas, [00:29:00] more vantage points. It was a big walk up to get to the waterslides, ziplines were in the same area. The waterslides went down to a big section, saw lots of kids there, and I think it was cruisers from the Carnival Celebration, or Magic, I believe was the other ship.
Not many kids on Holland America, but definitely a lot of kids activities in Dominican Republic. And one area where I saw a lot of kids, an area that I really liked, there was a waterfall, koi ponds, or koi fish ponds. Lots of flowers and insects inside of Amber. There was a display saying that Amber Cove inspired Jurassic Park, or that Jurassic Park took some ideas from Amber Cove, but this resin that the insects were encased in, that a mosquito had led to the rise of the dinosaurs in the movie, I think was what they were explaining.
There was also a plaza area with various masks. There was a carnival or carnival celebration area [00:30:00] and a lot of vibrant colors. They signed, said Amber Cove, lots of shops. So there was lots to see Amber Cove. Day six, sea day seven. The final day was Nassau Bahamas. It was nice. They broke up a lot of these with sea days, but I think there were.
Two in a row, so maybe it would be nice to have one day at port, sea day, one day at port. This is just how they did it this time. NASA had the straw market. There was lots for sale, including a wood carving section. I took some video footage of that. There were multiple sections in the straw market. Find all kinds of hats, musical instruments, bags, you name it, it was there.
Lots of crafted items, especially in the wood carving section. There was a marina area with very clear water and a lighthouse. I was able to see right to the bottom and also see fish inside of the water. Lots of shops and restaurants. There was a Senor [00:31:00] Frogs. And the shops at the start of the fort were very colorful buildings.
There were great photo ops. Big hard flamingo displays, but not real flamingo, unfortunately. And masks, once again, there was a museum, the Junkanoo Museum, and I heard this word Junkanoo when I was in Atlantis, as there was a Junkanoo parade that I have a video of back in the archives. And after Nassau, Bahamas, it was time to get ready to get off the ship.
There were bag tags available at guest service. They suggested putting bags out before midnight so you can pack your luggage, leave it outside of your door. and then getting it on the ground. So I did exactly that. I left some of the bathroom items in the room, my passport, and some personal items stuffed into my drawstring bag and was good to go.
It was easy to retrieve the luggage after getting off the ship as they had different colors for the bag tags and the areas [00:32:00] corresponding with the colors. The last day got breakfast. They called the boarding group with the baggage colors. It took less than 15 minutes to get off the ship, and the ride share was maybe a 20 minute wait.
Pretty easy. I like Tallend America. I wouldn’t pay 1, 200 for it, but to be fair, I wouldn’t pay 1, 200 for any cruise at the moment. And with the magic of casino tier matching and casino offers, I’m happy to take complimentary cruises if it means I just have to pay a few hundred in taxes, fees, and internet.
I think a good experience. I kept myself busy throughout the cruise, practicing video poker, working on YouTube related items. I had streaming services that worked just fine. Netflix, although Mandy mentioned that her internet, the base package, didn’t let her use Hulu. It just blocked it. And I’ve seen this happen on previous ships too, that if you don’t pay for the higher grade of internet, it just [00:33:00] blocks certain things.
And this happened with me and Google Drives that I wasn’t able to access Google Drives on Virgin Voyages unless I had the better internet package. Pay the toll. It’s okay. It’s a complimentary cruise. You’re just paying maybe three, four hundred dollars. All in after the experience, and I had the onboard credit, which offsets some of that.
So I was disappointed about the whole casino thing, didn’t gamble onboard because of that back off, and really got no explanation for what I did wrong. There was no path for redemption, and I genuinely just don’t know. Were, was Carnival unhappy that I did room charges, played the money through, and then stopped?
Were they unhappy I won, I hit a royal flush, and, oh, Justin did room charges. He did about 8K, not K, so now we’re just not going to let him do any more because he knows what he’s doing. And I think this is a lot of casino hypocrisy that they’re going to take the action from people who lose, people who don’t know what they’re [00:34:00] doing, but then the people start winning, they seem to be intelligent players, oh what is he doing with all this room charges, and then cut him off.
And this happened with me on other ships too, that I would get up to around 3, in room charges. Then they would say, Oh, you can’t room charge anymore. You have money on hand. We’re not going to let you room charge. And then I explained, look, I just want to do this for points and miles. And I’m willing to give you guys action.
And they still say no. Anyway, a lot of casino stupidity is it that they don’t want to pay the interchange fees that they have to pay some kind of fees to take these transactions, but Hey, if you’re offering video poker, that’s 96 percent paying a 3 percent fee, then what did you want to take that action or a casino after all?
I guess they don’t. And they didn’t this time. The host told me, maybe I mentioned, to go to a certain website and appeal. And I heard absolutely nothing back. Even sending an email, filling out their form. No reason, no [00:35:00] explanation. I was happy with the food on board. The room was very spacious. The beds were comfortable.
It was a cool vacation for about a week. And now I’m recording in March 2025, March 9th, 2025, here for two nights in Fort Lauderdale, and I’m going to go on another cruise with Celebrity. So instead of flying back to Philadelphia area, going home, then flying back at a later time, since this one’s out of Fort Lauderdale, figured to take it and go on another cruise.
So stay tuned for future trip report, and stay tuned for various cruise videos on my YouTube channel. The YouTube channel has been growing, so thank you for your support. March 9th, 2025, recording, I’m at 1197 total subscribers. I reached 1000 earlier this year, and I’ve been doing daily content. So in addition to these longer foreign podcast episodes, I’m putting up these three minute or so [00:36:00] travel videos and also podcast clips.
So I’d appreciate if you subscribe to Hurtigurdy Travel Podcast on YouTube to support this as I’ve also received monetization from YouTube. So this helps me be more full time in the miles, although I still find myself playing poker in casinos because that’s also a good source of income and entertainment.
Thank you for joining me for today’s episode. And stay tuned for future content. Some closing announcements, ticket sales for Zorkfest 2025, a Miles Points a Gambling event are live at Zorkfest. travelzork. I hope to see you at Zorkfest 2025, Las Vegas from December 5th through December 7th. I’m also looking forward to other events 2025 and had a successful 2024 speaking at events with Award Travel 101, Travels Org, Frequent Traveler University, and both Chicago [00:37:00] Seminars events.
If you’re an event organizer and would like to have me speak at your 2025 event, please contact me. Visit meetup. com slash Philly miles and points to RSVP for monthly greater Philadelphia travel credit miles and points meetups. I host in Willow grove, Pennsylvania. The next meetups are March 23rd, April 13th, 2025.
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