Sometimes we receive really timely questions, and this is a great example, as we just got off a cruise as we’re writing this. A player wanted to know what happens to their bank if they have money left at the end of a cruise:
When you play on a cruise and win or don’t spend all your money on your account, how do you get your money back?
Wendy
We’ll use Carnival as our example, since that is the cruise line we frequent and have the most recent experience with their cashless gaming system, but there’s usually similar processes in place for most casinos, land-based or cruises, with a cashless system.
One option is to visit the cashier. The cashier can cash you out of the money you have in your account, and in that way you can leave with the cash on hand.
In the case of Carnival, they have cash machines that can let you both put cash on your account as well as redeem the cash on account. They look like the ATM machines, but use your Sail & Sign card instead of an ATM card.
This can also allow players who don’t want to be charging room charges to their account for their casino play (making it easier to lose track of what they’ve deposited) to instead use cash to fund their casino play, but placing it onto their card.
If you debark the ship and forget to cash out in those ways, the final method, as long as you have the minimum required (which at last check with Carnival was $10), is they’ll mail a check to the address on your cruise account, usually not long after the sailing is complete.
So the good news is you won’t have any issues getting your money back, and in many cases there’s multiple ways to do so.
Land-based casinos will have similar cashless gaming options, but with the ability to link other sorts of payment accounts like your bank account, PayPal, Venmo and so on to both add or remove funds from your account, so you don’t have to be on property to complete those transactions. So in those cases there’s even more helpful ways to accomplish it.
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